Queen of England

Fashions of the Napoleonic era for women had been dashing. However, larger social forces were at work that now placed a disapproving stamp on this look. While the daintily-shod foot could still peep out from under voluminous skirts, necklines rose and the feminine figure was concealed beneath jaunty collars, puffed sleeves, and other additions.

Another indicator can be seen in the hats - frothy and a harbinger of mroe to come during this century. Rackety King George IV was long dead, and his old sea dog brother would sit on the throne for only a few more years.

A new era was coming. It would be marked by a transition from the House of Hanover to the House of Windsor. Yet this change wasn’t endemic to Britain alone. The same reaffirmation of a sterner morality included continental Europe and America. This new zeitgeist took form in the shape of a slender eighteen-year-old. The young Queen Victoria was ready to re-order society into an image of her making.

How did women fare in the 1830s? European society was growing more conservative, and the lusty days of the Regency were now looked back on with a shudder. Popular culture might admire the dash of a Count d’Orsay, but, for women, only courtesans and actresses were permitted the same license. As one consequence, a trend was building for a greater envelopment of the feminine form in fabric.

A new age was coming—one with powerful consequences for the future. It began on the morning of June 20, 1837, when an eighteen year-old girl learned that she had become the reigning monarch of England. Her values would set a whole new standard for communicating gender. In fact, she’d give her name to the popular culture that would pervade the world until the end of the century: Victorianism. Peter Gay, our former head of the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, has written a series of books that describe the zeitgeist of that period, Bourgeois experience, from Victoria to Freud.

p.s. Researching Costume and Fashion History is being offered on Tuesday April 7, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. in the South Court Classrooms.