The first major study of Cashmere and Paisley shawls in nineteenth-century British literature, this book shows how they came to represent both high fashion and the British Empire.
During the late eighteenth century, Cashmere shawls from the Indian subcontinent began arriving in Britain. At first, these luxury goods were tokens of wealth and prestige. Subsequently, affordable copies known as “Paisley” shawls were mass-produced in British factories, most notably in the Scottish town of the same name. Textile Orientalisms is the first full-length study of these shawls in British literature of the extended nineteenth century. Attentive to the juxtaposition of objects and their descriptions, the book analyzes the British obsession with Indian shawls through a convergence of postcolonial, literary, and cultural theories.
Surveying a wide range of materials—plays, poems, satires, novels, advertisements, and archival sources—Suchitra Choudhury argues that while Cashmere and Paisley shawls were popular accoutrements in Romantic and Victorian Britain, their significance was not limited to fashion. Instead, as visible symbols of British expansion, for many imaginative writers they emerged as metaphorical sites reflecting the pleasures and anxieties of the empire. Attentive to new theorizations of history, fashion, colonialism, and gender, the book offers innovative readings of works by Sir Walter Scott, Wilkie Collins, William Thackeray, Frederick Niven, and Elizabeth Inchbald. In determining a key status for shawls in nineteenth-century literature, Textile Orientalisms reformulates the place of fashion and textiles in imperial studies.
The book’s distinction rests primarily on three accounts. First, in presenting an original and extended discussion of Cashmere and Paisley shawls, Choudhury offers a new way of interpreting the British Empire. Second, by tracing how shawls represented the social and imperial experience, she argues for an associative link between popular consumption and the domestic experience of colonialism on the one hand and a broader evocation of texts and textiles on the other. Finally, discussions about global objects during the Victorian period tend to overlook that imperial Britain not only imported goods but also produced their copies and imitations on an industrial scale. By identifying the corporeal tropes of authenticity and imitation that lay at the heart of nineteenth-century imaginative production, Choudhury’s work points to a new direction in critical studies.
The first major study of Cashmere and Paisley shawls in nineteenth-century British literature, this book shows how they came to represent both high fashion and the British Empire.
During the late eighteenth century, Cashmere shawls from the Indian subcontinent began arriving in Britain. At first, these luxury goods were tokens of wealth and prestige. Subsequently, affordable copies known as “Paisley” shawls were mass-produced in British factories, most notably in the Scottish town of the same name. Textile Orientalisms is the first full-length study of these shawls in British literature of the extended nineteenth century. Attentive to the juxtaposition of objects and their descriptions, the book analyzes the British obsession with Indian shawls through a convergence of postcolonial, literary, and cultural theories.
Surveying a wide range of materials—plays, poems, satires, novels, advertisements, and archival sources—Suchitra Choudhury argues that while Cashmere and Paisley shawls were popular accoutrements in Romantic and Victorian Britain, their significance was not limited to fashion. Instead, as visible symbols of British expansion, for many imaginative writers they emerged as metaphorical sites reflecting the pleasures and anxieties of the empire. Attentive to new theorizations of history, fashion, colonialism, and gender, the book offers innovative readings of works by Sir Walter Scott, Wilkie Collins, William Thackeray, Frederick Niven, and Elizabeth Inchbald. In determining a key status for shawls in nineteenth-century literature, Textile Orientalisms reformulates the place of fashion and textiles in imperial studies.
The book’s distinction rests primarily on three accounts. First, in presenting an original and extended discussion of Cashmere and Paisley shawls, Choudhury offers a new way of interpreting the British Empire. Second, by tracing how shawls represented the social and imperial experience, she argues for an associative link between popular consumption and the domestic experience of colonialism on the one hand and a broader evocation of texts and textiles on the other. Finally, discussions about global objects during the Victorian period tend to overlook that imperial Britain not only imported goods but also produced their copies and imitations on an industrial scale. By identifying the corporeal tropes of authenticity and imitation that lay at the heart of nineteenth-century imaginative production, Choudhury’s work points to a new direction in critical studies.
Considering popular literary images of Indian and Paisley shawls as markers of fashion, class, gender, and race during the long nineteenth century, this book shows how Indian imports and influences shaped wider discussions of British literature, art, politics, and empire.
Suchitra Choudhury is a research fellow supported by the William Lind Foundation at the University of Glasgow and an independent scholar. Her articles have appeared in Textile History and Victorian Literature and Culture. She is the cocurator of the display Paisley Shawls in Literature at Scotland’s Paisley Museum (2023).
From diplomatic gift to fashion trend, literary trope to
colonialism’s violent accessory, the cashmere shawl is the star of
Textile Orientalisms. Expertly weaving historical and literary
sources, Suchitra Choudhury spins a vibrant tale of this culturally
rich textile, intertwining the object and its many soft powers with
British Empire scholarship.
*Susan Hiner, author of Accessories to Modernity: Fashion and the
Feminine in Nineteenth-Century France*
Suchitra Choudhury weaves together entangled histories and
discovers that the humble shawl is in fact a powerful symbol of
empire, trade, industry, class, gender, design, and fashion, as
well as being a symbol of identity, authenticity, family, and
belonging.
*Leonie Bell, director, Victoria and Albert Museum Dundee*
A magisterial exploration…. Suchitra Choudhury has dug deeply in
the archives of British India to reveal the shawl’s multiple
meanings as a desired fashion accessory and orientalist icon.
Linking the fashion system to imperial governance, gender and class
insurrection, her book demonstrates that despite its privileged
place at the heart of British domesticity, the ‘old Cashmere shawl’
possessed an uncanny power to disturb and disrupt. An important,
original, and long-awaited contribution to the literary study of
British India.
*Nigel Leask, author of Stepping Westward: Writing the Highland
Tour, c.1720-1830*
The definitive work on the subject of Cashmere and Paisley shawls
in all of their intricate significances within eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century English history and fiction.
*Deborah Denenholz Morse, Sara E. Nance Professor of English,
College of William & Mary*
An original and arresting piece of scholarship…. With its broad
range, it should find a wide readership among those interested in
fashion and the novel, literary critics, and cultural and imperial
historians alike.
*Kate Teltscher, author of India Inscribed: European and British
Writing on India, 1600–1800*
An impressive and extensive study on the cashmere shawl in British
literature, anatomizing it as both a valuable commodity and a rich
metaphor in literature. Suchitra Choudhury’s work is unique in
denoting the shawl’s significance in both feminine and masculine
experiences, and the manifold interpretations it engendered,
creating ‘a “grammar” of consumption’ across gender and imperial
discourses….It would be very useful for students of fashion,
Victorian, and material culture studies, as well as suitable for
the general reading public.
*Fashion Theory*
This beautifully illustrated and engagingly written monograph
surveys a wide range of materials including poems, plays, novels,
and artistic and illustrative material.... [W]hat this book does
exceptionally well is highlight and hold in balance the many
competing discourses that surrounded Cashmere and imitation shawls
in Britain during this period. Drawing upon the literary shawl as
both a locus, representative, and even occasionally a tool of
empire, Choudhury’s engaging monograph sets up and excitingly
explores "the interface between Britain and India during the
colonial period."
*British Association for Victorian Studies Newsletter*
A compelling analysis of the historical and literary significance
of the shawl in British culture from the eighteenth through the
early twentieth centuries. . . . A well written, thoroughly
researched, and engaging monograph that will surely be useful to a
wide range of audiences, particularly to scholars working on
nineteenth-century Britain and British India.
*Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies*
Suchitra Choudhury has taught me to pay close attention to any
mention of a shawl in the literature of the long nineteenth
century, and perhaps that is one of the highest types of praise a
scholar can offer a colleague—to say that she has changed how one
approaches and interprets texts. . . . This book will be of
interest to a wide variety of Victorianists, particularly those
interested in fashion history, material culture, and postcolonial
studies.
*Victorian Studies*
[A] must read for anyone interested in the cultural journeying of
cashmere and paisley shawls. Every page is invested with attention
to detail and the joy of Choudhury’s alchemic writing skills,
breathing life into the shawl’s rich history and inherently
powerful symbolism.
*Karen Louise Parker, Dress: The Journal of the Costume Society of
America*
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