Regis, A. and Wynne, D. (2012) Miss Havisham's Dress: Materialising Dickens in Film Adaptations of Great Expectations. Neo-Victorian Studies, 5 (2). 35 - 58. ISSN 1757-9481
Abstract
This essay focuses on the neo-Victorian materialisation of Dickens’s vision through the costuming of the Miss Havisham figure in three film adaptations of Great Expectations: David Lean’s Great Expectations (1946), Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), and Alfonso Cuarón’s Great Expectations (1998), a modern updating. The distinct film language which emerges from the costume designs in each of these films enables cinema audiences to re-read and re-imagine the novel’s portrayal of perverse and uncanny femininity. As a result, the disturbing and enduring ambiguity of Havisham’s clothing establishes her as a figure of resistance to modernity, and as an embodiment of decline, signalling youth and age by means of a robe which is at once wedding gown, unfashionable garment and shroud.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | This is an open access article under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) |
Keywords: | ageing; costume; Charles Dickens; fashion; film adaptation; gender; Great Expectations; Miss Havisham; Sunset Boulevard; textiles. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of English (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 30 Oct 2015 15:09 |
Last Modified: | 30 Oct 2015 15:16 |
Published Version: | http://www.neovictorianstudies.com/ |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Swansea University |
Refereed: | Yes |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:90301 |