In relation to clothing it is necessary first to define the relationship between clothing and the body. In Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity Elizabeth Wilson describes the relationship between the body and clothing as follows: “A part of ... strangeness of dress is that it links the biological body to the social being, and public to private” (2). Further: “If the body itself with its open orifices is itself dangerously ambiguous, then dress, which is an extension of the body yet not quite part of it, not only links that body to the social world, but also more clearly separates the two. Dress is the frontier between the self and the not-self” (Wilson 3). The “strangeness” of clothing seems to be that it is both material and social. As a material substance it is cloth cut and sewn to fit the person wearing it and physically is positioned between the wearer and the world around, but it also functions as a social marker and carries multiple possible meanings projected on the clothing by the surrounding society.
The ambiguity of the clothed body is also described by Warwick and Cavallaro in Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the Body as having both margins and boundaries:
[...] whilst the boundary divides and frames, the margin blurs distinctions and frontiers. It is one of the paradoxes of dress to be both a margin and a boundary at the same time. As boundary it frames the body and separates it from the rest of the social world [...] As margin, on the other hand, dress connects the individual to other bodies, it links the biological entity to the social ensemble and the private to the public. (xvii)
Separating the body and clothing seems to be highly complicated, as clothing is always on the body and therefore closely related to it simply because of the close contact to the body.
Dress “blurs distinctions and frontiers”, it both separates and connects. The private body becomes public as it is showcased in a dress and the biological body is thus connected to the social hierarchies and systems.
Warwick and Cavallaro also discuss the duplicity of clothing on the body: “Dress as an image, or representation, operates as a screen on different levels. It is capable of acting as a sort of shield, a structure indicating and determining a division or separation, and, at the same time, as a surface on to which other images may be projected” (47; emphasis original). Although clothing can be seen as a separating element between the body, or the person, and the world around it, it can be seen, as Warwick and Cavallaro suggest, as a sort of blank space on which different kinds of meanings can be projected. Dress “whilst contributing substantially to the subject’s symbolic socialization, simultaneously problematizes the dividing structures on which such a process relies [...]” (Warwick and Cavallaro 57), which makes the complete separation of clothing and body quite difficult.
The ambiguity of the relationship between the body and clothing is described further by Warwick and Cavallaro:
[...] in the body/dress relationship, the ostensibly inanimate and hence powerless item of clothing is transformed into an agent by its ability to furnish the body with signifying powers that the unclothed subject would lack. Clothing’s ambiguity is encapsulated by its ability to operate as a framing device and a cohesive structure at one and the same time. (45) The “cohesive structure” of clothing described above is the interest of this study.
Clothing’s ability to attain signifying powers that link the body to the social and the way clothing functions as a sort of bond between members of society in the novel offers interesting view points to the analysis of clothing in Gone with the Wind.
The power aspect of clothing on body is also one of interest in this thesis. Adam Geczy describes clothing and power in Fashion and Orientalism: “With clothing, the fact that it is inhabited as well as seen means that the positioning of gaze, the locus of power, is potentially skewed” (3), The deceptiveness of clothing, or the “potentially skewed” locus of power, is one of the most interesting aspects of clothing in the novel. Because the boundaries between the body and clothing cannot be definitely defined or completely separated, studying clothing in the novel will occur in close relation to the body as well.
The body itself, like clothing, is an ambiguous concept. For instance Michael Featherstone describes the body as having a “double character” and states that “we are a body and we have a body; we see and are seen; our body is the platform from which we see the world and also an object in that world which is seen by others” (233). In the same way clothing has been described above as both a screen on to which different meanings can be projected and a shield separating the body from the surrounding world, the duplicity of the body is visible in Featherstone’s argument.
In further relation to the ambiguity of the body, Featherstone suggests that “it is insufficient to see the body as merely a surface to be inscribed, as a carrier of social signs.
The body is clearly a potential, in process and movement, something which goes beyond itself. Yet it is also understood as an image – something that is a resemblance or likeness, a mirroring” (233-234). This image, according to Featherstone, is “more than a picture of how we look, a mental construction of our appearance. It is not a fixed projection – rather a variety of images that have accumulated from the past” (234). The body seems to be more of a construct itself instead of being merely a surface on which images can be constructed.
It is not fixed so it is open to changes and different kinds of projections.
In this thesis the focus will be on the clothed body, that is, clothing will be looked at as the link between the body and the social. It could be argued that in Gone with the Wind
clothing is used in a way to enhance the body and to create meanings on it, as the kind of screen Warwick and Cavallaro describe, and it is through the clothed body, that identity is constructed. Therefore all references to clothed body in the thesis refer to the set of symbolic and social meanings constructed on the body through clothing.