Fashioning the Domestic Novel: Rewriting Narrative Patterns in Margaret Oliphant's Phoebe, Junior and Dress

This article argues that in her 1876 novel Phoebe, Junior, Margaret Oliphant used fashion and dress as a means to rework and modernize the narrative patterns of the domestic novel. In a volume entitled Dress, written for Macmillan's 'Art at Home' series in 1878, Oliphant developed a mode of dress that privileged the adaptation of prevailing forms and fashions to the needs of the individual body. Oliphant saw such an individualist approach to dress as a modern understanding of fashion that favoured change and the adaptation of prevailing styles over the imitation of dominant social and aesthetic forms. This article links Oliphant's understanding of fashion in her Dress volume with the revisionary narrative process that she exemplified in her writing of Phoebe, Junior. Returning to her series of novels charting the Chronicles of Carlingford after a number of years, Oliphant marked in sartorial terms the social and aesthetic changes that had occurred since the publication of her penultimate Chronicle, Miss Marjoribanks, in 1866. Revising in Phoebe, Junior her earlier novel, the trope of female creativity that linked the pen with the needle, and the conventional narrative patterns of the domestic novel, Oliphant posits a model of artistry based around the image of scissors and a process of cutting in order to create.