Women’s suits, Eaton’s Catalogue 1900.
A picture is worth a thousand words; or, more aptly put, a LACK of pictures is worth a scholarly treatise.
There are only 3 pages of women’s dress goods in the 1900 Eaton’s Catalogue, two of which are this page of suits and another offering a dressmaking service.
By 1913 the entire front section of the catalogue is an homage to women’s love of costume and clothes and her new desire to buy them rather than make them.
Last blog I wrote about a young girl in 1770 Boston (born in Nova Scotia) whose primary preoccuption, it seemed, was her clothing. (Maybe it’s an instinctive thing.) But it wasn’t until the industrial changes of the early 1900′s, that a woman was given full leave to pursue this obsession.
The first chapter of Marion Talbot’s 1910 treatise, the Education of Women, explains how the home went from being a center of production to a center of consumption around 1900 and that created a new breed of female, who I call “Consumer Girl.”
“The change of the interests in women which is most striking is that due to the industrial revolution or the introduction of the factory system. The removal of household industries from the home to the factory has gone on rapidly,until the process has been completed in the areas of spinning, weaving, shoemaking, tailoring, candle dipping, preparing drugs, and the numerous other activities. Sewing, baking, preserving different foods,cooking in different forms are disappearing. It is only a few years that all women’s and children’s clothing had to be sewn in one’s own home, and nearly every stage of preparation of one’s own food had to be carried on in one’s own kitchen. The process of the removal would be more rapid, were not women and the men of the families, held in bondage to the idea that the permanence and sanctity of the home depended upon the retention of sewing and cooking within its walls. In such families, these activities still take precedence, even over child-rearing.”
In find this last phrase really interesting in the context of Flo in the City, my novel about a girl coming of age in the pivotal 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ . Mother Margaret Nicholson, born 1854, was a gifted seamstress and cook, but her daughters certainly were not. Indeed, I find it interesting in the context of the entire century.
The less there is to do for a woman in the house THE BIGGER the activities remaining become, in mind if not in actual effort.
This woman, Marion Talbot, was kind of prescient, but it did take about 100 years for cooking to become a passe activity. Or is it?? Certainly each generation becomes more and more deskilled with respect to cooking ability. Cooking itself, these days, is a kind of specialized art. There are many people who are brilliant at it, alot of these people being men. (My youngest son is going to have a philosophy degree in a year, but luckily, he is working at a high end restaurant as a sous chef, so he’ll likely also have a good job. His partner, who is getting a Masters, does no cooking at all. But when the children come, if they come, I wonder what will happen then?)
Women in 1910 have a new responsibility, claims Talbot, to be savvy consumers. “Because of this great change, women now have the new function of directing how the the products of other people’s labour shall be consumed. It is estimated that the consumption of 95 percent of the world’s goods is directly controlled by women. This is a new a serious responsibility, requiring different training from pre-industrial times. To meet this responsibility, a reading of the daily papers to see what bargains may be had, blind credence in labels, a skill in keeping up with fashions, is not nearly enough. Training should include a knowledge of materials, a knowledge of production and laws governing each industrial process,standards of quality of the article and efficiency of the workman. It should also include such an appreciation of human needs as will help determine the conditions under which goods are produced. (She lists working conditions.) As of now, women are receiving no such training.”
Wow! What can I saw. We never received such training. We don’t want to know where our things come from, and at what cost. (We put our blind trust in government agencies to protect us from harm.) And no one wanted us to develop a consumer conscience. This is especially interesting in view of today’s Green Consumer Initiatives. Has the tide actually turned or are we being Royally duped?
