1840s silhouette
After consuming a significant number of books on scientific advances in the 1840s, I wonder why, in such a highly charged atmosphere of innovation and energy, their clothes and hairstyles were so dreadful.As much as I enjoy championing the champion-less, I would take up the cause of this decade begrudgingly, and only out of a desire to understand the physical aspects in which all these advancements took place. For fashion-wise, the decade was invidiously dowdy.
Scientifically and philosophically it yielded an extraordinary number of innovations and divergences in thought:
- John Stuart Mill writes, Principles of Political Economy, in 1844
- Start of the Computer Revolution with Charles Babbage and Ada Byron Lovelace
- First Publication of The Economist, 1843
- Marx & Engels write the Communist Manifesto, in 1848
- First convention for Women’s Rights held in 1848
- First use of general anesthesia in an operation in 1844
- First telegraph sent, starting a Communication Revolution
- The Political ‘Revolution of 1848′
- Darwin’s preparation of his theory of Natural Selection
But the women’s clothes were awful. The fashions of this decade were the prudes of the prudish nineteenth century. Alison Gernsheim writes: “Never before or since has Western women’s costume expressed respectability, acquiescence and dependence to such a degree as in the 1840s, the most static decade of nineteenth century fashion.” And, I am inclined to agree with her. One would need to go back to the fifteenth century – and very arguably not even then – to find a decade of fashion so hell-bent of stifling what our genetic disposition would urge us to find attractive.
Perhaps, besides the Europe-wide famine, this was one of the reasons for the explosion in thought. It is difficult to imagine the female visage inspiring contentment and distraction for mankind when framed by such severely parted, drooping hair and visible only when her view is straight-forward on due to her deep-brimmed poke bonnet. Those wretched bonnets made the sideways glance in the park or the passing look on the street impossible. The sullen, sick faces of the fashion plates, stuffed into stovepipe-like contraptions or sad, plastered hair were little improved by a lame spattering of dinky lace and fake flowers. And the bodices! Their cut made the youthful and sinewy matronly, the tall and willowy gangly and angular, and the well-busted top heavy and immobile. The constriction of the skirts, pancake-like flattening and dropping of the bosom, all-over covering of the skin, and face-blocking unflattering hair emphasized that idea that women were indeed forbidden fruit, but not in a good way. Mystery was abandoned for sanctimonious righteousness, boring rigidity, and the stifling doctrinal tightness of fear and disapproval.
The fashions of the 1840s were a blight upon the eyes of men and an encasement for the expression of women. In 1839, the year before the plunge into this mirthless decade, Honore de Balzac bent minds into viewing fashion as “sort of a symbolic language,” and that “to be proficient in the science, every woman walks about with a placard on which her leading qualities are advertised.” It is sad to imagine that the language of fashion would be one so without poetry and voiced with a clipped, monotone lack of ingenuity and spirit. Clothing can be not only a sounding board, as Honore suggested, it can also be an entombment. Is it any wonder that George Sand dressed like a man?!
1847 Portrait of Lola Montez painted for the King of Bavaria
It is easy to imagine the lascivious and romantic beauties of their days, the Josephines in high waisted Empire clothes, lounging on chaises and eating strawberries, or the Marie d’Agoults attracting the young Liszts in their exaggerated puffed-sleeved of the 1830s showing off their little waist and luminescent faces with dangly earrings in the candlelight. Or perhaps the era of the hoop that was to follow in the 1850s and 60s. Though it is not my favorite period, it had more redeeming qualities than the 40s. It was when below the waist was just too large and festooned to be ignored and the bosom generously framed and available for visual consumption.
But the 1840s? Even Lola Montez – the courtesan who was rumored to have seduced the King of Bavaria by wrestling her way into his study, sliding her hips onto his desk, and cutting her bodice open with a rough pair of scissors without so much of an introduction – looks dowdy and prudish in the fashion of the time. Though the particulars of the story are exaggerated, Ms. Montez’s quick temper and overpowering lustiness were infamous. But in her high-necked black gown with her flat conical bodice, It is hard to imagine her irreverential gall and hedonism inspiring the discontent among the masses that led to the downfall of her royal lover and the end of her career as a mistress of state. Though to her credit, the decision of Ms. Montez to not rely on her fashionable clothes to capture the Wittelsbach King – and eventually a title – was a demonstration of good strategy.
The western world of the 1840s must have been a rather detestable place: cold weather, potato famines, cranky men and bad clothes. Is it any wonder that so many were disenchanted with their institutions?
“I wonder why, in such a highly charged atmosphere of innovation and energy, their clothes and hairstyles were so dreadful.”
That’s because most woman were not allowed to know the outside world (politics etc) beyond their homes.
It was the 1950s of the 19th century.
“That’s because most woman were not allowed to know the outside world (politics etc) beyond their homes.”
I actually believe that’s a myth from at least the 1890s, if not the 1950s, created to make later periods seem more progressive by comparison. We can’t look back from our time period and judge the past by the standards of today; it’s comparing apples and oranges!
The 1840s were, after all, the beginning of the women’s suffrage movement, the middle of the industrial revolution, various political wars, and various other movements that are the real basis of our modern world. Women did know about them — they had to because they effected their everyday lives — and they participated in them in the ways that were open to them. Sure, they couldn’t run for office or vote, but they managed the family income, wrote essays, political poems, and books, they traveled and gave lectures, and some even started riots (think Carry Nation and her axe attacks on taverns). Women couldn’t help but know about huge numbers of things, including politics, outside their homes, and the fact that some women’s magazines and (male) speakers and writers stressed that “a woman’s place is in the home” seems to me a reaction to all the things that women were actually doing outside the home, not a reflection of the real domestic situation.
Women were very active in the anti-slavery movement, education reform, industrial reform, health and medical reform, which we take for granted today. Why was the prohibition movement run almost exclusively by women? Because hundreds of thousands of women and children were starving, beaten, homeless, raped and experienced other horrifying things every day at the hands of drunken men, who spent all their income on drink, went home and sold off their families’ possessions to buy more alcohol, and when they died, their creditors came and confiscated anything left to pay their drinking debts. We like to think that prohibition was a horrible, repressive, kill-joy government thing, and that everyone else wanted it gone, but when prohibition ended it was a huge step backwards into a life of abuse for thousands of women and children.
Now, as for 1840s clothing, I have also been doing a lot of studying of the mid 19th century, and the 1840s styles are actually some of my favorites. Compared to the 1830s and 1850s and 60s, they are much more practical and comfortable, and the softness and simplicity of line is attractive. Petticoats are much easier to move around in than hoops, and they are still wide enough to make the waist look small by comparison, especially with the fitted, pointed bodice waistline. They cover a too-large butt, belly or hips nicely, and they don’t tip up and show your undies if you fall down, unlike hoops! Tight sleeves mean no huge pillows on your shoulders, dragging your dress down or knocking you in the face when you turn your head, no wide pagoda sleeves falling in the middle of everything you’re trying to do, or flapping in the breeze when you’re outside. Higher necklines mean no bodice “muffin-top” look at the bust-line, which is not really attractive on anyone, bodice-ripper novel covers to the contrary! Plus, there was the very flattering cadet bodice option, with the neckline in a deep V to the waist, filled in with a frilly white chemisette. Besides, there is always evening wear, which featured very low necklines and short sleeves, and not too much trim.
1840s hairstyles I find more attractive than the 1830s, with their bunchy-ness: bunches of frizzed short curls on the temples, bunches of braids and loops of ribbon sticking up at the back, too many bunches. The 1840s hairstyles were smooth and elegant, longer shiny ringlets hanging over the ears, and the rest smoothly and easily pinned up. 1850s and 1860s hair got kind of weird with those wide earphone/Princess Leia things on the sides; I read several women’s magazines calling them “wings”. And don’t even get me started on 1870s hair!
I guess it’s just about the kind of style (simple vs. complicated) that appeals to us, and the things a particular style represents for us. For me, the 1840s are not repressed, dour, dowdy or ugly, they are practical, comfortable, accessible to all (not just the rich), and elegant in their simplicity. It’s true that there were not a lot of major fashion changes during the decade, but I see that as a good thing because the everyday person could avoid re-doing their wardrobe every year for a while, and not be totally out of fashion. Plus, we all know how many other important things people were thinking about during the decade, so I think it’s appropriate that extreme styles took a back seat for a while.
Sorry for not responding for a long time, I just found out about your response while I was looking at 1840′s fashions.
I was only talking about the 1840′s in Great Britain where the normal middle class “woman were not allowed to know the outside world (politics etc) beyond their homes”, not the entire 19th century.
I learned it from some Freudian British named Willett Cunnington in a book from 1936 called “Fashion and Woman’s attitudes in the Nineteenth Century”
The only suffrage I know started in the USA with the famous Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, the same year when revolutions were impacting Europe.
I assumed you didn’t like 1840s fashion since you wrote “But the women’s clothes were awful. The fashions of this decade were the prudes of the prudish nineteenth century.”
“Compared to the 1830s and 1850s and 60s..”
I hate 1856 to early 1860′s fashions, that’s when the crinoline appeared and changed woman’s silhouette into a giant pyramid
http://www.ancestryimages.com/proddetail.php?prod=f7299 the early 1850′s were better because it was a continuation of the late 1840′s silhouette with its shawls and mantles.
“1840s hairstyles I find more attractive than the 1830s.”
One fashion of the late 1820s and early 1830s was called the Apollo Knot
http://www.probertencyclopaedia.com/cgi-bin/res.pl?keyword=Apollo+Knot&offset=0
The hairstyles of those time’s make the woman look active.
“The 1840s hairstyles were smooth and elegant, longer shiny ringlets hanging over the ears, and the rest smoothly and easily pinned up.”
Since I’m a male, naturally I would like the late 1830′s to 1850s hairstyle because it makes woman look meek and passive compared to the fashions 20 years ago. That style is the most passive hairstyle woman ever wore, and must of satisfied the patriarchal males seeing such a passive hairstyle and clothing.
They look so virgin and angelic that it was shocking when I saw a 1840s porno french plate showing a woman sitting down with a male opening her dress open… and the woman had the 1840′s hairstyle and dress.
“1850s and 1860s hair got kind of weird with those wide earphone/Princess Leia things on the sides”
I think that style was popular in the late 1830′s
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_M2Cvj22ZTf0/S31RCqT4zoI/AAAAAAAAA0o/HjUI901pYPM/s1600/1839+-+La+Mode,+dam+i+bl%C3%A5tt+och+dam+i+bl%C3%A5randigt.jpg
“And don’t even get me started on 1870s hair!”
This 1871 picture so Alice in wonderland like.
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511F7KTYCTL._SS500_.jpg
My first that was, “That’s a courtesan?” When I think of a courtesan, I think Satine from Moulin Rouge. Someone who is sexy and uses her clothes to accentuate it. Ms. Montez looked like someone you’d see on the cover of a book on morals.
great website … i enjoy your writings … i am male and would so enjoy seeing ladies dress like this, very proper and formal