Wright State University
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Pride and Prejudice: The Bicentennial
Pre-conference Materials, Posters, and Ephemera
Mar 21st, 9:38 AM
“But the clothes, the wedding clothes!”:
Fashionable Bridal attire in Jane Austen’s Pride and
Prejudice
Jessie Nastasi
Wright State University - Main Campus
Follow this and additional works at: http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/celia_pride
Part of the English Language and Literature Commons
Repository Citation
Jessie Nastasi, "“But the clothes, the wedding clothes!”: Fashionable Bridal attire in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice" (March 21,
2013). Pride and Prejudice: The Bicentennial. Paper 15.
http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/celia_pride/preconference/blog/15
This Event is brought to you for free and open access by the CELIA Events at CORE Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pride and Prejudice:
The Bicentennial by an authorized administrator of CORE Scholar. For more information, please contact [email protected].
2/10/2014
Pride and Prejudice: The Student Blog: “But the clothes, the wedding clothes!”: Fashionable Bridal attire in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
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Pride and Prejudice: The Student Blog
Thursday, March 21, 2013
“But the clothes, the wedding clothes!”: Fashionable Bridal attire in Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
A fashionable wedding is foremost on Mrs. Bennet’s mind when she exclaims, “But the clothes, the wedding
clothes!” (Austen 347). She is completely overcome with excitement at her beloved daughter Lydia being wed,
despite the reasons for it, and it is incredibly telling that almost instantly she starts to envision what Lydia will
wear! Regency ladies prized fashion, for all their sermons on the dangers of vanity, there was an insatiable desire
for creativity in attire. In the 1816 May issue of La Belle Assemblee a new niche in women’s apparel was starting:
the wedding gown. The article about the “Dresses of Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte” may as well have
been a fashion show, for all the detailed descriptions of her trousseau and in another article about her wedding to
the Prince Leopold, “Her Majesty’s Drawing Room,” what all of her guests wore.
About
A blog site featuring original research by
undergraduate students at Wright State
University enrolled in Crystal B. Lake's semin
on Pride and Prejudice (Spring 2013).
We hope you enjoy reading about the cultura
and historical contexts surrounding Austen's
famous novel. And be sure to participate in
CELIA's Bicentennial events on October 10-1
2013. Click here for more information.
Blog Archive
▼ 2013 (26)
► April (6)
▼ March (19)
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Hertfordshire
“Nothing so Unmilitary”:
Examining How Uniforms In...
The Physic or Exotic Garden
I Never in My Life Saw Anything
More Elegant than ...
Why Will Thou Bind Thy Lovely
Brow?
“But the clothes, the wedding
clothes!”: Fashionab...
"Dancing is of More Importance to
a Gentleman Than...
There Are But Few Things Which
Can Afford Us Great...
I’ll tune my pipe to playful notes .
. . And hail ...
The Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopoldreturning from the altar after the Marriage Ceremony.
The start of the description of the princess’s dresses first describes that she wore “on her countenance that tranquil
and chastened joy which a female so situated could not fail to experience” (224), in other words the romantic and
sentimental bridal glow is a part of her ensemble. It may perhaps be presumed that the tradition for brides to wear
white has long been the norm in European wedding ceremonies, but this is not true for the Regency where a
bride’s wedding attire was often merely her best dress and would be worn until it was no longer serviceable. White
dresses, however, harkened back to the classical period that the Regency strived to evoke. In many of the fashion
plates and descriptions found with in La Belle Assemblee the trend of “White dresses are now become general,”
(39). The color was incredibly popular for dresses in general, not yet the hallmark of a bridal gown.
Life is Really Too Short: Wasting
Time with Regenc...
The Most Elegant Collateral
Embellishment of Taste...
The Importance of Practice
"From Every Window There Were
Beauties to Be Seen"...
Attract Notice by the
Copiousness of His Talk...
Thus Does Gaming Harden the
Heart and Swallow up E...
"Harry Will be the Gentleman" :
The Nature of Men ...
Pride, My Dear
These Works of Fancy
She Heard Him With A Visible
Emotion
► February (1)
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Pride and Prejudice: The Student Blog: “But the clothes, the wedding clothes!”: Fashionable Bridal attire in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Princess Charlotte's wedding dress, 1816. The Museum of London.
In fact, the princess Charlotte’s gown is one of the most famous wedding outfits of the Regency, which still
survives in tact today. The dress is a “silver lama on net, over a silver tissue slip, embroidered at the bottom with
silver lama in shells and flowers. Body and sleeves to correspond, elegantly trimmed with point Brussels lace. The
manteau was of silver tissue lined with white satin, with a border of embroidery to answer that on the dress, and
fastened in front with a splendid diamond ornament.”(224). Imported silver lace, glittering diamonds, the dress is
only meant to be worn once, for the specific occasion of her wedding ceremony. Several more gowns featuring
gold and silver with elements of lace, almost all of them are to be worn over a white satin slip (225). Cost does not
enter into Mrs. Bennet’s dreams for “The marriage of a daughter… her thoughts and her words ran wholly on
those attendants of elegant nuptials, fine muslins,” (351). Mrs. Bennet’s character is revealed to be completely
frivolous and impractical in regards to the cost of such lavish preparations for Lydia as a new wardrobe. Mrs.
Bennet, surely wishing to live vicariously through her daughter, plans an extravagant trousseau of several new
dresses for Lydia. One can only imagine they were not on the scale of Princess Charlotte’s gowns, but never-theless, this is a huge expense as “Mrs. Bennet found, with amazement and horror, that her husband would not
advance a guinea to buy clothes for his daughter” (351). It seems at first comical that “She was more alive to the
disgrace, which the want of new clothes must reflect on her daughter’s nuptials, than any sense of shame at her
eloping and living with Wickham, a fortnight before they took place” (351). However, when one considers the
attention to detail in the articles about Princess Charlotte’s wedding dresses, and the court dresses in “Her
Majesty’s Drawing Room” it gives insight into Mrs. Bennet’s mental state of extreme dismay. The fact that
photography had not yet been invented and that descriptions and drawings of the clothing would have all been
done by hand, takes a considerable amount of time on the part of the authors and illustrators of fashion articles.
The types of lace, the sorts of artificial flowers and the materials, the colors, and the cuts of fabric are a multitude
of small elements that as a whole determined whether or not a person was fashionably attired. For a person like
Mrs. Bennet whose sole ambition in life is to see her daughters married, what they wear on the day of the
ceremony is the pinnacle of their lives in her eyes. Lydia in their new social position as a married woman will
reflect directly on Mrs. Bennet. She wishes to show her daughter off to the neighbors in order to compete with
them. If Lydia is fashionably garbed in the latest styles, which all women were to keep themselves current on, then
Lyida would be perceived as superior to others less fashionably dressed. Their clothing serves as social marker as
much as their new status gained from their husbands, as well as a financial one. For Mrs. Bennet what Lydia
wears on her wedding day and to travel in is second only to the act of getting married. Fashion is crucial to convey
the image of maternal success Mrs. Bennet wants to cultivate.
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Pride and Prejudice: The Student Blog: “But the clothes, the wedding clothes!”: Fashionable Bridal attire in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Une Mariee. Journal des Dames ed des Modes. 10 September. 1813. Print.
Posted by Jessie Nastasi at 9:38 AM
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