Charlotte Brontë, ‘plainness’ and the language of dress

Abstract

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855) inhabited a society in which beauty was elevated above all other female attributes and where, with most work outside the domestic sphere deemed unladylike, marriage was the means by which middleclass women ensured their future security. Yet Brontë was exceptionally plain and as this study has proved, this set her at severe disadvantage in social, marital, economic and psychological terms. In consequence, Brontë spent much of her life confronting the challenges wrought by her plainness―on the one hand tortured by self-hatred and by the scrutiny of others, and on the other, incensed by the injustices of her contemporary society’s treatment of the plain. This thesis reveals evidence of this in her life choices, in her letters, in her previously unstudied extant clothing and in the novels for which she later became so famous. Drawing upon the disciplines of history, biography, literature and language, psychology, the study of dress, sociology, electrochemistry and chemistry, this integrative and highly innovative study considers the seismic impact that plainness had upon the life, works and clothing of the novelist.

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ORCID for Maria Hayward: orcid.org/0000-0002-3299-4383

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