| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores the significance of dress in two Victorian novels, namely Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1859–60). In both novels, clothing acts as a vehicle for gaining a deeper understanding of the characters. In Jane Eyre we follow the protagonist’s journey from orphan girl to married woman, all of which is marked through her clothing, but also through her relationship to needlework. This is explored by examining the frequency at which different fabrics are mentioned—as well as the amount of detail in sartorial descriptions. In Collins’s novel, however, dress plays an essential role in driving the plot further, as the story is dependent on the visual likeness of the two women in white. In a narrower sense, fabrics and fashions are utilised in order to showcase different traits within the female characters. This thesis will therefore prove that coupling the field of material studies with literary analysis will lead to important insights on some of the most compelling female characters of the Victorian period. | eng |