The complexities of wearing mourning dress took hold as the Victorian era progressed following the death of Prince Albert in 1861. Queen Victoria wore her widow’s weeds for the remainder of her long life until 1901, when the Edwardian era began. Many who saw themselves as fashionable, including those in the lower classes, followed their Queen’s example.
Women were the leaders of a household’s mourning drill. It was the woman who as the social representatives of their husbands showed the world how sorrowing the family was by wearing clothes and following little rules that reflected this.
While royal attitudes to mourning permeated down throughout society, often these attitudes were totally impractical for the majority of the population. This was because royalty not only had the finance to afford conspicuous consumption of the excessive rules of mourning etiquette, but also little need to labour unduly hard.
Advice on what mourning clothes to wear, what mourning etiquette to follow abounded in magazines for women. In 1865 Henry Mayhew the social historian remarked that “...Women, ...had to put aside all their ordinary clothes and wear nothing but black, in the appropriate materials and with particular accessories, for the first stages of mourning.”
Women were the leaders of a household’s mourning drill. It was the woman who as the social representatives of their husbands showed the world how sorrowing the family was by wearing clothes and following little rules that reflected this.
While royal attitudes to mourning permeated down throughout society, often these attitudes were totally impractical for the majority of the population. This was because royalty not only had the finance to afford conspicuous consumption of the excessive rules of mourning etiquette, but also little need to labour unduly hard.
Advice on what mourning clothes to wear, what mourning etiquette to follow abounded in magazines for women. In 1865 Henry Mayhew the social historian remarked that “...Women, ...had to put aside all their ordinary clothes and wear nothing but black, in the appropriate materials and with particular accessories, for the first stages of mourning.”
