Undressing Tess: Miss JB

I am going to try blogging about my seminar papers so that I can get a better grip on the topics and stuff that I want to cover in them. I also think this may help me to avoid the last minute procrastination that I am so accustomed to. I NEED to make sure that I DO NOT do my papers at the last minute. I need to get a decent GPA and actually have some papers that I can send out to journals and conferences. Then I need to spend my summer sending things out. I finished my bibliography tonight. I am not sure how this paper is going to form, but I am excited to get the materials listed in a coherent space so that I can have them to read through. I am looking forward to investigating exactly what Tess’s clothes mean in her relationship to her status/her class/her body, etc. I plan to reread Tess over the weekend as well as get the two Hollander books from the library.Here is my Bib:

Burman, Barbara and Caroel Turbin. Material Strategies: Dress and Gender in Historical Perspective. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.

Butler, Lance St. John. Ed. Alternative Hardy. New York: St. Martin’s, 1989.

Cavallaro, Dani and Alexandra Warwick. Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and Body. New York: Berg, 1998.

Crane, Diana. Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2000.

Dalziel, Pamela and Michael Millgate. Thomas Hardy’s Studies, Specimens and Notebook. New York: Oxford UP, 1994.

Gatrell, Simon. “Dress, Body, and Psyche in ‘The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid’: Tess of the D’Ubervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge.” The Thomas Hardy Journal 22 (Autumn 2006): 143-58.

Guerard, Albert J. “Colour and Movement in Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Ed. Ian P. Watt. The Victorian Novel: Modern Essays in Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1971.

Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D’Urbervilles: Complete, Authoritative Text with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Five Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Ed. John Paul Riquelme. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Ser. Ed. Ross C. Murfin. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1998.

Hollander, Ann. Feeding the Eye: Essays. New York, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1999.

—–. Seeing Through Clothes. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.

Kim, Ui Rak. “Marxist Criticism, A Working Class, and Alienation in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Journal of English Language and Literature 46.4 (Winter 2000): 1061-72.

LaValley, Albert J. Ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Collections of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969.

Michie, Elsie B. “Dressing Up: Hardy’s Tess of the D’Ubervilles and Oliphant’s Phoebe Junior.” Victorian Literature and Culture 30.1 (2002): 305-23.

Silverman, Kaja. “History, Figuration, and Female Subjectivity in ‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles.’” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 18.1 (Autumn 1984): 5-28.

Williams, Merryn. “Hardy and Social Class.” Tess of the D’Ubervilles: Thomas Hardy. Ed. Peter Widdowson. New York: St. Martin’s, 1993. 24-32.

Worth, Rachel. “Rural Laboring Dress, 1850-1900: Some Problems of Representation.” Fashion Theory 3.3 (September 1999): 323-42.

—–. “Thomas Hardy and Rural Dress.” Costume: Journal of the Costume Society 29 (1995): 55-67.

My next research goal is to begin gathering for Miss JB. I am not sure even what tact I want to take for that book. The lesbian thing seems like it is too easy, but so little has been written on this book that it is unreal. I may end up comparing this to another Muriel Spark book. I am re-reading Miss JB tomorrow to prepare for my presentation with Hailey and maybe that will help me get a better grip on my research for that.