As an indispensable garment for female fashion in the eighteenth century, the petticoat was consequently also a ubiquitous item of both ordinary and upper class women’s clothing. Against the common view of petticoats as a mere piece of underwear, in many cases they were wanted to be seen. However, they can be defined both as outer and under garments of women and were often worn in multiple layers of two or three at a time for additional shape and warmth. The appearance of the petticoat was closely linked to the occasion and wearability as well as the class of the woman wearing it. Therefore it appeared to be very diverse in its shape, material and design.
Definition
According to the Oxford English Dictionary
petticoat, n.
Pronunciation: Brit. /ˈpɛtɪkəʊt/ , U.S. /ˈpɛdiˌkoʊt/ , /ˈpɛdəˌkoʊt/
Forms: lME pettecote, lME–16 peticote, lME–16 petticote, lME–16 petycote, 15 (...)
1. A man's tight-fitting undercoat, usually padded and worn under a doublet and over a shirt; (also) a padded jerkin worn under armour for protection. Now hist.(...)
2. a. A woman's undercoat or under-tunic, analogous to the male petticoat, often padded and worn showing beneath an open gown. Now hist.
Later developing into the decorated underskirt at 2b.
However, in terms of its significance in eighteenth-century society and literature this OED definition of the 'petticoat' appears to be the most appropriate:
b. A skirt, as distinguished from a bodice, worn either externally or showing beneath a dress as part of the costume (often trimmed or ornamented); an outer skirt; a decorative underskirt. Freq. in pl.: a woman's or girl's upper skirts and underskirts collectively. Now arch. or hist. The usual sense between the 17th and 19th centuries.
1711 R. Steele Spectator No. 145. ⁋7 There is not one of us but has reduced our outward Petticoat to its ancient Sizable Circumference, tho' indeed we retain still a Quilted one underneath.
1727 Country-post in Swift et al. Misc. II. 288 A Mouse..to shelter under Dolly's Petticoats.
1763 F. Brooke Hist. Lady Julia Mandeville II. 37 The handsomest of the country girls, in white jackets and petticoats, garlands of flowers..on their heads.
Petticoats as Essential Garment
The Flannel Petticoat
The flannel petticoat can be mainly considered as a form of underwear due to its practical use. Back in the eighteenth century, flannel was soft wool with a napped surface and as an under-petticoat, it provided warmth and protection especially during winter times. For this purpose the flannel petticoat was often also quilted for additional warmth. Because of its rather simple material, the petticoat made from flannel was mainly worn by working women and servants. (Tortora & Eubank 279)
The Silk Petticoat
Expensive silk clothing was a generally acknowledged sign of higher social rank. Women of this rank mainly wore silk petticoats to complement the robe à l'anglaise, a gown which was suitable as everyday clothing and rarely worn with hoops but with false rumps. However, silk petticoats generally appeared both with and without hoops.
The painting of Lady Sefton shows her in a gown and petticoat of light silk which was probably worn without a hoop. The gown, a robe a la polonaise, belongs to less formal wear.
The picture next to it shows a quilted petticoat that dates from the mid eighteenth century. I was made from blue silk (which has faded to a green colour) and has a wool wadding a glazed wool lining fabric. The patterns of the quilting include zigzag lines and flowers down to the seam. This type of petticoat was surely worn with an open-fronted dress to show off its superior material and elaborate design.
Figure 1: Isabella,Viscountess Molyneux, later Figure 2: Quilted silk petticoat, ca. 1750-1770
Countess of Sefton by Thomas Gainsborough, 1769.
The Hoop-Petticoat
Since women desired an overall curvaceous shape in order to underline the essence of their femininity, the hoop-petticoat was of particular interest in the eighteenth century’s fashionable society. The hooped skirt was worn as an under-petticoat and had cane or bone hoops sewn to it at intervals. With its wide silhouette the hoop created the desired domed shape. This article of clothing had not been unknown before, but only after 1711 the old Tudor ‘farthingale’ was renamed the hoop-petticoat and went through different stages of development. It varied within its size and shape not only according to the formality or informality of the dress but it also changed with the time.
In the first third of the century, the bell shaped hoop-petticoat complemented the sacque gown or robe à la française. While the gown itself was often of plain material, the petticoat was embroidered and decorated. (Bradfield 115) In the second third of the century the hooped skirt developed further. An increasing French influence additionally enhanced rich decorations and large patterning on petticoats. In general the hoop-petticoat was at its widest between the 1740s and 50s. After that the width moved upwards on to each hip through the wearing of side hoops, later refered to as panniers. The hoop-petticoat was now flattened in front and behind, but spread out on each side. This foundation altered the shape of women's silhouette drastically and some skirts got so wide that women wearing it had to walk through doorways sidewise to accommodate their huge dress. In addition to that, from the forties onwards skirts were worn opened in the front to best display the embroidered and ostentatious petticoat beneath. (Bradfield 119)
Figure 3: Sacque gown with round hoop-petticoat, Figure 4: Side-hoops, ca. 1750-1780. Figure 5: Sacque gown with side-hoops, brocaded decorated with ruchings and ruffles, ca. 1760. silk, ca. 1755.
Under King George III the gown remained open to display the hoop-petticoat, which was still elaborately quilted or decorated with frills or flounces. However, wide side-hoops were now mainly worn for court dress. Especially with draped and looped-up dresses, the so called robes à la polonaise, the petticoat was now often shorter than the dress. With the 1780s hooped petticoats completely discarded as everyday wear and became a pure court fashion. There the hoop-petticoat still complemented the robe à la française. Its wide silhouette remained to be distinctive and women were creating quite a presence at court. (Bradfield 125)
Social Perception of the Hoop-Petticoat
Whereas flannel and silk petticoats represented an integral and unquestioned article of clothing, the hoop-petticoat was never completely acculturated in eighteenth-century society. From its very first appearance it met with a lack of understanding and sympathy amongst its male contemporaries. Most of them considered the hoop-petticoat as something artificial. It was identified with the excessive, with a kind of exoticism in eighteenth-century life and specifically with illicit female reproduction. The hoop-petticoat with its huge, complex and expensive appearance was often regarded as rather estranging in eighteenth-century society. (Mackie 27)
At the same time discourses about the connection of the hoop-petticoat and the credit economy emerged. The credit economy had established at the end of the seventeenth century and was linked to the formation of the Bank of England. However, people were not always at ease with this new financial condition. Its development was therefore accompanied by concerns about the “empty” phantom of the credit and its economic and socio-cultural effects. (Mackie 30) Authors like Swift and Addison attributed a threatening “feminine” instability to credit and linked it to fashion and women. All share the potential to become anything because they are in themselves nothing. The hoop-petticoat in particular was associated with an inflated speculative bubble and therefore with credit-based speculations. Both the hoop and the credit would be hard to interpret and to construe. (Mackie 31f.)
In addition to that the hoop petticoat provoked a discussion about the conflict between nature and fashion. On the one hand the hoop-petticoat was part of fashion and fashion was generally considered as being irrational. On the other hand the hoop-petticoat enabled women to access territory in the public sphere through their fashion and therefore to take space not only materially but also symbolically. In opposition to this was the debate about the legitimate sphere for female activity beyond the “natural” function of the woman. The domestic propaganda of the eighteenth century commanded women to stay home in order to fulfil this function. (Mackie 34)
In the face of these changes and the aspect of artificiality there was an endorsement of female purity and naturalness. Women had to be divested of the artificial hoop-petticoat, which was moreover at odds with the perception of the female body and its natural function of procreation. Female appearance should signal sexual desirability, but the space claimed by the hoop-petticoat was anti-sexual, because it blocked sexual advances and caused inconvenience for the masculine desire. Then again the hoop provided distance and therefore protected women’s chastity at the same. (Mackie 35) However, some authors still argued that the hoop might actually encourage promiscuity. The special feature to conceal pregnancy allowed women to control illegitimate maternity. The dynamic of the hoop-petticoat was therefore very ambivalent and it could both hide as well as reveal pregnancy, since it made everyone look pregnant. (Mackie 36)
Petticoats in Eighteenth-Century Literature
Due to the fact that the eighteenth century was an age dominated by fashion, its forms of writing were concerned with fashion itself or articles of fashion, too. Among other garments, the petticoat became a symbol for the shape-shifting nature of female fashion and therefore appeared in various texts and situations. It can be linked to the emergence of material culture, to gender roles or to a critical perspective on fashion in general. Like mentioned above, it was especially the hoop-petticoat allowing women physical transformation and which consequently became a very controversial issue in eighteenth-century society. It is therefore not surprising that many literary forms that picked up on the hoop-petticoat derive from the genres of satire, mock-epic and caricature. What many of these texts have in common is their strong or less strong reference to Ovid and the subject of metamorphosis in terms of fashion. However, the petticoat as the commodity per se became a subject in texts like object narratives, as well.
Petticoats in It-Narratives
In an increasingly commercial society the literary genre of the it-narrative focused on inanimate objects, often garments or accessories, as its central characters. Gowns, waistcoats and petticoats developed in the eighteenth century into a form of currency and where passed around between different owners and different social classes. This theme is picked up in the object narrative where the object itself is brought to life and made to recount its adventures. What all it-narratives have in common is that the objects suffer a remarkable decline in material and fashionable status. In Edward Thompson’s Indusiata it is a silk petticoat which describes its own material circulation. It begins as a bale of silk, but the story of the initial owner of this bale of silk, a girl named Indusiata, is prior to its creation. The story shifts to the petticoat’s first-person narrative when the silk is made into an exquisite petticoat for the Queen of England. However, the petticoat gets soiled and some spectacular events take place until it describes its final transformation from rags into a sheet of paper. (Wigston Smith 73f.)
Other examples of object narratives indicate the abilities of garments to alter especially women’s bodies with regard to stays, hoops and panniers. The two-part Memoirs and Interesting Adventures of an Embroidered Waistcoat also comprises The Episode of the Petticoat, where the petticoat describes the appearance of her former mistress. Even though she was blessed with good looks, ‘Nature had not been so kind in furnishing her with a Shape, which was at best ordinary, and never, for certain Reasons, could bear a critical Examination.’ (Vol. II, p.7) The petticoat’s narrative emphasises how much the representation of the mistress’ appearance depends on the object’s ability to shape the narrative and at the same time the body of its owner. (Wigston Smith 74)
Satire and Caricature
The appearance of the clothing worn by those at court received particular journalistic attention. Therefore both magazines and newspapers printed extensive sartorial reports and descriptions. Since these were focused on the ornate appearance of the garments, it was especially the decorated and embroidered hoop-petticoats which attracted attention and which were much admired. (Greig 100) However, this tradition of reporting the clothing worn to court events was ridiculed by The Morning Chronicle on 20 January 1795:
It eternally consists of a satin or velvet train, and an embroidered petticoat, which glitter with half a dozen ornaments of tassels and fringe,
flowers and foil, gold and silver through so many insipid columns. The etiquette of Court demanding the obsolete hoop in the Ladies dress...
there is no scope for the exercise of either fancy or taste; the whole variety of description consists in the colour of the body and train...whether
the embroidery is in bouquets of roses, or branches of wheat-ear, all of which is...interesting to no human creature beside.
This satirical passage declares not only the hoop-petticoat as outdated, but also the whole pompous and florid appearance as completely outmoded at the end of the eighteenth century. Also Parker’s General Advertiser and Morning Intelligencer picks up the new fashion of the hoop petticoat in a biting manner (26 April 1783):
Due to new and cheaper forms of graphic reproduction as well as due to a more literate audience there was also an increase of satirical printmaking in the eighteenth century and especially from the 1670s onwards. At the same time the public became increasingly involved in political and cultural affairs through the emergence of coffee houses. In the last third of the century English printmakers began therefore also to focus on fashion as principal subject and published their caricatures in periodicals. (McNeil 257) These forms of satire aimed at upper-class women and their formal dress. Many caricaturists picked up the social commentary on the absurdity of the fashion of the hoop-petticoat and therefore poked fun at the fashion item itself, but mainly at the women who wore it.
The caricature below, drawn by John June and titled "Carriage and Petticoat", was published in The Review ca. 1750. It depicts a scene set outside Long's Warehouse in Covent Garden. On the left a woman emerges holding up her petticoat. She reveals her undershift and arouses the interest of several other fashionably-dressed women in the street. One of them with her back to the viewer shows the width of her petticoat while two shoeblacks sitting next to her, laugh at the petticoat. In the background, another women in a hooped petticoat is being lowered through the roof of a carriage with the assistance of three men. Passers-by of different classes join in the merriment and amuse themselves by watching the spectacle. In the background on the right a women is tried before a magistrate's court. Apparently she is accused of having worn the old-fashioned round hoop-petticoat which is suspended above her head.
Figure 6: Satiricial print "Carriage and Petticoat" by John June, The Review, ca. 1750.
The mock trial which is depicted in this caricature may very well be an allusion to the mock trial of a hoop-petticoat in one edition of the literary journal Tatler, founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. In the edition of January 5, 1710, the judge Isaac Bickerstaff, who is the central persona, hears the case of a woman and her hoop-petticoat, which is placed above the heads of the attendees just like in the caricature. The court serves as tribunal for the interrogation of fashionable people and things. The reason why the woman is taken to court is her outsized and abundant hoop-petticoat, which even hindered her to get through the entrance of the house. After the reading of the indictment the petticoat is condemned as irrational and unnatural and therefore found guilty. As a consequence the woman is treated as fashion victim. She is pardoned and released, but her hoop-petticoat is confiscated, so that the she returns to her “natural” form.
The Hoop-Petticoat- An Heroi-Comical Poem
The heroi-comical poem developed as a new and particular form of mock-heroic poetry in the eighteenth century. It is distinguished by its tone and its intention and can be considered as less satirical than the mock-heroic poem. As such of a form of writing The Hoop-Petticoat by Joseph Gay (aka Francis Chute) broaches once again the issue of women’s transformation through dress. In the first book Betty, the maid, sews a silk hoop-petticoat for her pregnant mistress Chloe and becomes deified for her work:
The Whalebones spread the swelling Canvas wide / And stretch’d their stubborn Lenghts from Side to Side; / No more was wanting but the Needle’s Aid, / Which Betty to her skilful Hand convey’d; (Gay 20)
Gay makes the petticoat appear as a noble invention and thereby satirises the importance that women put on the hoop-petticoat and on luxury goods like articles of fashion in general. The finished garment effectively conceals the pregnancy and the fact that Chloe was unable to restrain her passions. In this case the hooped petticoat therefore covers up natural sins. It disguises Chloe’s natural body shape and allows her physical transformation through pregnancy without others noticing it. In this way she can preserve her reputation and can render her own body invisible. However, when Chloe wants to leave her home and tries to get on the carriage, she is prevented from doing so:
But how Cross Fate does our Designs prevent, / By some unlook’d for, Luckless Accident? / No sooner did she at the Coach arrive, / And Orders gave to Robin where to drive, / But found, (Oh fatal Chance!) yet found too late, / The Petticoat too Wide, the Door too Strait: / Entrance, by Force, she oft attempts to gain, / Betty’s assistance too she calls in vain, / The stubborn Whalebone bears her back again. (Gay 26)
Here too, it is the popular theme of the enormous hoop-petticoat that is too big and too impractical for everyday life and therefore clearly underlines the artificial character of this kind of fashion.
Petticoats in Pamela
Samuel Richardson’s Pamela is characterised by a distinct link between writing and clothing while the petticoat represents a ubiquitous item. Throughout the novel Pamela rightly believes that her clothing choices will enable her to shift between classes. Consequently, what becomes evident is that the wearing of petticoats was not restricted to upper classes. Petticoats were popular with all classes and as Pamela shows, also servant women of the lower classes wore petticoats and hoops, since they often received their mistresses’ hand-me-downs. In this way they could cross boundaries and imitate the upper class.
Another reference to petticoats is made when Pamela is forced to hide her letters. She decides to keep them in the only ‘private’ place that is still available to her and makes them a part of her under-petticoat: “But I begin to be afraid my writings may be discovered; for they grow bulky. I stitch them hitherto to my undercoat, next my linen.” (Richardson 168) However, the letters are often exposed in the novel and Pamela’s thoughts are undressed. Here on can see a clear link to the development of the petticoat from a mere undergarment to an article of clothing which was meant to be seen.
In addition, Pamela’s petticoat becomes a symbol of her identity when she attempts to escape and therefore throws her petticoat into the pond as an intended sign that she is dead. Pamela had to strip off her clothes and with them her identity in order to regain her freedom. Once more it is the petticoat that emblematises women’s identity in the eighteenth-century society. (Goss)
Annotated Bibliography
Primary Sources
Anon. Memoirs and Interesting Adventures of an Embroidered Waistcoat, Part II. In which is introduced, the episode of a petticoat. London, 1751. Web. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. 18 Dec 2014.
The included object narrative of the petticoat stresses the petticoat as a shape-shifting article of clothing.
Bickerstaff, Isaac. The Tatler. Issue 116, 3 Jan. 1710 – 5 Jan. 1710. Web. Burney Newspaper Collection. 16 Feb 2015.
This journal’s mock-trial nicely supplements the satirical print of the carriage and the petticoat in The Review.
Chute, Francis. The hoop-petticoat: an heroi-comical poem: in two books. By Mr. Gay. The third edition. London, 1720. Web. Eighteenth Century Collections
Online. 7 March 2015.
This poem is essential in order to present the various forms of writings which dealt with the topic of the hoop-petticoat.
News. Parker’s General Advertiser and Morning Intelligencer. London, 26 April 1783. Web. Burney Newspaper Collection. 9 Jan 2015.
This short paragraph about the hoop-petticoat underlines its social perception in a wide-spread medium like this newspaper.
Richardson, Samuel. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print.
Richardson’s novel makes a lot of references to clothing in general and the petticoat in particular.
June, John. "Carriage and Petticoat" Satirical Print. The Review. London 1750. Web. The British Museum Online Collection. 23 Feb 2015.
This satirical print is not a text, but as a primary source it provides yet another form of the appearance of the petticoat in eighteenth-century literature.
Thompson, Edward. “Indusiata: or, The Adventures of a Silk Petticoat.” Westminster 1 (June-December 1773). Print.
As an it-narrative this text represents a significant form of literature which underlined the importance of the petticoat as commodity.
Secondary Sources
Bradfield, Nancy. Historical Costumes of England: From the Eleventh to the Twentieth Century. London: G.G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1970.
Laycock, Deborah. “Shape-Shifting: Fashion, Gender, and Metamorphosis in Eighteenth-Century England.” Textual Bodies: Changing Boundaries of Literary
Representation. Ed. Lori Hope Lefkovitz. New York: State University of New York Press, 1997. pp. 127-160.
Goss, Deborah. “Pamela’s Fourth Bundle: Writing and Apparel in Pamela” The Graduate English Journal of Hunter College. Hunter College, n.d.
<http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/ology/perspectives_deborah.shtml> 10 March 2015.
Mackie, Erin. “Lady credit and the strange case of the hoop-petticoat.” College Literature 20.2 (1993): pp. 27-43. JSTOR. Web. 27 Feb. 2015.
McNeil, Peter. “Fashion and the eighteenth-century satirical print.” The Fashion History Reader- Global perspectives. Eds. Giorgio Riello and Peter McNeil.
London and New York: Routledge, 2010. pp. 257-262.
Ribeiro, Aileen. The Art of Dress. Fashion in England and France 1750 to 1820. New Haven & London: Yale UP, 1995.
Styles, John. The Dress of the People. New Haven & London: Yale UP, 2007.
Tortora, Phyllis G, and Keith Eubank. Survey of Historic Costume: A History of Western Dress. New York: Fairchild Books, 2010.
Images
1) Gainsborough, Thomas. "Lady Sefton", 1769. <http://www.gogmsite.net/reign-of-louis-xv/1769-isabella-viscountess-m.html> 15 Feb 2015.
2) Quilted silk petticoat. Quilt Museum and Gallery Collections. <http://www.quiltmuseum.org.uk/collections/heritage/silk-quilted-petticoat.html> 7 March 2015.
3) Sack back gown, Great Britain ca. 1760. <http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O74093/sack-back-gown-unknown/> 3 March 2015.
4) Side hoops, <http://collections.lacma.org/node/214117> 3 March 2015.
5) Sack back gown, Great Britain ca. 1755. <http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O74092/sack-back-gown-unknown/> 3 March 2015.
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