Hairwork in Victorian Literature and Culture

Matter, Form, and Craft
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-3-031-78778-2
Verlag: Springer

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 466 g

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture

This book presents an original and engaging study of the cultural history and literary significance of hairwork – the crafting of decorative objects, such as jewellery, from human hair – in Victorian Britain. Hairwork became increasingly fashionable and commercialised in the mid-nineteenth century, before swiftly declining in popularity. Yet, in the Victorian imagination, hairwork held a peculiar capacity to emerge from and capture moments of tension: it was made to mark relationships as they were redefined or consolidated; to process transitions and articulate hope for the future; and to express identities as they were questioned and explored. This book reconstructs and interprets the role of hairwork in revealing and negotiating such desires and anxieties by studying its historical trajectory, surviving artefacts, and practices alongside its literary representations in works by Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Wilkie Collins, and Margaret Oliphant. It shows how the combination of hairwork’s matter, form, and craft – the material of hair, the designs and uses of hairwork, and the processes of its making – expose the complexities and tensions within identity, affective relationships, and social relations and thus contributed to its unique place in Victorian culture.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hind, Heather

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

.- 1 Introduction: Working with Hair.- 2 A History of British Hairwork: Desire.- 3 A History of British Hairwork: Anxiety.- 4 Matter: Hairwork, Touch, and Connection in Charlotte Brontë’s and Emily Brontë’s .- 5 Form: Hairwork, Identity, and Relationships in Wilkie Collins's  .- 6 Craft: Hairwork, Time, and Affect in Margaret Oliphant's  ,   and  .- 7 Conclusion: Hairwork's Afterlives.

Über Autor(innen)

Heather Hind is an Honorary Associate of The Open University, UK, with research interests in Victorian literature, material culture and handicrafts.