Campus Location
Abilene Campus (Residential)
Date of Award
5-2018
Document Type
Thesis
Department
Literature
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Steven Moore
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Cole Bennett
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Sandy Freeman
Abstract
Though clothes are often said to “make the man,” they are not frequently said to build a character. This thesis explores the ways in which clothing was a performative tool for those who wore it during the 1920s in America as well as for authors who wrote about this world in which they lived. This study’s theoretical framework is inspired by Judith Butler’s concept of the performative; it is also influenced by historical research into the clothing of the 1920s. Primary texts explored include F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night, Nella Larsen’s Quicksand, and Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral. In each of these works, clothing is used symbolically as a way to emphasize thematic elements, but it is also used as a tool through which the author builds characters. Through careful crafting of the self’s appearance, individuals choose to either conform to the world around them or to subvert it. Furthermore, these characters use clothing to specific purposes, mirroring the utility of garments in the real world, whether one is examining contemporary society or a specific era like the Jazz Age.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Johnson, Alyssa Quinn, "You Are What You Wear: Clothing and American Authors of the Early 20th Century" (2018). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 77.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/77