Passing fashions: Reading female masculinities in the 1920s

Feminist Studies

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 663-700

  Doan, Laura ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0032162307     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3178585     Document Type: Article

References (84)

1. Radclyffe Hall to Audrey Heath, 19 Mar. 1929 (emphasis mine). Lovat Dickson Papers (MG 30, D 237), Correspondence-Publishers and Agents, vol. 4, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa. For Hall's reaction to the Barker case, see Michael Baker, Our Three Selves: The Life of Radclyffe Hall (New York: William Morrow, 1985), 254.
2. Annette Kuhn, The Power of the Image: Essays in Representation and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1985), 53; Valerie Arkell-Smith, "I passed as a man for 30 years!" Empire News and Sunday Chronicle, 19 Feb. 1956. For further discussion of Barker's story, see Julie Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids: Women Who Dressed as Men in the Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness (London: Pandora, 1989), 2.
3. Annette Kuhn, The Power of the Image: Essays in Representation and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1985), 53; Valerie Arkell-Smith, "I passed as a man for 30 years!" Empire News and Sunday Chronicle, 19 Feb. 1956. For further discussion of Barker's story, see Julie Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids: Women Who Dressed as Men in the Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness (London: Pandora, 1989), 2.
4. Annette Kuhn, The Power of the Image: Essays in Representation and Sexuality (London: Routledge, 1985), 53; Valerie Arkell-Smith, "I passed as a man for 30 years!" Empire News and Sunday Chronicle, 19 Feb. 1956. For further discussion of Barker's story, see Julie Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids: Women Who Dressed as Men in the Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness (London: Pandora, 1989), 2.
5. Daily Herald, 1 Mar. 1929, 1; News of the World, 10 Mar. 1929, 9.
6. Daily Herald, 1 Mar. 1929, 1; News of the World, 10 Mar. 1929, 9.
7. Daily Herald, 9 Mar. 1929, 1.
8. Eve: The Lady's Pictorial, 30 June 1926.
9. Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), 173.
10. Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), 390.
11. The shingle, one of several popular hairstyles, was so de rigueur that some women insisted on it even if it made them look "as if [they] had just served fifteen years in prison" (Daily Express, 1 Apr. 1924, 5). The same year saw the introduction of the close-fitting cloche hat: "This was extremely important, because when it had imposed itself on the fashion it almost compelled women to wear their hair short. Those who would not cut off their locks were condemned to wear the only possible hat on the tops of their heads, where it gave a very ridiculous appearance. Within a couple of years of the first appearance of the cloche 99 percent of the young women of Western Europe had short hair." See James Laver, Taste and Fashion from the French Revolution to Today (London: George C. Harrap, 1937), 130.
12. A notable exception is Mary Louise Roberts's meticulously researched study of postwar France which considers, among other phenomena, the cultural implications of short hair within one specific national culture. Although Roberts does not engage fully with homosexuality, her work nevertheless shifts critical inquiry in a new direction. See her Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
13. Bertha Harris, "The More Profound Nationality of Their Lesbianism: Lesbian Society in Paris in the 1920s," in Amazon Expedition: A Lesbian Feminist Anthology, ed. Phyllis Birkby et al. (Albion, Calif.: Times Change Press, 1973), 79.
14. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, vol. 2, Sexchanges (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 327.
15. "Female cross-dressing . . . was restricted by an ordinance passed in 1800 and, at the turn of the century, strictly enforced by Lépine, the Paris prefect of police" (Benstock, 48).
16. Valentine Ackland, For Sylvia: An Honest Account (London: Chatto & Windus, 1985), 88. Gay Wachman kindly alerted me to this passage.
17. Benstock, 181.
18. See also Andrea Weiss, Paris Was a Woman: Portraits from the Left Bank (London: HarperCollins, 1995).
19. Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (London: Virago, 1985), 164.
20. Alkarim Jivani, It's Not Unusual: A History of Lesbian and Gay Britain in the Twentieth Century (London: Michael O'Mara, 1997), 27.
21. An examination of Troubridge's diaries and the biographies on Hall by Michael Baker and Sally Cline indicates that the couple spent about two days in Paris in 1921, seven days in 1922, eight days in 1924, and three or four days in 1927. They apparently did not visit Paris at all in 1923, 1925, or 1928. The exception was the extended visit in 1926 to obtain information for The Well of Loneliness-about five days in August and September, followed by a sustained visit from 5 October to 2 November. See Lovat Dickson Papers (MG 30, D 237), vols. 1 and 2, Una Troubridge Diaries, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa; Baker; and Sally Cline, Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John (London: John Murray, 1997). Claudia Stillman Franks notes too that Hall's contact with Brooks, Barney, and others on the French scene "was exclusively social. She saw them too sporadically for them to play any major part in her life, and similarly, she played no part in theirs." See her Beyond "The Well of Loneliness": The Fiction of Radclyffe Hall (Amersham, U.K.: Avebury, 1982), 33.
22. An examination of Troubridge's diaries and the biographies on Hall by Michael Baker and Sally Cline indicates that the couple spent about two days in Paris in 1921, seven days in 1922, eight days in 1924, and three or four days in 1927. They apparently did not visit Paris at all in 1923, 1925, or 1928. The exception was the extended visit in 1926 to obtain information for The Well of Loneliness-about five days in August and September, followed by a sustained visit from 5 October to 2 November. See Lovat Dickson Papers (MG 30, D 237), vols. 1 and 2, Una Troubridge Diaries, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa; Baker; and Sally Cline, Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John (London: John Murray, 1997). Claudia Stillman Franks notes too that Hall's contact with Brooks, Barney, and others on the French scene "was exclusively social. She saw them too sporadically for them to play any major part in her life, and similarly, she played no part in theirs." See her Beyond "The Well of Loneliness": The Fiction of Radclyffe Hall (Amersham, U.K.: Avebury, 1982), 33.
23. Cline, 230. "When [Hall] needed to relax several British friends were visiting Paris." Alternatively, the myth surrounding Hall's connection with Paris may have developed because some readers thought Hall's art was following her life. The hero of The Well of Loneliness, Stephen Gordon, goes into exile in Paris. I suspect that Hall chose Paris as Stephen's destination because she realized that writing a novel in support of sexual inverts was risky so it would be better not to draw on a scene closer to home, in London. By putting the spotlight on Paris, where many in Britain already thought homosexual culture thrived, Hall successfully deflected the focus from London's own "fashionable artistic night-clubs and . . . rowdy lesbian bars" (ibid., 174).
24. Cline writes that Hall "was eccentric and her fashions bizarre" (311).
25. Valerie Steele, Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 237.
26. Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women between the Wars, 1918-1939 (London: Pandora, 1989), 22; see also the entry for "flapper" in the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 5 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1989). For further information on the flapper fashion, see Steele; Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1954); and Billie Melman, Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties: Flappers and Nymphs (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988).
27. Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women between the Wars, 1918-1939 (London: Pandora, 1989), 22; see also the entry for "flapper" in the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 5 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1989). For further information on the flapper fashion, see Steele; Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1954); and Billie Melman, Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties: Flappers and Nymphs (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988).
28. Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women between the Wars, 1918-1939 (London: Pandora, 1989), 22; see also the entry for "flapper" in the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 5 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1989). For further information on the flapper fashion, see Steele; Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1954); and Billie Melman, Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties: Flappers and Nymphs (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988).
29. Deirdre Beddoe, Back to Home and Duty: Women between the Wars, 1918-1939 (London: Pandora, 1989), 22; see also the entry for "flapper" in the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 5 (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1989). For further information on the flapper fashion, see Steele; Cecil Beaton, The Glass of Fashion (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1954); and Billie Melman, Women and the Popular Imagination in the Twenties: Flappers and Nymphs (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988).
30. Phyllis Tortora and Keith Eubank, A Survey of Historic Costume (New York-Fairchild Publications, 1989), 299. The first women in England to cut their hair short in the prewar era were young students at the Slade School of Art, who considered it almost a rite of passage. The painter Carrington, for example, sported the cut and Dorothy Hepworth was, upon arrival, "frightfully disappointed so few girls wear their hair short," according to biographer Kenneth Pople (interview conducted in Bristol, England, in May of 1996).
31. Mary Agnes Hamilton, "Changes in Social Life," in Our Freedom and Its Results, ed. Ray Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1936), 234. Hamilton reflects on the impact of social change for women in the early years after World War I.
32. Times, 8 Aug. 1921, 9.
33. "Healthy Young Girls Are More Boyish than Boys," Daily Mail, 18 Jan. 1921.
34. I checked the letters to the editor for several weeks after the article appeared See Daily Mail, 19 Apr. 1927, 7 (emphasis added).
35. C. Willett Cunnington, English Women's Clothing in the Present Century (London: Faber & Faber, 1952), 163.
36. James Laver, A Concise History of Costume (London: Thames & Hudson 1969) 233 (emphasis added).
37. Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (New York: New American Library 1983), 21 (emphasis added).
38. Richard Klein, Cigarettes Are Sublime (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 117.
39. Daily Chronicle, 7 Mar. 1929, 3.
40. H. Montgomery Hyde, The Other Love: An Historical and Contemporary Survey of Homosexuality in Britain (London: Mayflower Books, 1972), 197.
41. David Pryce-Jones, Cyril Connolly: Journal and Memoir (London: Collins, 1983), 131, 149. Horatia Fisher was the daughter of Sir William Fisher, commander of the Mediterranean fleet, and niece of Desmond MacCarthy.
42. Humphrey Carpenter, The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends (London: Faber & Faber, 1989), 176, 177. The Honorable Evelyn Gardner was the daughter of the 1st Baron Burghclere, and the granddaughter of the 4th earl of Carnarvon.
43. Quoted in the magazine Urania, no. 71-72 (1928): 10.
44. Nigel Nicholson, Portrait of a Marriage (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1990), 99.
45. Diana Souhami, Gluck: Her Biography (London: Pandora Press, 1989) 35-36
46. Hamilton, 250.
47. Laver, 130.
48. Punch, 11 May 1927, 517.
49. Cunnington, 147.
50. Garber, 161, 152.
51. Baker, 118.
52. Richard Corson, Fashions in Eyeglasses (London: Peter Owen, 1967), 202.
53. Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (London: Virago Press, 1992), 169.
54. Birmingham Post, 11 Apr. 1927, 13.
55. Ethel Mannin, Confessions and Impressions (London: Jarrolds, 1930), 232.
56. Newcastle Daily Journal and North Star, 22 Aug. 1928, 8. Incidentally, Hall would not have worn an Eton crop in 1928; by then that style was "not nearly so popular" and was displaced by the "long shingle vogue." See Daily Express 16 Aug. 1928, 5, and 23 Aug. 1928, 3.
57. Newcastle Daily Journal and North Star, 22 Aug. 1928, 8. Incidentally, Hall would not have worn an Eton crop in 1928; by then that style was "not nearly so popular" and was displaced by the "long shingle vogue." See Daily Express 16 Aug. 1928, 5, and 23 Aug. 1928, 3.
58. Alison Adburgham, A Punch History of Manners and Modes: 1841-1940 (London: Hutchinson, 1961), 311.
59. Baker, 203.
60. Richard Ormrod, Una Troubridge: The Friend of Radclyffe Hall (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1985), 153.
61. Baker, 166; Ormrod, 153.
62. Daily Express, 8 Apr. 1924, 5.
63. Ibid., 25 Mar. 1924, 7.
64. Tatler, 21 Apr. 1926.
65. Daily Graphic, 14 Oct. 1924.
66. Evening News, 10 Apr. 1926, 4.
67. Sketch, 21 Apr. 1926, 146. Plus fours, incidentally, were the first article of male clothing Barker purchased and wore in public. (They are loose sports knickerbockers made four inches longer than ordinary knickerbockers.)
68. E.O. Hoppé, "As Others See Us," Royal Magazine, December 1926, 110, 113.
69. "Why She Feels Better in Men's Clothes," an undated newspaper cutting from private papers in the collection of Roy Gluckstein, London.
70. Morning Post, 12 Apr. 1926.
71. Daily Graphic, 9 Apr. 1926.
72. Ronald Blythe, The Age of Illusion: England in the Twenties and Thirties, 1914-1940 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1963), 38.
73. Ruth Adam, A Woman's Place: 1910-1975 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975), 98.
74. Eve: The Lady's Pictorial, 29 Aug. 1928, 409.
75. Sunday Times, 5 Aug. 1928, 12.
76. Blythe, 38.
77. Manchester Daily Dispatch, 21 Nov. 1928, 5.
78. Baker, 247.
79. Dorothy Hepworth (1898-1978) spent her life with the artist Patricia Preece (1900-1971). Although Hepworth's diary was dated on the binding as 1927, she seems to have recorded information in it for several years thereafter, so it is difficult to date precisely when she drew the sketch or comprised her reading list, which included Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, Iwan Bloch's The Sexual Life of Our Time, and the relatively obscure study by "Xavier Mayne," The Intersexes.
80. Cecil Roberts, One Year of Life: Some Autobiographical Pages (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1952), 96.
81. Valerie Arkell-Smith, "I dare not see my son's wedding," Empire News and Sunday Chronicle, 15 Apr. 1956.
82. Daily Express, 26 Apr. 1929, 11. Both Barker (1895-1960) and Hall (1880-1943) were daughters of gentlemen of independent means. Barker's mother was herself a clergyman's daughter, while Hall's mother was a young American widow. Barker was well educated and attended a finishing school in Belgium. She grew up in the country, became an experienced horsewoman, and at eighteen "joined the gay social life of the country, often hunting all day and dancing all night" (Empire News and Sunday Chronicle, 19 Feb. 1956, 2). Hall's father, a "monied Victorian gentleman," attended Eton and Oxford and, after separation from Hall's mother, provided his daughter "with a very large annual allowance for maintenance and education" (Baker, 10; Una, Lady Troubridge, The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall [London: Hammond, Hammond, 1961], 14). Hall never received a formal education, but instead was taught by a series of nannies and governesses. She seems to have craved social respectability that would have been denied her growing up under the stigma of divorced parents. Gluck (born Hannah Gluckstein, 1895-1978) was born into a wealthy business family, founders of the famed J. Lyons & Co., which, among several other enterprises, owned the fashionable Trocadero Restaurant. She attended the St. Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, but rather than go on to university she chose to attend the St. John's Wood Art School.
83. Daily Express, 26 Apr. 1929, 11. Both Barker (1895-1960) and Hall (1880-1943) were daughters of gentlemen of independent means. Barker's mother was herself a clergyman's daughter, while Hall's mother was a young American widow. Barker was well educated and attended a finishing school in Belgium. She grew up in the country, became an experienced horsewoman, and at eighteen "joined the gay social life of the country, often hunting all day and dancing all night" (Empire News and Sunday Chronicle, 19 Feb. 1956, 2). Hall's father, a "monied Victorian gentleman," attended Eton and Oxford and, after separation from Hall's mother, provided his daughter "with a very large annual allowance for maintenance and education" (Baker, 10; Una, Lady Troubridge, The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall [London: Hammond, Hammond, 1961], 14). Hall never received a formal education, but instead was taught by a series of nannies and governesses. She seems to have craved social respectability that would have been denied her growing up under the stigma of divorced parents. Gluck (born Hannah Gluckstein, 1895-1978) was born into a wealthy business family, founders of the famed J. Lyons & Co., which, among several other enterprises, owned the fashionable Trocadero Restaurant. She attended the St. Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, but rather than go on to university she chose to attend the St. John's Wood Art School.
84. Daily Express, 26 Apr. 1929, 11. Both Barker (1895-1960) and Hall (1880-1943) were daughters of gentlemen of independent means. Barker's mother was herself a clergyman's daughter, while Hall's mother was a young American widow. Barker was well educated and attended a finishing school in Belgium. She grew up in the country, became an experienced horsewoman, and at eighteen "joined the gay social life of the country, often hunting all day and dancing all night" (Empire News and Sunday Chronicle, 19 Feb. 1956, 2). Hall's father, a "monied Victorian gentleman," attended Eton and Oxford and, after separation from Hall's mother, provided his daughter "with a very large annual allowance for maintenance and education" (Baker, 10; Una, Lady Troubridge, The Life and Death of Radclyffe Hall [London: Hammond, Hammond, 1961], 14). Hall never received a formal education, but instead was taught by a series of nannies and governesses. She seems to have craved social respectability that would have been denied her growing up under the stigma of divorced parents. Gluck (born Hannah Gluckstein, 1895-1978) was born into a wealthy business family, founders of the famed J. Lyons & Co., which, among several other enterprises, owned the fashionable Trocadero Restaurant. She attended the St. Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, but rather than go on to university she chose to attend the St. John's Wood Art School.