The Performance of Privacy: Dandyism in W. M. Thackeray's Pendennis

Crossley, Alice (2011) The Performance of Privacy: Dandyism in W. M. Thackeray's Pendennis. Victorian Network, 3 (2). pp. 30-51. ISSN 2042-616X

Full content URL: http://www.victoriannetwork.org/index.php/vn/artic...

Documents
23-27-1-PB.pdf
[img]
[Download]
[img]
Preview
PDF
23-27-1-PB.pdf - Whole Document
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

219kB
Item Type:Article
Item Status:Live Archive

Abstract

This article draws on Thackeray's appropriation of the apparatus of theatrical culture in order to examine the complex negotiation of public performance and private life engendered by the practices of dandyism in the period. In Pendennis, the figure of the dandy appears inherently artificial in its reliance upon spectacle and display, yet it also enables self creation and the maintenance of privacy. Different types of the dandy are isolated in the novel as forms of masculine performance to be variously emulated or rejected in the formation of individual identity. While Thackeray is often considered to be sceptical of dandyism, his sustained employment of dandiacal personas in this novel suggests that his view of such performative practices was more ambivalent. Costume here offers the allure of display to both fictional characters and actual readers, while retaining a potentially impenetrable barrier between self and society. In a society that seems at once to foster a culture of surveillance and spectacle, and to retreat from such theatrical practice as inauthentic and artificial, such close attention to dress may be considered as simultaneously suspiciously vulgar or effeminate, and cautious or protective. In the novel examined here, Thackeray charts the development of his hero with an emphasis on the role of costume in the experience of masculine identity. In doing so, this article suggests, the text engages in an exploration of performance as privacy.

Keywords:Victorian Studies, William Makepeace Thackeray, dandyism, Performativity, Urban Performativity, Sexuality, history of clothes, costume, masculinity studies, nineteenth-century fiction
Subjects:V Historical and Philosophical studies > V100 History by period
Q Linguistics, Classics and related subjects > Q321 English Literature by period
Q Linguistics, Classics and related subjects > Q320 English Literature
Q Linguistics, Classics and related subjects > Q322 English Literature by author
Divisions:College of Arts > School of English & Journalism > School of English & Journalism (English)
ID Code:30885
Deposited On:30 Aug 2018 09:12

Repository Staff Only: item control page