Marriage lines: a wedding veil for Jane Austen

 This veil, entitled 'Marriage lines', was inspired by Jane Austen’s life and in particular the manuscript of her unfinished novel The Watsons, which is housed in the Bodleian library in Oxford. One of the interesting things about the manuscript is that Jane used ordinary sewing pins to ‘cut and paste’ parts of the story in order to make changes and rearrange the words. Jane’s novels are concerned with social issues, seen from a female point of view, and the way in which young women, in particular, navigate the world around them and their place within it. Jane herself never married, although she came close to doing so twice; the first time for love (although the young man’s family prevented the marriage) and the second time for pragmatic reasons. In fact she accepted the second proposal but changed her mind by the next morning and broke off the engagement.

At one point in The Watsons, the heroine’s sister, Elizabeth, says ‘I think I could like any good humoured man with a comfortable income’ which is a sentiment shared by many of Jane’s fictional characters; although not her heroines, who are all seeking love and meaning in their relationships. I embroidered this text onto lace, which I cut and pinned to the wedding veil. This mirrors the way Jane pinned her manuscripts, so that the words, like the sentiments, can be rearranged or even removed as the situation changes. My aim was to reflect the general view of marriage in Jane’s novels as a negotiation open to rearrangement as well as Jane’s own equivocal views of the married state.

Families recorded in lace bobbins

 These inscribed lace bobbins celebrate various family relationships. The first three celebrate parents: My dear father; Sarah Ions my dear mother; and A present from my father 1836. I think these three were made by the Compton family, with James making the two on the left and his father Jesse making the one with the spiral inscription. Jesse was born in 1793 and James died in 1889 so between them they covered a large part of the 19th century and made hundreds of bobbins for their local community in Buckinghamshire.

The next two bobbins recall a sister and a son: Eliza Hall my dear sister died Feb 5 1866; and My dear son David Hall 1866. These two people have the same surname but I don’t know if they were related. I have a feeling they probably were though because the date 1866 has been added as an afterthought to the second bobbin. I don’t know if David Hall also died in 1866 or that date just became important to the lacemaker, possibly because it was the year her sister died. There is no space on the bobbin to add the word ‘died’ but bobbin makers often used the shorthand D to signify death and there is room to squeeze that in, so the fact that it doesn’t appear suggests that it is not a memorial bobbin for her son.

The final two lace bobbins record Aunt Betsy and Aunt Sarah. There are quite a few of these bobbins with aunts names on them and I think they must have been given as gifts to the aunts. Families were larger then so most people would have had several aunts, and also family friends called aunts, who would all have been lacemakers and would have appreciated the gift of another lace bobbin for their work. These bobbins are a lovely reminder of the social and personal history recorded on lace pillows that reminded lacemakers of their loved ones as they worked.

 

Whispering lace curtain

 

The lace trim on the ‘Whispering’ net curtain reflects and records the conversation overheard at a formal house party. The lace, like the party, begins formally with everything in its place, but soon degenerates as the guests talk freely among themselves and the threads of the lace unravel to reveal a tangle of whispers, hinting at coercion, control and confinement. The net curtain has captured nine whispers including It’s our little secret, What did you expect, you got what you deserved, He frightens the life out of me and Keep out it’s not your business. They reveal that all is not as it seems. There are some cries for help underlying the social veneer.

The curtain is part of a series suggesting that the net curtain acts as a sieve within the home capturing and recording conversations, atmospheres and feelings and becomes a repository for the essence of the home. I designed the main piece of lace in the Bedfordshire style and then used threads from within the lace to embroider the ‘whispers’ across the fabric of the curtain. The whispers cross over each other and the text is not supposed to be read in a linear fashion, but as snippets of overheard conversations. Therefore, the story may change depending on the order in which the whispers are read; in the same way as overheard conversations are pieced together to form a narrative, which may be correct or not.

Marking time net curtain

 

This net curtain entitled ‘Marking time’ is pierced with pins and needles in the traditional tally pattern for counting and suggests a prisoner marking time; counting the days until their release. The use of a net curtain for such a method of counting seems unusual and even uncanny, in the Freudian sense, when the boundary between the homely and the unhomely becomes blurred. This boundary, the liminal space between home and not-home, is represented here by the net curtain.

The use of pins and needles for marking time suggests that the time keeper is using the only tools at her disposal, her needlework equipment, to record the passing of the days. This misuse of feminine sewing equipment suggests a subversion of the domestic and reflects the duality of home as sanctuary and prison. But like many uncanny experiences it leaves us with more questions than answers. Why is she not sewing quietly and contentedly? What is troubling her? Is she held against her will? Is she a victim of domestic abuse? What is she afraid of? Why does she have no voice? Is she still even enclosed in the curtained room or have we stumbled upon a scene from a fairy tale?