Dressed for the Part: Clothing as Narrative Enquiry into Gender, Class, and Identity of Pauper Lunatics at Whittingham Asylum, England, 1907–1919

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between dress, gender and class, identity, and mental illness. It centres on Whittingham Asylum, not far from the town of Preston, Lancashire, North West England. The article focuses on a collection of female admissions records and photographic portraits from Whittingham Asylum during the period c. 1890-1930. The analysis is interdisciplinary. Theoretical perspectives from fashion, feminist discourse and material culture are combined with the writings of Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag, as well as contemporary literary sources, to explore the social and cultural realities embedded in the clothing of those women featured.