The role of clothing in the pre-bourgeois ambience of Kersnik’s novels

Ana Perović

doi:10.15503/jecs20131.267.280

Abstract

The article focuses on the analysis of women’s and men’s clothing appearances in the pre-bo-urgeois ambience of Kersnik’s novels. Particular clothing items and clothing appearances indicate the presence of specifi c spiritual and social characteristics, typical for the cultural and historical environment in which the two literary works were created. The methodological approach of the analysis in terms of theory is based on general semiotic theory (Eco, Lotman), cultural semiotics (Barthes), literary theory and literary history, Lotman’s symbol theory, clothing culture, discourse analysis and Bourdieu’s theory of habitus. The article discusses separately the clothing appearan-ces of male and female characters. The descriptions of clothing appearances reveal the socio-histo-rical background of the literary works as well as many other abstract categories such as characters’ mental states, their ideologies, political beliefs, positive and negative character attributes as well as their moral virtues and vices. Clothes as part of the pre-bourgeois habitus try to establish a balance between the urban and the rural, between prestige and humility, between refi nement and coar-seness. Irony is often a result of the contrast between the physical determinants and the associate variable, i.e. the clothing. The author uses a range of various clothing appearances to characterize and mock different classes of people; the trivial conversations about fashion denote the banality of social life; the differences between the “true” bourgeoisie and those who strive to reach and fi t into that social class are already strongly indicated in the descriptions of their external appearances.

Highlights

Clothing appearances of male literary charactersJ. Kersnik (1993) uses a wide range of different clothing appearances to sarcastically characterize various groups of people attending the wedding of the local nobleman: “(...) the gentlemen all carried big bunches of flowers and were dressed in all sorts of clothes, as is the custom on such occasions here, in these small towns and villages: next to the latest tailcoat you could see a worn-out black overcoat worn with a red spotted shirt; and because the road was all muddy, the court clerk was wearing high boots and white gloves” (p. 102)
An analysis of the roles of clothing or clothing appearances in literary texts requires knowledge of an accurate definition of clothing items, which includes a thorough knowledge of their purpose and morphological characteristics; studying a certain clothing item from the historical and sociological perspective of a specific period; examining the author’s personal relationship to clothing; studying the motif-thematic connections in which the clothing appears; studying clothing as a literary “symbol”30; observing how the traditional symbolism of clothing preserves, modifies or
Expression entirely changes; examining clothing items as a part of the literary character’s description; discovering clothing or clothing appearance as means of characterization which can grow into an irony and satire and helps to draw caricatures

Summary

Clothing appearances of male literary characters

J. Kersnik (1993) uses a wide range of different clothing appearances to sarcastically characterize various groups of people attending the wedding of the local nobleman: “(...) the gentlemen all carried big bunches of flowers and were dressed in all sorts of clothes, as is the custom on such occasions here, in these small towns and villages: next to the latest tailcoat you could see a worn-out black overcoat worn with a red spotted shirt; and because the road was all muddy, the court clerk was wearing high boots and white gloves” (p. 102). The described clothing appearance corresponds to the prescribed dress code for the bourgeois gentlemen; the dress code awareness was not fully and not developed among the people of this small town This gives a good insight into the social structure of the population which in its essence was of peasant origin and extremely heterogeneous in economic terms and in terms of education. Cankar’s philistines, clearly originating from Kersnik’s petit bourgeoisie, show the political conformity of their characters through their clothes and appearance; i.e. through a faithful imitation of the bourgeois dress code. The clothing items that are most frequently presented are shoes, trousers, hats, jewellery and other fashion accessories such as gloves These items denote the social stratification (according to financial and intellectual capacities), the petit bourgeois underdevelopment and the entrapment in trivial social conventions the literary characters cannot cope with. In contraposition to the elite event, which at its core focuses on appropriate clothing, these elements emphasize the underdevelopment of the bourgeois habitus in the Slovene territories of that particular time period

Clothing Appearances of Female Literary Characters

Conclusion