Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England by John Styles

Abstract

93 Dorset’’—The Middle Sort of People focuses on parish experience; it argues that the social identity of the provincial middling sorts was predominantly founded on their roles within their parish . Detailed examination of Household Hearth Tax assessments, probate inventories , parochial office holdings, and ownership of material goods support these findings. Within parishes, selfproclaimed ‘‘chief inhabitants’’ ranked themselves higher on the social scale than regular ‘‘inhabitants.’’ All ‘‘inhabitants ’’ paid taxes, a sign of relative wealth, and all shared similar parochial concerns and outlooks, yet ‘‘chief inhabitants ’’ generally possessed greater wealth and income, and most held parish/governmental offices. Wealth determined , contributed to, and confirmed status within the parish. However, though relative wealth becomes one of the markers (among others) that determines ‘‘middling’’ social status, it is important to recognize that the status brought about by this wealth had no real meaning external to the parish; that is, self-identifying as a ‘‘chief inhabitant’’ of a particular parish did not translate into viewing oneself as part of a larger, extra-parochial group (such as ‘‘the middle sort’’). Mr. French argues that any sense of extra-parochial social identity stemmed not from identification with the socalled social class of the ‘‘middle sort,’’ but rather with a concept of gentility, and that the chief inhabitants of the parish were the ones most interested in acquiring the trappings (internal and external ) of gentility, modified for their particular circumstances, as a means to escape their place within the parochial hierarchy. As he notes, ‘‘‘chief inhabitants ’ were only distinguished from the rest of the ratepayers because they possessed more of the same kind of attributes ’’; in contrast, gentility ‘‘represented a clear social threshold that was acknowledged universally, despite disagreements over definitions. It was a way out of the contingent pecking order of local office, the vestry, and the rating list, because it referred to norms that were external to, and larger than, the parish.’’ The middle sort of people in provincial England during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries understood themselves primarily in terms of their position within their parish and, secondarily , through their relationship with and adaptation of the attributes and material goods associated with notions of gentility . Kathleen M. Oliver University of Central Florida JOHN STYLES. Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven: Yale, 2007. Pp. xi ⫹ 432. $50. Most histories of eighteenth-century English dress focus on the clothing and accoutrement of the gentry and aristocracy , and occasionally the middling classes. Rarely is the dress of the lower classes examined, and, then, not at any length; the most sustained examinations of plebian dress are usually found in costume histories of occupational or working dress. To a great extent, the bias toward upper-class dress comes from the wealth of sources (portraits, fashion sketches, fashion periodicals, diaries and journals, probate inventories) in the case of upper-class dress, and the relative dearth, in the case of plebian dress. Thus, Mr. Styles’s Dress of the People provides a welcome and nec- 94 essary addition to the history of English costume, in its detailed examination of eighteenth-century plebian dress. ‘‘No eighteenth-century commodity,’’ Mr. Styles notes, ‘‘revealed differences in living standards between rich and poor more visibly than clothing.’’ In order to discern ‘‘the part clothing played in the activities and experiences’’ of the common folk, Mr. Styles employs ‘‘a patchwork of sources, all of them to some degree obdurate, flawed and incomplete .’’ These include those previously unused in histories of dress, specifically ‘‘records of criminal trials and advertisements for fugitives,’’ as well as the more traditional ones of personal account books, parish poor records, travel narratives, and prints. Although criminal proceedings of thefts of plebian garments have their limitations as source material (for instance, the tendency for thieves to steal the ‘‘more desirable, expensive and easily disposed items’’), as do newspaper advertisements describing clothing worn by (predominantly male) fugitives, Mr. Styles cautiously employs and analyzes these sources. The book is organized into four sections . Part I, entitled ‘‘Patterns of Clothing ,’’ has separate chapters on travelers’ impressions of English plebian dress; articles of dress associated with the common people, such as smock frocks, coarse linen shifts, or bedgowns; clothing...