Without and Within: Victorian Mourning and Treatment of the DeadMain MenuFleeing Death: Victorian Paranoia Concerning Public HealthFirst SectionDying Well and Loved: At the Moment of Death and MourningSecond SectionWearing and Burying Death: Fashion, Mourning, and Public Displays of DeathThird SectionUp and Down the Stair with Burke and Hare: Body-SnatchingFourth SectionWeird Science: Anatomical Use of the DeadFifth SectionWorks Cited/Full-Texts/Further ReadingsKyle Brett425ed005fc457ac8e436783036f285b42b192fb4
The Jeweller's Book
12016-11-19T13:03:09-05:00Kyle Brett425ed005fc457ac8e436783036f285b42b192fb4581Wearing and Burying Deathplain2016-11-19T13:03:09-05:00Kyle Brett425ed005fc457ac8e436783036f285b42b192fb4
Here is a pattern book, published in 1864, containing a collection of drawings and designs for hair jewelry. Within the excerpted pages, we can see a solid example of period mourning (and not!) hair rings and bracelets. Again, modern readers may find this morbid, but I want to highlight the idea that a physical commodity and luxury item can be infused with the personhood of the dead. Here, I argue, the dead have become completely objectified--something to be worn and displayed publically on the living bodies of those that survive them. Like the insistence of a healthy outward appearance in the first chapter, Victorians also want to publically display those they love and mourn with a nod to acceptable fashion.