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Friday, 28 February 2014

An old friend revisited: Elizabeth Parker's circa 1830 sampler

Last week, at an exhibition entitled ‘Frayed: Textiles onthe Edge’ at the Time and Tide museum, Great Yarmouth (more on that in my next post!), I revisited a piece of textile that last year dominated my life and thoughts for months on end! The item is Elizabeth Parker’s autobiographical textile sampler, which was the subject of my undergraduate dissertation at the University of Manchester.  Belonging to the Victoria and Albert Museum (whose online collection entry on it can be found here), the sampler features a 1,643 word autobiographical outpouring by a seventeen year old, working class, nineteenth-century female, painstakingly crafted in tiny red cross stitches. Parker narrates her childhood, abuse in the workplace, suicidal temptations and mental struggles in a confessional and prayer-like manner. Devoid of the moral verses, ornamental borders and decorative stitching typical of samplers from the seventeenth century onwards, the piece stands out as highly unique and profoundly powerful. 
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
My degree was in English Literature, and Parker’s sampler provided a perfect opportunity to bring my love of textile into my work. Whilst the sampler had previously only really been written about as a textile artefact, I saw its value as a literary text in itself that could be analysed and written about in just the same way as one would any other novel, poem, play or traditional autobiography, despite its unorthodox textile form. To put many months of study into painfully generalised terms: due to gendered moral and religious discourse concerning women’s roles, traditional autobiographical writing and publishing was simply not an opportunity afforded many historical females, and especially not suicidal, abused, seventeen year old maidservants. There is a large literature of critical work relating to the importance of reclaiming the voices of women throughout history who, due to their gender, social and economic status, were not able to have their voices heard in orthodox ways (if anyone wants to get in touch re: reading lists I’d be happy to help!) For me, Parker’s sampler constituted an amazing chance to recover one such lost voice and give it the serious literary consideration it deserves, as well as exploring the interplay between its form and content: essentially, what does the fact that it is a textile text mean, what effects does this have on it as a piece of literature. 

my precarious position of study!
At the time of writing my dissertation the sampler wasn’t on display anywhere. Instead, however, I was able to go and view it in storage at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Blythe House facility in Hammersmith, which was an amazing and special experience for me in itself! Unfortunately this did also mean that I was only able to view the sampler whilst precariously standing at the top of a tall stepladder, as it was hung very high up! As a result, my photos are all very close up! I’d also like to give special thanks to V&A curator Edwina Ehrman for meeting with me that day and also taking me up to the conservation studios, which was just fantastic. 


Now, the dissertation totals 31 pages and I can’t really go into it all without practically rewriting the whole thing on here!  So just briefly… the focus of my study was at its most broken down level, I suppose, the complex paradoxes that surrounded every aspect of the sampler. The text begins with the words ‘As I cannot write’, immediately conjuring up a whole load of questions given that Parker is indeed communicating in text (and thus ‘writing’), yet this text is not orthodox writing, but stitch. Nor is it, however, a conventional textile sampler. As my previous post on the evolution of samplers discusses, by the 19th century textile samplers had become the ultimate method by which traditional Victorian femininity was inculcated: not a site for independent production of text and communication. Parker’s stitching therefore occupies a strange and subversive space, negotiating gender norms and traditions to perform a radical act of autobiographical communication at the same time as it claims not to be autobiographical ‘writing’, hiding in the safety of its textile form, and subsequent associations with feminine behaviour in sewing. 

This sense of paradox is furthered by close study of the text itself. I discovered profound anxiety concerning silence and speech, agency and passivity, and the problems of narrating both personal trauma and confession. Parker is nonetheless compelled to speak out, for the sake of her wellbeing and salvation, at the same time as she recognises this act, and even her own thoughts, as transgressive. Connecting Parker’s act of autobiographical stitching to both the theories of Hélène Cixous concerning the need for an exclusively female form of writing with the body, and the ancient story of Philomela, who after being raped and having her tongue cut out won justice by weaving a depiction of her story, I ultimately argued that the textile form of Parker’s writing is crucial in resolving the tensions and paradoxes discussed so far. The act of joining together fabric and thread in every stitch offers a valuable alternate discursive site where Parker is free to express herself, simultaneously healing and joining her fractured mental state. The fact that the sampler is a textile text is, I found, absolutely intrinsic to the meaning and power of Parker’s communicative act. 

I find the above painfully brief and badly explained compared to the months of research and writing that went into the original dissertation, but I hope it is enough to spark someone’s own thoughts and interest without being too garbled! A nice surprise was that the dissertation won the De Quincey essay prize - meaning that thankfully I can't have been the only one in UofM's English department who thought it was interesting (always a relief) - who knew being a textile nerd would come in so handy! Again, for anyone wanting reading tips on anything from material practices and gender/feminism, female life writing and autobiography, samplers, the role of form in literary texts, etc, just get in touch! 




1 comment:

  1. I know this post is old but I’d love to read your dissertation if you are still willing to share.

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