[Hardy-l] genderising children

[Philip Irwin]

I wonder if we are looking from a twenty-first century perspective at the
clothing of infants. We may now consider dresses and petticoats as girls'
clothing but our forebears thought of them as infants' clothes. I suspect
that the clothing of boys in this garb had little to do with generational or
gender groupings, but was for practical considerations, especially in large
families. Trousers mean more holes in knees to be darned, more difficulties
with toilet (both before toilet training and after - think of the buttons),
and, being gender-specific, less scope for 'hand-me-downs'. The rite of
passage of 'britching' arose from this pragmatism.

To show that I am not remaining completely off-topic, could I ask when Jude
is actually set? Social attitudes to many things, including the status of
children, changed greatly over the 64-year Victorian era. Obviously it was
written after the major educational and industrial/agricultural reforms, but
is it, like so much of TH's work, set two or three generations earlier?
Pardon my ignorance if this is an elementary question.

Thanks,
Philip
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://coyote.csusm.edu/pipermail/hardy-l/attachments/20070811/842d1c06/attachment.html