Fashion In Ouartet In Autumn

Quartet in Autumn, the most acclaimed work of Barbara Pym’s, was published and shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1977. It depicts the lonely life of four old staff of 1970s in London, through which Pym wants to draw the public’s attention to the predicament of the marginalized people.Pym is obsessed with fashion throughout her life. Fashionable elements play an important role in Quartet in Autumn. Based on the fashion theory of Georg Simmel and Herbert Blumer, this thesis intends to shed light on the functions of fashion in this novel through the analysis and comparison of the two female protagonists, Letty and Marcia. It illustrates how fashionable elements in everyday life reflect the class attributes, psychological needs and living predicament of the two women. Fashion is the production of class distinction. Through their respective attitude towards fashionable elements in daily life, including hairstyle, eating style and quotidian language, it is safe to conclude that Letty comes from upper-middle class while Marcia is of lower class. Garments serve as the carrier of a personalized human subjectivity. The two heroines’different dressing styles reveal their respective psychological needs. On one hand, fashionable underclothes embody breast-deprived Marcia searching for the lost female identity and her longing for the domestic and social life as a normal woman. On the other hand, fashionable clothes contrast Letty’s elegant outward appearance with her emptiness inside and symbolize her craving for love and passion in life. Moreover, fashion exposes the living predicament of these aged spinsters. Facing the tremendous impact of the changing culture and society in the Seventies, Letty and Marcia adopt two different approaches. The former tries to keep in synch with the social fashion so as to live up to the general expectation of the society, but still cannot avoid the doomed fate of being phased out. In contrast, the latter attempts to resist against cultural and social renewal by deliberately isolating herself from the outside world. As a result, she goes so far and slumps into eccentricity and insanity in other people’s eyes. Marcia’s death serves as the most emphatic emblem of the disjunction between social progress and an individual’s stagnating rhythm of life.Pym strives to deliver "her distinctive voice" via Quartet in Autumn, the darkest novel of all her works. The voice is to call upon the society to show more care and deep love for those marginalized spinsters who express their psychological needs and living predicament through fashionable elements under the pen of Pym.