Necking

A squeeze of the fist and a flick of the wrist is enough to crush a neck, a product relative to the strength possessed and force applied. The neck is the connection between the heart and the soul, which have come to represent a gendered dichotomy: the feminine body and the masculine mind. Suppositionally, to choke and/or strangle is to sever emotion from rationality, passion from reason. In the following fashion plate that I analyze, the theme of choking or strangling is unmistakable, made all the more palpable with its prominence in the headlines surrounding the recent trial of Jian Ghomeshi. But foregoing this activity as sexual pleasure, from a feminist perspective this theme presents issues circumscribing patriarchal control and power regarding the subjugation and objectification of women. The illustration clearly demonstrates this female objectification as an historical scourge to gender equality that transcends contemporaneity. My initial attempt to read the signification of this image takes inspiration from Paul Jobling’s commentary on Barthesian semiology, but inevitably merges with Freudian and feminist discourses that discuss the position of men and women in modernity, above and below the neck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Created by André Édouard Marty (Fig. 1), the fashion plate entitled “Brise du large: robe de Voyage de noces, de Dœuillet” (translated from French as “Sea Breeze: A Honeymoon Dress, by Dœuillet”), appears in volume 4, issue 2 of La Gazette du Bon Ton in 1921 (Fig. 2). This issue is described as “Spécialement consacré au mariage” (an edition dedicated to marriage) (Fig. 3). Appearing as the final plate in the issue (Planche 16) (Fig. 4), the illustration is contextually linked to a written piece within the edition titled “Voyage dans la lune de miel” (Fig. 5-7), for which Marty also provided illustrations. Written by Jean-Louis Vaudoyer, the title serves as a double entendre so often found in the witty captions of the gazette (Davis 58-60): “Honeymoon Voyage,” which puns with the more literal translation “A Trip to the Moon of [with] Honey.” In the caption of the fashion plate a double meaning in the word “Brise” also reveals the meanings “break” and “breath.” This confers additional meaning to choking and women as objects; a visual reminder of their role in the institution of marriage.

Jobling communicates that Barthes’ study of semiology regarding fashion is made up of both “written clothing” (le vêtement écrit) and “image clothing” (le vêtement-image) (133). However, it is the written language that Barthes claims has primacy in his methodological approach, and this text is limited by three applications of rhetoric: the “poetics of clothing,” the “worldly signified,” and “the reason (or right) of fashion” (138). For the fashion plate I selected, the “written clothing” gives the description of a navy (marine) twill and terra cotta Moroccan crepe dress to wear on a wedding trip (honeymoon), thereby indicating the social situation that is appropriate for this ensemble. The information supplemented by the written language indicates that the perfect geographical locale to wear this dress is the seaside, to which the illustration further alludes. But whereas the text and image both present the audience with a comprehension of the colour palette, the written description of the fabrication imparts tactile knowledge that would otherwise be unintelligible without a visit to the Dœuillet atelier. With reference to the rhetorical applications mentioned previously, the “poetics of clothing” suggests that this dress will be a memento of marriage and a reminder of nuptial bliss and new life; it will be lovingly cared for as such.

Regarding the powerful visual presence inherent to fashion (objects and images), I agree with Jobling’s assertion that images play a more vital role that is counter to Barthes’ logocentric reliance on the written word (139). Therefore, further analysis of this fashion plate sans text (i.e. image clothing), reveals more possibilities. Barthes contends “All advertising says the product but tells something else,” leading Jobling to ascertain that advertising conveys “a double-message, converting use value (‘buy me’) into symbolic value (‘buy me because’)” and “often resorts to a form of myth or metalanguage in the process” (qtd. in Jobling 140; 140). The “poetics of clothing” thus insinuates this outfit as ideal to wear in a cool breezy seaside environment (“buy me”), but also expresses a mood or sensation of the demureness that the woman will come to embody in this dress (“buy me because”). The metalanguage can then be interpreted as “dress and present her in this way and she will submit to obedience accordingly.” In this interpretation, I conspicuously imply that the targets of this ad are men, whose financial capital is inherently mandatory for the consumption practices of women, consequently repackaging women as commodities: necessary for a pleasant honeymoon. My reasoning for this implication is textually evident in Vaudoyer’s narrative, which reads like an administrative manual for the honeymoon:

So you have found the perfect woman—Congratulations! You must train her, after having your way with her. You must force her to take your name, because this is your property now; your registration of her will make it so. You won’t want to lose her, so why not keep her on a leash? (satirical transcription; my emphasis)

My tone in this fake translation is perhaps a bit extreme, since I am imposing my personal values across time and space upon the domain of my pre-existence. Nevertheless, it is odd to read a text that seemingly sets out to educate a man on how to take a new wife on honeymoon, down to the preparation of her passport; the woman is objectified as referenced by the language “votre dame” and “votre femme.” This exacerbates my confusion when compounded with the illustration of a man choking a woman, hence my analogy to a leash. It is from this spectacle that I diverge into an, albeit brief, psychoanalytic reading of this image and its symbols.

In her article on fashion and psychoanalysis, Janice Miller recounts J.C. Flügel’s concept of the nineteenth century “Great Masculine Renunciation,” which contends “[…] men arguably imprinted on their bodies the values of hegemonic Victorian masculinity by disavowing their bodies as a site for the construction and expression of identity or for decoration” (50). This illustrates how the site of the body became relegated to frivolity and a preference for the mind became the more valuable feature of masculinity, solidifying a gender binary that considers fashionable artifice and intellectual rigour to be mutually exclusive. There were of course masculine fashions during this time, though these styles were extremely tame in contrast to pre-Victorian male dress. Following the Edwardian era and La Belle Époque, and continuing into the interwar years, women’s dress experienced a similarly modest transformation that mirrored the earlier transformation of men’s dress. Highly influenced by the designs of Paul Poiret, clothing became less ostentatious and less restrictive, while waists dropped and hair shortened, culminating in boxy silhouettes and ‘boyish’ figures. I posit this relevance as possibly crucial in understanding Marty’s illustration as a patriarchal solution to to the threat of masculine ‘superiority’ that seeks to ask: “What’s next, women in trousers?!?” In a patriarchal society it is important that these socially constructed binaries do not dissolve, because after all “Men are human beings, women are sexed; masculinity is universal, femininity particular” (Moi 850).

As a final thought in deciphering this fashion plate, I focus on the act of choking and strangulation. To reiterate from the introduction, the neck is a passage that joins corporeality to the psychical domain, allowing the vital flow of blood and oxygen between the two. In essence, this crushing of the neck metaphorically reinforces the bifurcation of gendered masculine and feminine; the soft tissue of the neck makes it an area most vulnerable to suppression. Adhering to Freud’s theory of castration anxiety, I further suggest this act of strangulation is a latent reaction against the Biblical story of Judith beheading Holofernes and the abundance of historical imagery accompanying it (Fig. 8 & 9). “If man operates under the threat of castration, if masculinity is culturally ordered by the castration complex, it might be said that the backlash, the return, on women of this castration anxiety is its displacement as decapitation, execution, of woman, as loss of her head” (Cixous 43). Thus the decapitation of Holofernes plays into men’s fears of castration, urging them to define women’s subservience as essential for survival. In Marty’s illustration, the woman is choked into the role of object, effectively effacing her subjectivity by the spectatorial gaze, which positions woman as objects in these images because “[…] women are not shown to be living, breathing or thinking individuals” (Miller 54).

Or maybe I’m utterly wrong and Marty was just a huge fan of Baudelaire…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Discussion questions:

How could this fashion plate be interpreted as a “text of bliss” according to Barthes?

Can you argue a case for the image having transgressive potential in its representation of women, similar to Alison Bancroft’s psychoanalytic framing of Nick Knight’s fashion photography? (For a review, see Janice Miller’s section on Psychoanalysis and Fashion, pp.57-58 in “Sigmund Freud: More than a Fetish: Fashion and Psychoanalysis” in Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists.)

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Works Cited

Cixous, Hélène and Annette Kuhn. “Castration or Decapitation?” Signs 7.1 (1981): 41-55. Web. 30 April 2016.

Davis, Mary E. “La Gazette du Bon Ton.” Classic Chic: Music, Fashion and Modernism. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2008. 48-92. Web. 20 March 2016.

Jobling, Paul. “Roland Barthes: Semiology and the Rhetorical Codes of Fashion.” Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists. Eds. Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik. London: I.B. Tauris, 2016. 132-48. Print.

Miller, Janice. “Sigmund Freud: More than a Fetish: Fashion and Psychoanalysis.” Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists. Eds. Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik. London: I.B. Tauris, 2016. 46-62. Print.

Moi, Toril. “From Femininity to Finitude: Freud, Lacan, and Feminism, Again.” Signs 29.3 (2004): 841-78. Web. 30 April 2016.