England Am I? Elizabethan Clothing, Gender, and Crisis in Virginia Woolf’s “Between the Acts”

Abstract

In her final novel, Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf placed the self within a national, historical narrative. The novel is rich with the anti-fascist agenda of Three Guineas, told through the lens of women’s stories and, significantly, their historical clothing. Specifically, Woolf used Elizabethan costume to reflect on the role of dress in women’s lives. This article considers why Virginia Woolf selected the Elizabethan era as a sartorial and psychological alternative to her present. In a study of both sixteenth- and twentieth-century dress, this article explores how the Renaissance may have posed a more malleable, self-assertive antidote to the pressures of modern fashion—and the systems it upheld.

Keywords

• virginia woolf
• between the acts