Abstract
When the fairy tale resurged in popularity during the fin de siècle, authors Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Sharp explored how the dress and decoration of characters shaped public perception of the wearers’ gender. Through their examination of how clothes politicize the body—often in ways uncontrollable and devastating to the characters forced to adapt a specific aesthetic—Wilde and Sharp unite the fairy-tale genre with contemporary conversations about gender identity and sexual politics, and how these conversations often work in contrast or even opposition to the interiority of the wearer.
The artist has the same moral influence as the dressmaker.
—Wyndham Lewis, “The Art of the Great Race,” Blast (1915) 1
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Hollander, A. (2017). Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Sharp, and the Politics of Dress and Decoration in the Fin-de-Siècle Fairy Tale. In: Bristow, J. (eds) Oscar Wilde and the Cultures of Childhood. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60411-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60411-4_5
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-60410-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-60411-4
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