I know that comparing Bridgerton costumes to actual historical garments is asking for a headache. But I do like thinking of Penelope causing a Featherington panic with her close-to-plain wedding dress.
Because who else in Regency England was wearing plain, unadorned silk wedding dresses? The religious group known as the Quakers, that's who.
On the left we have fictitious Penelope Featherington, about to become Penelope Bridgerton. On the right we have a real wedding dress worn by a Quaker woman, Lydia Poultney, in 1809. While made of a sumptuous fabric, it is unadorned - a specific religious statement for a Quaker.
Pen's hair clip and hem ruffles here edge away from pure plainness, but are not out of place for plainer Quaker dresses in the 19th century- they'd often have some hem folding or subdued ruffling. And Colin's looking very plain from the side!
Many Quakers in the 18th and 19th century followed "plain" guidelines for their lifestyle and dress. There were Quakers who didn't follow these - called "gay" Quakers! For those Quakers who did dress plainly, it was an expression of their belief in the equality of human beings before God.
Quakers expressed this in other ways, too. Women who were moved to preach in a Quaker service were allowed to. Many Quakers were active as hospital and prison reformers, as abolitionists and, in the U.S., in the Underground Railroad helping slaves escape. They often applied their beliefs into economic activism that carried weight because they were businesspeople, too.
So! Imagine Portia Featherington seeing Penelope's wedding dress and panicking. First Penelope was doing all that talking to Lord Debling that involved opening books. Pen's always been dreadfully thoughtful. Now a nearly plain dress on her wedding day - is Penelope about to declare for the Quakers? That Colin has been dressing awfully simply himself. What's next? Sweeping the sugar bowls off the tables? Disowning her family for their frippery and financial crimes? Not speaking to her worldly mamma any more?
Learning that Pen's extracurricular activities were non-Quaker to the extreme - gossiping! - would have led Portia to sigh with relief, briefly.
For more about Regency Quaker dress and activities, see...
Quaker Plainness in the 19th Century
Dating a Green 1820s Dress with Quaker examples
How 18th-century Quakers led a boycott of sugar to protest against slavery
The Relinquishment of Plain dress: British Quaker women's abandonment of Plain Quaker attire, 1860-1914 - Thanks for your thesis, Hannah Francis Rumball, I'm really enjoying it. Lots of Quaker wedding dresses in here!
the fact fandom as a whole can be built out of seperate yet overlapping “migratory” fanbases that move from canon to canon in search of specific itches being scratched is revelatory of the underlying emotional structures of fannish engagement for many people, which is fundamentally derivative in the sense that it is about obsession. it is about getting that same itch scratched over and over. like sex, or desire. it is about iterative desire in form or structure, as so much of fannish content is about desire. if it’s working on you you will never get tired of it and will always want more. if it isn’t it’s baffling how it could be doing it for anyone. it is basic to the enterprise in a way that means the criticisms that fandom is often derivative or unoriginal has always struck me as off-base on multiple levels. i also like fandom and fic as a ground for expansive creative exploration free of the demands of the wage, but that has never been what everyone is getting out of it, or the only thing i myself get out of it. and assuming it is, or should be, and these repetitions that are likely to strike those not in the loop of desire as dull undifferentiated slop are deviations from what could or should be a more noble intellectual pursuit is naive and means you will never really get anywhere in analyzing fandom.
2600 fics in the Lewis tag and surely SOMEONE has reckoned with the potential that is Hathaway canonically falling for and making out with a trans woman?
If it hadn't been for a leaky pipe in the basement of All Saints, who knows what might have happened. But the flooded church basement had necessitated a venue switch for band rehearsal, causing James to rush all the way across Oxford to St. Mary's, already twenty minutes late. He has a bloody terrible time finding parking too, though that's a poor excuse for not looking where he's going.
James is out of the habit of noticing pretty women, so the first thing he notices about Zoe Kenneth is that she's quite tall. Well, the second thing really. The first thing he notices is that he's knocked her over with his guitar case.
Love and light to the fic author who had James Hathaway describe himself to an old classmate as pansexual. I don't think that's right but it's not wrong either.
His sexuality might be something of a Rorschach test for the viewer, actually.
wild time in usamerican senatorial politics. truly the establishment has rotted from the inside and collapsed. whatever comes next, the old guard commentariat is not ready to understand it...
2600 fics in the Lewis tag and surely SOMEONE has reckoned with the potential that is Hathaway canonically falling for and making out with a trans woman?
I do not think I am ready to write a trans woman protagonist in Lewis fic. I don't have the insight or experience. But I do want to read it, I want to read something that gives Zoe dignity and James a new kind of depth...
now I want a trans empowered redux of Life Born of Fire, bc it doesn't take much imagination for an AU in which Zoe Kenneth was excited for her transition
Which could result in a wonderful love triangle involving Will McEwan, Zoe, and James Hathaway...
And unlike in het love triangles, the gay man, the straight trans woman, and the bisexual man could all actually share all sides of the triangle
....well. Finished s2e3 "Life Born of Fire" and WOW I forgot how transphobic that episode was, with a very 2008 "gay is okay but trans is simply too weird" attempt at progressiveness.
and from this episode was Repressed!Hathaway launched!!!
vaporwave
germansingergirl
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
janainaart
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
