Comfort in Small Things? Clothing, Control and Agency in County Lunatic Asylums in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England
Comfort in Small Things? Clothing, Control and Agency in County Lunatic Asylums in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England
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小事中的舒适感？
DOI：
10.1080/13555502.2012.744241
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发表时间：
2013
影响因子：
0.3
通讯作者：
Hamlett J
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hamlett J
这篇文章探讨了19世纪和20世纪初英国公共疯人院的服装。它考虑了当局的意图，但也探讨了病人的经验和代理，这是出了名的难以获得。公共资助的（贫民）病人不得不放弃自己的衣服，穿上庇护所的标准服装。庇护当局并不认为这是一种制服，无论是尊敬的还是惩罚性的，并声称强制着装是为了改善病人的行为和帮助康复。人们越来越意识到，着装的多样性可能是有益的，有人呼吁允许一些穷人病人穿自己的衣服，但这最终是不切实际的经济大规模提供的公共庇护。虽然衣服可能会给穷人带来安慰，但一些病人却因为它的强加而感到愤怒和羞辱。不合身的物品和粗糙的织物可能是一个日常的，身体的，提醒穿着者的耻辱，他们的身份是疯狂的乞丐。然而，它确实为自我塑造提供了一些空间。患者能够做出小的，但在这种情况下，告诉调整他们的穿着和头发的方式。如果被认为是安全的，他们被允许一些小的财产。其中某些物品，如眼镜和假牙，对基本的能动性和独立性至关重要。其他的，比如珠宝，特别是结婚戒指，可以帮助保持与外部世界关系的重要联系。
This article examines clothing in public lunatic asylums in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. It considers the intentions of the authorities but also explores patient experience and agency, which have been notoriously difficult to access. Publicly funded (pauper) patients had to give up their own clothes and wear the asylum's standard apparel. Asylum authorities did not envision this as a uniform, either honorific or punitive, and claimed that imposed dress was intended to improve patients' behaviour and assist recovery. There was growing awareness that variety in dress could be beneficial and there were calls for some pauper patients to be allowed to wear their own clothes, but this was ultimately impractical within the economy of mass provision in the public asylum. Although clothing might have offered comfort to the impoverished, some patients were angered and humiliated by its imposition. Ill-fitting items and rough fabrics could be a daily, bodily, reminder to the wearers of the shame of their status as insane paupers. It did, however, offer some room for self-fashioning. Patients were able to make small but, in the circumstances, telling adjustments to the way they wore their clothes and their hair. If it was considered safe, they were allowed some minor possessions. Certain of these items, like spectacles and false teeth, were vital to basic agency and independence. Others, such as jewellery – and especially wedding rings – could help maintain a vital link with relationships in the outside world.