Modernism and Middlebrow through the Eyes of Object Studies

Abstract

This chapter argues that an object-orientated approach puts texts from a range of cultural registers into dialogue with one another and fruitfully reconfigures how a high modernist work like Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas might be read on its own. After providing examples of how a range of British and American authors and illustrators (including Rachel Ferguson, Winifred Kirkland, James Joyce, Bert Thomas, and Woolf) represent second-hand attire, the chapter examines the new tools and resources available to scholars that make a research project organized around objects possible. The chapter concludes by examining challenges to object-oriented study, including the difficulty of determining the range and scope of a project and the resistant qualities of things themselves. A gown designed by Sarah Fullerton Monteith Young, a court dressmaker who produced the garments worn by Virginia and Vanessa Stephen when they made their society debut, serves as an example of what we can and cannot know about objects and the people who possessed them.