ABSTRACT
The sartorial gender divisions discussed in the previous chapter had important implications in literary works where an engagement with fashion was constructed as a means of class emulation. Whilst Rosamond and Rose’s integrity is challenged through their allegiance to fashion, they are firmly located within a rigid class structure and remain so throughout each novel. For women who occupied a more precarious social position – as Chapter 1 established, developments in the fashion industry particularly affected the way in which lower-income groups encountered clothing – this allegiance to fashion was more problematic. In this context, fashion was seen to provide lower-class women with a social platform, a means of establishing a place in respectable society based primarily on their appearance. As such, references to fashion in narratives that deal explicitly with the socially mobile reveal its ability to influence and manipulate society as a whole.
