Bernadine Evaristo, Kate Atkinson, and clothes – welcome to episode 92.
In the first half of the episode, Rachel and I discuss clothes in books – do we care what characters wear? I forgot to mention, but do check out Moira’s excellent Clothes in Books blog for lots of this sort of thing.
In the second half, we are unusually modern – comparing Life After Life by Kate Atkinson and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo.
Do get in touch with us if you have any suggestions or questions – teaorbooks[at]gmail.com – and you can support the podcast at Patreon. Many thanks to those who do!
The books and authors we mention in this episode are:
The Flick by Annie Baker
John by Annie Baker
A Winter Book by Tove Jansson
A Name to Conjure With by G.B. Stern
For All We Know by G.B. Stern
Alan Ayckbourn
Harvey by Mary Chase
Speaking of Jane Austen by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern
More Talk of Jane Austen by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern
Flowers for Mrs Harris by Paul Gallico
Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
‘Miss Brill’ by Katherine Mansfield
The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
Letter From New York by Helene Hanff
Patricia Brent, Spinster by Herbert Jenkins
Emma by Jane Austen
Daisy’s Aunt by E.F. Benson
Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson
Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp
Ashcombe by Cecil Beaton
Edith Olivier
Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor
A Winter Book by Tove Jansson
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Good question!I sometimes yell I don’t ****ING care what you are wearing…especially male characters.Just get on with it.
Unless it’s a novel based on clothes such as The Dressmaker,which is too obvious to mention.😉
Discussion on clothes in books reminded me of Prince Yakimov, an eccentric and endearing character in Olivia Manning’s superb ‘The Great Fortune’ . Shabby but elegant, Prince Yakimov is half Russian and half Irish. He has fallen on hard times but wears the clothes of more prosperous times- a floor-length fur coat that belonged to the Tsar.
His sagging yellow cardigan “fluttering as though carried on a coat hanger”.
His “peculiarly English sense of humour” is demonstrated by his wearing one black and one brown shoe.
Re-reading Madame Bovary. In Chapter 9 she is dressing for the ball and puts on “a barége dress.” I had to look it up. It was a gossamer but warm fabric. Very luxurious! Meanwhile Charles, her husband, is putting on trousers that no longer fit him. I say what they are wearing is important.
I do if it helps to paint the picture of the character – for example, the discussion of Poor Yaki above, where his clothing is integral to who he is. I’m not interested in the clothes per se – just what they say about the character and help them sit in the story and what they represent.
I definitely do not want paragraphs after paragraphs of dress details in fantasy novels. But for some reason, I’m a little forgiving when I read contemporary novels. Weird.
I like learning about character’s clothes if it’s integral to the plot, or if it sets the scene somehow — like in Gone with the Wind or Atonement (though that may be just in the movie adaptation). I really enjoy it in historical or period novels because I do love social history, and I’m not much interested in modern fashion. I think in contemporary novels it can date a novel if there are too many details, especially if they mention name brands, which I find so irritating.
And I’m delighted to learn about Daisy’s Aunt which I promptly downloaded, can’t wait to read it! I love the Lucia novels and didn’t know where to continue with E. F. Benson. Maybe you can discuss it in an upcoming episode? I’d also love an episode with plays featured as I’ve just discovered how much I enjoyed reading them.
Do have a look at this blog if you liked both the GWTW book and film descriptions/depictions:
http://www.gwtwscrapbook.blogspot.com
Its no longer being updated, but I have kept the link in my bloglist and it works. The
blog authors researched contemporary 19th century fashion periodicals/plates to find equivalent dresses that might have influenced Plunkett’s designs for the film. Its a fun journey down that rabbit hole!
I very much enjoyed this discussion and had lots of thoughts about it, most of which had predictably evaporated by the time I got home from my walk…but it did make me think of Barbara Pym. She often describes her characters’ outfits – Allegra Gray (who tries to lead the formerly celibate priest Julian Mallory astray) is all chic little suits and fur collars, while Mildred Lathbury (a spinster at ‘just over 30’!!) wears sensible shoes, of course, and sees herself as ‘indistinguishable from many another woman in a neutral winter coat and plain hat and I was thankful for my anonymity.’
In her own diaries Pym frequently describes what she has worn that day – I had to look up ‘trollies’ (knickers, apparently).
In Some Tame Gazelle Belinda rushes to shove the stays she was mending under a cushion before the Archdeacon, paying an unexpected call, sees them. Undergarments do feature often in Pym novels.
Pym characters also often have dressmakers who call – not only to take instructions for new garments but also, as you mentioned, to alter old ones. Alterations might be needed if the owner has put on weight, but more often to update the item for the new season’s fashions. Dressmakers are also useful vehicles for passing on gossip – when Belinda hears from their dressmaker, Miss Prior, that the Archdeacon’s wife has ‘just got a lovely navy two piece with a lemon blouse’ she is indignant:
‘“It isn’t right” she thought “for a clergyman’s wife to get her clothes from all the best houses. She ought to be a comfortable, shabby sort of person , in an old tweed coat and skirt or a sagging stockinette jumper suit.”’
In modern novels, though, I rarely find any description of clothes, and when I do it’s almost always brand name-dropping, which I hate and which surely dates a book. The thing I (unreasonably) find most annoying, though, is the women who ‘just throw on a pair of jeans and simple white T-shirt’ (or a ‘crisp white shirt’) Who has all this crisp white stuff to ‘throw on’? ‘Simple white T-shirts’’ make anyone who’s not a size 8 look fat, and any white T-shirt I have ever owned stayed white for approximately 5 minutes.
I was just discussing this topic with my daughter, who agreed that clothes say so much about a character – she also pointed out that it’s not just about women, and that a character like James Bond is partially defined by his suits.
Fascinating topic.
Elizabeth Mapp and Diva Plaistow competing over dresses styles and trimmings in Benson’s Miss Mapp came to mind. The incidents showed a lot about their competitive personalities. Thank you for another enjoyable episode.
If I am reading a book set in Asia, Africa I get fascinated by what people are wearing and end up having to look up the references on line.
Lovely!