COVE

Children’s clothes went through a dramatic change in Jane Austen’s time as changing ideas on childhood and childrearing in England. In Johann Zoffany’s The Lavie Children, there are multiple children displayed playing in different kids of dress that where common in the early 1770s. The seven children are separated into three categories of childhood: infant, child, and adolescent and divided by gender in their clothes. The boys are each wearing breeches that tie off at the knee, with a button-down vest and coat, but the younger boys on the board are both dressed in a solid color closer linked to toddlers’ clothes rather than the elder boy under the tree with a more defined collar on his undershirt and different colored trousers closer in looks to men’s suits (O’Brian). The two little girls in white dresses with a wide-banded sash around the waist and matching bonnets are dressed in looser outfits that are more similar to the infant “frock” with a back fastener (O’Brian). The girl in all white playing with the dog is wearing a more structured dress that is the in-between dress of the toddler frock and adolescent dress. White was commonly worn by girls for the same reason it was worn by women with the added layer that it makes the older women look younger (Reid-Walsh) She started wearing stays and structured dresses not as ornate as the elder girls (Davidson). The eldest girl in the pink ornate dress is in a style of dress similar to the adult women, signifying she is preparing to go out into proper society (O’Brian). As the children get older, the clothes start to become more and more structured moving away from the looser fitting play clothes.

By the middle of the regency period, a new separation is made from children and adolescents in the form of play clothes. In the early 1800s, the “Skeleton Suit” was invented for boys to wear from the toddler stage to the time they are 8 or 9 and can transfer to men’s suits (Boyle). Girls wore a more structured version of a frock referred to as a “Slip” with the same design elements but a stay is worn underneath as well as a bonnet. The invention of these play clothes display the changed view of childhood that came with enlightenment and the romantic movement.

Work Cited

Boyle, Laura . “Regency Children’s Clothing: Daywear and Playwear.” Jane Austen Centre and the Jane Austen Online Gift Shop, 2011, janeausten.co.uk/blogs/fashion-for-children/regency-childrens-clothing-daywear-and-playwear.

Davidson, Hilary. Dress in the Age of Jane Austen. Regency Fashion. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2019.

O’Brien, Alden. “What Did the Austen Children Wear and Why? New Trends in British Children’s Clothing, 1760–1800» JASNA.” Jasna.org, 2020, jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/vol-41-no-1/obrien/. Accessed 26 Nov. 2023.

Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline. ““Pray, Is She Out, or Is She Not? - I Am Puzzled”: Decoding Fanny’s Position at Mansfield Park.” Persuasion, vol. 17, no. 1, 1995.

Zoffany, Johann. The Lavie Children (ca.1770). https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/vol-41-no-1/obrien/.