clothes and identities

How does appearances (clothes and styles) reflect Olivia's identities in Heat and Dust?

Olivia

A vain woman in a male dominated society in the 1920s

Cream linen suit
Evening dress
Satin shoes
Jewel case

A vain woman in a male dominated society-

• Limited physical mobility
• Vain, materialistic, shallow - 'She was glad to think that she soon she could be wearing them and people would see her.', 'Her dress stuck to her legs with perspiration and she was afraid that, when she got out, it would be wrinkled all over the seat and look awful.'
• Misfit in India
• Reflection of class and wealth for herself and her husband instead of comfort- ornamental role of woman in the 1920s
• Attention- seeking

Conflicting roles-
a civil servant’s wife, an adulteress, a mother

White dress with white lace

Conflicting roles

• Role as the wife of a high rank civil servant
• Enhance beauty- vanity
• Mother: White- joy or grief?
• Adulteress: Irony- sin ( adultery, abortion )

' A murderer'

Untitled Slide

A 'murderer'?

• Concealing nature- avoid judgement
• Symbolism of black- death, sin, shame
• Procedural significance
• Emotional index
• Symbolism of black- death, sin, shame
• Emotional index

a ' free ' woman?

Untitled Slide

Olivia- a free woman?

• Clothes a burden- restriction of freedom ( physical and social )
• Symbolically- entrapment in unfulfilling marriage
• Off with the clothes- get physical with Nawab, physical and spiritual freedom?
• Illusional freedom, does not break free from patriarchy-> dependency on men till the end ' When she first came here, she may really have been what she seemed, a pretty woman, rather vain, pleasure seeking, a little petulant. Yet to have done what she did and then to have stuck to it all her life long- she couldn't have remained the person she had been. But there is no record of what she became later, neither in out family nor anywhere else as far as I know.'