Examining fashion accessories in both novels and fashion discourses, Susan Hiner reframes the feminine accessory as a signifier of modernity and makes an important claim about the "accessory" status of women in nineteenth-century France: as both commodities and consumers, women were in fact "accessories to modernity."

Accessories to Modernity
Fashion and the Feminine in Nineteenth-Century France

Susan Hiner

2010 | 288 pages | Cloth $47.50
Literature | Women's/Gender Studies
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Prologue
1. La Femme comme il (en) faut and the Pursuit of Distinction
2. Unpacking the Corbeille de mariage
3. "Cashmere Fever": Virtue and the Domestication of the Exotic
4. Mademoiselle Ombrelle: Shielding the Fair Sex
5. Fan Fetish: Gender, Nostalgia, and Commodification
6. Between Good Intentions and Ulterior Motives: The Culture of Handbags
Epilogue. The Feminine Accessory

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments