Interviews
with Staff & Advisory Board Members - Sarah
Josepha Hale & The Godey Girls
Page
1 | Page 2
H.
Kristina Haugland - Advisory Board Member & Associate
Curator at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art
1) How
did you first learn about Sarah Josepha Hale/Godey’s Lady’s Book?
When I was working
in theatrical costume design, the many reprints of Godey’s fashion
plates in books about the history of dress were much used as design
sources. Since then in my studies of history, social history, and
the history of dress I have come to more fully appreciate the magazine
as a wonderful resource for the study of mid- to late-nineteenth century
American life and attitudes.
2) What
was the nature of the exhibits that showed Godey’s fashion plates and
why was it important to use the fashion plates in an exhibit?
I have used images
and information from Godey’s in many ways. I often give illustrated
lectures about the history of dress, and the fashion plates from Godey’s
are a wonderful way to show the ideal look of the time. The other
images in the magazine, such as the illustrations of fictional stories
and non-fiction articles, the depictions of crafts and trim and needlework,
and the line drawings of garments and accessories are all very useful
when discussing aspects of the nineteenth century. Even the advertisements
featured in the magazine are great – in an exhibition at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art about hoop skirts of the late 1850-1860s, for example,
I was able to reproduce an ad for a Bradley’s Duplex Elliptic Hoop
Skirts from 1867 and show it alongside the Bradley’s hoop skirt from
the Museum’s collection. The ad featured not only line drawings of
the hoop skirt, but all the promotional information and puffery of
the manufacturer. Beyond the visual information, the writing is also
a wonderful source. In the same hoop skirt exhibition I also used
many quotes from Godey’s to explain the fashion for and contemporary
attitudes towards hoop skirts. To help visitors understand the benefit
that many at the time saw in hoop skirts, for example, I quoted an
1859 Godey’s, which blamed seven thick underskirts worn in July for
putting a woman into “a languid state of health that was incurable,”
and claimed that lightweight sprung steel hoops now protected even
the foolish from this sorry fate.
3) Please
explain briefly how the fashion plates were displayed?
See above
4) What
do you think were the magazine’s major contributions related to your
special project?
When researching
for the hoop skirt exhibition, I read through microfilm of Godey’s
for the years 1856 to the early 1870s, the period of the hoops domination
of fashion, and also looked at some volumes that are in the Museum.
Studying the magazine in total helped me get a better picture of life
was like at the time, as well as to see how often hoop skirts were
mentioned, and to assess attitudes towards hoops. In addition, as
mentioned above, the magazine provided many particular images and
quotes.
5) Do
you think that the fashion plates are relevant today?
While Godey’s
certainly shows the spread of fashion consciousness into the middle
classes in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, I think that it is
very important to remember that the fashion plates in Godey’s are
similar in many ways to the images in fashion magazines like Vogue
today – that is, they show the ideal of fashion, not what everyone
is wearing or what everyone looked like. I think the fashion plates
are relevant today in that they show us that our current conceptions
of beauty, the ideal form, respectability, and so forth are very fleeting,
and will soon be as out-of-date as those represented in Godey’s.
6) What
about Godey’s Lady’s Book is important to you?
Godey’s gives
the opportunity to study exactly what an American woman of the time
would have seen – the magazine is a wonderful mix of fashion, humor,
social comment, stories about life, ideas for home decorating and
cooking, and so forth. Although fashion information was more widely
available in the period that Godey’s was published than it had been
before, the news Godey’s brought to American women in big cities,
small towns, and on the frontier would have been extremely welcome
in the age before television and the myriad sources that transmit
such information today.
7) Historically,
why are the fashion plates important?
Fashion plates
help show the ideal of a time, not only on the lines and decorations
of dress, but of the body, hair, and other aspects of appearance.
They also have descriptions so that we can understand what is meant
by certain terms at a particular time, and see what fabrics and color
combinations were used. Of course, fashion plates must not be regarded
as what was actually worn by the majority, but they are very useful.
If fashion plates are compared to the other extreme of fashion illustration,
caricatures, which make fashions appear as ridiculous as possible,
we can get some idea of the truth of how a fashion looked to contemporaries.
8)
What aspect of Godey’s Lady’s Book would you recommend for educators
to investigate or develop for research and/or assignments?
I think educators
could give their students a stimulating and personal way to investigate
life in the nineteenth century by assigning them to study some aspects
of Godey’s. For instance, they could have a student read the story
“Doing Her Own Washing” from the Godey’s of June 1861, which relates
the terrible things that happen when a woman insists on doing her
own laundry to save money instead of sending it out. After reading
the story, the students could then discuss what the story told them
about how washing was done at the time, how that differed from doing
laundry today, the role of men and women as depicted in the story,
what other aspects of the story struck them and so forth.
9) What
aspect of Godey’s Lady’s Book would you recommend for students to investigate
or develop for research and/or assignments?
See
above; any study of the material would give great insight into nineteenth
century life.
10)
Why do you think it is important to produce a documentary about Godey’s
Lady’s Book?
I think that Godey’s
Lady’s Book is not as well known as it should be, and the role it
and Sarah Josepha Hale played in shaping and disseminating the tastes
and expectations of American society in the mid-to late-nineteenth
century is not fully appreciated.
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