Reading all the books

Warning: plot spoilers

I only recently discovered Edith Wharton, and I’m very glad I did. The House of Mirth, Wharton’s novel about society woman Lily Bart and her attempts to keep up with the gilded lives of her friends, may at first sound frivolous. But it is a powerful critique of the careless world of the rich and the sexist scrutiny into women’s private lives. We find ourselves loving and hating Lily; we are hopelessly caught up in the glamour of her social life, and yet there is something repelling and monstrous about it all, epitomised in the character of Gus Trenor. Such a life comes with many beautiful clothes, and Wharton’s prose gives us occasional glimpses into the attire of Lily and her set: furs, elaborate hats, ‘rich tissues and jewelled shoulders in harmony with the festooned and gilded walls’.

Lily is well aware of the sexist hypocrisy within her circle, particularly in the matter of clothing; as she says to Lawrence Selden:

‘Your coat’s a little shabby–but who cares? It doesn’t keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they don’t make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop–and if we can’t keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership.’

If there is any line which crystallises the essence of The House of Mirth and underscores its entire storyline, it must surely be ‘Who wants a dingy woman?’ Lily can be shallow and vacuous, but she is often also astute, and here she is under no illusions about the consequences of not being ‘pretty and well-dressed’. The cost of her lifestyle motivates her to use Gus Trenor to make money, and sets the wheels in motion for her decline into disgrace.

At the wedding of Jack Stepney and Gwen Van Osburgh, Lily pores over Gwen’s jewels, and her heart ‘gave an envious throb as she caught the refraction of light from their surfaces – the milky gleam of perfectly matched pearls, the flash of rubies relieved against contrasting velvet, the intense blue rays of sapphires kindled into light by surrounding diamonds […] the glow of the stones warmed Lily’s veins like wine. More completely than any other expression of wealth they symbolized the life she longed to lead…’ The unattainable jewels take on a special significance to Lily, whose desperation to attain the kind of life that Gwen Van Osburgh secures for herself ultimately becomes her downfall.

One of the most tragic scenes in the novel is towards the end, when the now-disgraced, newly poor Lily is sorting through all of her old clothes:

‘The remaining dresses, though they had lost their freshness, still kept the long unerring lines, the sweep and amplitude of the great artist’s stroke, and as she spread them out on the bed the scenes in which they had been worn rose vividly before her. An association lurked in every fold: each fall of lace and gleam of embroidery was like a letter in the record of her past. She was startled to find how the atmosphere of her old life enveloped her […] every hint of the past sent a lingering tremor along her nerves’.

The old clothes are a painful reminder of Lily’s past, which she can never hope to recreate now she is a fallen woman. In particular there is the iconic white dress which she wears at the Welly Brys’ party, in imitation of Joshua Reynolds’ 1776 portrait of Mrs Lloyd.

Joshua Reynolds, Mrs. Richard Bennett Lloyd, 1776

The simple diaphanous gown clings to the subject provocatively, revealing the outline of her legs; Lily’s version is unmistakably an homage to Mrs Lloyd, yet it is also very much her. To Gerty Farish it also makes her ‘look like the real Lily’, ‘the Lily we know’. The spectating men ‘make titillated, nudging comments on her performance’; they fail to appreciate any artistic vision, and instead gawp at her figure. As Michael Gorra observes, this moment “marks the height of Lily’s social triumph”. But the ‘Mrs Lloyd’ moment, combined with the Rosedale/Trenor rumours and Bertha Dorset’s spiteful machinations, ultimately lands our unmarried tragic heroine in a dingy boarding house, hooked on sleeping pills and abandoned by most of her ‘friends’.

So clothes have multiple functions in The House of Mirth. They signify status; they contribute towards Lily’s economic and social ruin; and they carry painful memories of the past, a life that Lily knows she can never get back. Stay tuned for a forthcoming ‘get the Lily look’ post soon. Because who doesn’t want to emulate a disgraced young socialite?

Gillian Anderson as Lily Bart, The House of Mirth, 2000

I’m a bit late to the party here, but I’ve only just begun this blog, so bear with me.

I remember the world of ‘bookstagram’ erupting in outrage when an article by Hillary Kelly appeared on the Vulture website, criticising the trend of posting pictures of pretty books on Instagram. Often these book photographs are taken against an attractive background, such as a library or a coffee shop, and often they also feature paraphernalia such as flowers, lattes, or stationery. Kelly acknowledges that “books have always been art objects as well as social indicators”, and even admits that she has fallen for the trend herself. (In fact, Kelly’s entire Instagram is a feast of aesthetic aspirationalism.) Perhaps, then, Kelly feels it is OK to criticise ‘bookstagram’ – because she is to an extent ‘one of them’. Kelly’s article was followed by a snide Guardian piece on the “annoying art form” of bookstagram. (I would recommend reading meandorla’s excellent response to these articles, which is far more articulate than mine will be.)

Kelly complains about a specific brand of book photography (or, as she terms it, “book porn”): women draping themselves across open books, “like some sort of Abrahamic sacrifice to the gods of paper and ink”. She uses the Instagram posts of several young female bloggers to prove her point, complaining that “they’re not even telling you the titles of books”. (None of these users were made aware that Kelly was running a piece deriding their work.) One of these users, danysbooks, regularly posts photographs of book covers, titles in full view; they are often accompanied by a discussion question to get people talking about literature. Another user, loriimagination, frequently discusses the contents of books on her profile. And theslowtraveler posted an excellent defence of her right to take a nice picture of a spread of books, “for no other reason than I think it looks pretty”.

Kelly claims that, to these bloggers, books are “just another object, shorn of meaning and sometimes of binding, rearranged to show that their possessors’ lives are prettier, more whimsical, more creative than yours”. Aside from the sheer spitefulness of this claim, if my own experiences are anything to go by it is also grossly inaccurate. I regularly Instagram nicely arranged photographs of whatever I’m reading, and I am careful to curate lovely editions of books. Books are precious to me. They are, in the words of Virginia Woolf, “the mirrors of the soul”. They are pocket-sized windows into different lives and beliefs and perspectives. They lay bare what it means to be human. I literally teach books for a living, and I studied them for three years at university. Anyone who would like to accuse me of not reading the books whose covers I post pictures of, or of using them as “Literary Filter[s]”, can FIGHT ME.

Honestly though, who cares if people like posting beautifully filtered photographs of their books? Writers themselves have celebrated aestheticism since the beginning of time. (We all know that, if cameras and the internet existed when Chaucer’s manuscripts were being painstakingly created, carefully filtered photographs of the Ellesmere would be all over the ‘gram.) The close historical associations between art and literature are heavily documented. Books can be both objects of beauty and something more meaningful; you only have to look at Vanessa Bell’s dust jacket designs for Woolf’s novels, or at F Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic Gatsby cover, to know that. These writers understood the appeal and importance of a good cover, and I doubt they would complain if these covers were appreciated by a wider online audience. Even Serious Academics such as Dr Laura Varman enjoy instagramming photographs of books they own.

It smacks of bitterness to write an elitist article tearing down the efforts of mostly young, “childless” (yes, Kelly actually went there) women who share their love of books and art with a wider audience. It is somewhat ironic that some of the fiercest critics of these women are the same people who lament the decline of the printed book industry. Kelly’s article feels like an attempt to prove her intellect and superior appreciation of books, rather than any meaningful contribution to a discussion about literary aesthetics. For what it’s worth, I teach in a secondary school, and I have been encouraging children to read classic literature by getting the librarian to buy beautiful editions and displaying them. It’s actually working.

The one good thing about this whole saga is that it has inspired me to write a blog post about my favourite book covers, which will appear in the near future. In the meantime, please enjoy these lovely Vanessa Bell dust-jackets, which are works of art in their own right.

 

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy’s novel about the tragic demise of a woman who defies social conventions, is an obvious choice for this blog. Anyone who has seen the film, starring Keira Knightley as the eponymous heroine, will remember the sumptuous costumes. I have not watched the film, but I did read the novel recently. It’s almost 1000 pages, so many of the finer details of Tolstoy’s prose have been forgotten. But of course there is the famous description of Anna at the ball, in which she makes her grand debut (we see her before the ball, but this is her Big Moment – the moment when Kitty sees Anna “now as someone quite new and surprising to her”):

‘Anna was not in lilac, as Kitty had so urgently wished, but in a black, low-cut, velvet gown, showing her full throat and shoulders, that looked as though carved in old ivory, and her rounded arms, with tiny, slender wrists. The whole gown was trimmed with Venetian guipure. On her head, among her black hair—her own, with no false additions—was a little wreath of pansies, and a bouquet of the same in the black ribbon of her sash among white lace. Her coiffure was not striking. All that was noticeable was the little wilful tendrils of her curly hair that would always break free about her neck and temples. Round her well-cut, strong neck was a thread of pearls.’

Anna’s dress is daring and provocative; she wears black when most other ladies are in pale hues. She stands out apart from the others, which at this point in the novel is a desirable prospect for her. The gown is ‘low-cut’, emphasising her sexual desirability. The ‘wilful tendrils’ of hair hint at her rebellious nature. At this moment, Kitty realises that ‘Anna could not have been in lilac…that her dress could never be noticeable on her’. Anna’s attire is cleverly chosen to enhance her luminous beauty, and she succeeds in drawing Vronsky’s eye once more.

Later in the novel we are given another portrait of Anna, this time in white:

‘Dressed in a white gown, deeply embroidered, she was sitting in a corner of the terrace behind some flowers, and did not hear him. Bending her curly black head, she pressed her forehead against a cool watering pot that stood on the parapet, and both her lovely hands, with the rings he knew so well, clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure, her head, her neck, her hands, struck Vronsky every time as something new and unexpected. He stood still, gazing at her in ecstasy.’

The whiteness of her gown connotes innocence and purity, which is obviously ironic in this situation. But, with the benefit of literary hindsight, there is something very innocent and Edenic about this moment in the novel.

There are many other characters whose clothes I could discuss – sensitive, farming-obsessed Levin, Dolly with her feelings of social inadequacy, and the youthful ingenue Kitty to name a few – but I intend to keep this post short, so I will leave you with some Anna Karenina clothing inspiration. If you want to channel Anna’s fashion, seek out some provocative black velvet, pearls, furs, and large hats. And lots of rings.

Velvet maxi dress, Alexander McQueen

(As a side note, Kate Middleton’s custom McQueen gown is VERY Anna Karenina inspired)

Velvet maxi dress, £60, Collectif

Pearl necklace, £39.99, H Samuel

Faux fur jacket, £49.99, Zara

Off-the-shoulder gown, £1600, Temperley London

Crystal ring, £6.80, Topshop

Paste ring, £185, Laurelle Antique Jewellery

I remember reading Gatsby for A Level when I was sixteen or seventeen, and I fell in love with its glittering prose. Even though almost all its protagonists live shallow and vapid lives (“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy…”), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seductive descriptions of the people and parties of 1920s America weave a literary spell of sorts over the impressionable reader. Take the opening of Chapter 3:

‘There was music from my neighbor’s house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.’

The moth simile recalls the wispy fabrics and delicate beading of the 1920s flapper dresses which women like Daisy and Jordan Baker would wear to these glamorous parties. But more than that, clothes have a transformative power in the novel. Myrtle’s elaborate cream chiffon party dress, symbolic of her desperation to fit into Tom’s world, has such an influence that ‘her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur’. And then there is the unforgettable shirt scene:

‘He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us, shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. While we admired he brought more and the soft rich heap mounted higher–shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple-green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue. Suddenly with a strained sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.

“They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such–such beautiful shirts before.”’

The ‘beautiful’ shirts epitomise Gatsby’s pursuit of the American Dream and his attempt to use wealth to seduce Daisy, who is overwhelmed with emotion when surrounded by such exquisite possessions. But he is ultimately not enough for her, and the novel ends in tragedy.

I often find myself wanting to channel 1920s Gatsby fashion, but sadly it’s not part of my wardrobe (yet). Think layered ruffles, T-strap heels, beading, drop-waist dresses, headbands, feathers, and pearl necklaces. Below you’ll find a selection of my current favourites.

Midi dress, £350, Needle and Thread

Tulle dress, £1500, Alberta Ferretti 

T-strap heels, £135, Anthropologie

Clutch bag, £39, Lipsy

Pearl bracelet, £80, notonthehighstreet

Tulle mini dress, £52.50, Asos

Sequin midi dress, £75, Asos

Crystal headband, £302, Dolce and Gabbana