Title

Playing Italian: Cross-cultural Dress and Investigative Journalism at the Fin de Siècle

Author(s)

Laura Vorachek, University of DaytonFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 2012

Publication Source

Victorian Periodicals Review

Abstract

This examination of late Victorian journalism reveals that one type of clothing offered middle-class women protection from street harassment: cross-cultural dress. In appropriate ethnic attire, reporters and social investigators ventured into the immigrant communities that made up a part of England’s urban poor, exploring such trades as Jewish fur-puller or Italian organ-grinder. This incognito ethnic attire afforded women both the means and the authority to carry out their investigations into the Italian constituency of the Victorian working poor. This study also examines how costumes enabled female investigators to manipulate class- and gender-based assumptions about who had broad access to the streets of London in the late nineteenth century. It also considers the photographs and illustrations that accompanied female reporters’ articles.

Inclusive pages

406-435

ISBN/ISSN

0709-4698

Document Version

Published Version

Comments

This article first appeared in Victorian Periodicals Review, Volume 45, Issue 4 (winter 2012), pages 406-435.

Permission documentation is on file.

Copyright

Copyright © 2012, Johns Hopkins University Press.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press

Volume

45

Issue

4

Peer Reviewed

yes

Keywords

Victorian era, journalism, women, harassment, cultural attire

eCommons Citation

Vorachek, Laura, "Playing Italian: Cross-cultural Dress and Investigative Journalism at the Fin de Siècle" (2012). English Faculty Publications. 5.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/eng_fac_pub/5