ABSTRACT
Ruskin's views on women's clothing were not entirely consistent. He hated fashionable dresses, because they went against the gentlemanly code of behaviour, and because they engaged in waste of material and labour. Conscious of the economic divide in society, Ruskin had advocated the national costume, and had asked upper class women to help others dress well. Like other Victorians, Ruskin believed that the soul was feminine. He argued that the "idea that the woman is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience" was senseless. Ruskin echoed the eighteenth (and nineteenth-century) views on soul and colour. He too thought of colour as having corporeal origins, associated as it was "with life in the human body". Ruskin applied the theory of blushing colour to paintings. Ruskin felt that it was possible for different forms of art to convey the same meaning.
