HEROINES' CLOTHES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 10, 12 January 1934, Page 9

HEROINES' CLOTHES.

GALSWORTHY AND GLOVES. The way of many authors with the frocking of their heroines was pointed out by Catherine Carswell in the "Manchester Guardian." Mr. Galsworthy, she says, although he does not often treat us to a complete toilette, is constant in his references to the costumes of his characters. He is, moreover, insistent about such details as shoes and gloves. All his characters seem to wear gloves. Perhaps this ia one reason why there is something Sundaylied about them, and something of the suburban Sunday at that. No sneer is here intended. It is because he writes so well of the glove--1 wearing, or rather the glove-conscious, class that he is important. There is just the difference between Galsworthy'e women and Meredith's that there is between gentility and high breeding. One can easily imagine what sort of clothes were worn by Diana of the Crossways (Meredith helps us by saying that ehe dressed like a Frenchwoman); and one takes it for granted that she wore good shoes and gloves. But how her social stature would be lessened wero her creator to tell us about those points in her ensemble! I Irene Forsyte, the most beautiful of Galsworthy's heroines, does not become less beautiful to us when we read about her gloves (of French grey), her "bronzecoloured shoes," or the various dresses she wore. She does, however, take her place as definitely middle class, and it must be confessed that the descriptions of her clothes do not add to her beauty. In one passage she wears what appears to be an embossed velvet gown. Again she appears in a "gold-coloured frock . . . the bosom adorned with a cascada of lace," and a "ruffle of soft lace" is repeated with her outdoor costume of black velvet. With a dress of French grey, in "Indian Summer," the novelist is careful to give her "a lace scarf," and with her black evening dress, in "In Chancery," he put a mantilla over her shoulders. Irene thus answers to the description of "a scarfy woman." This makes her all the more English. Once wo see her dressed we do not feel it so impossible that she married into the set containing Mrs. Septimus Small. Mrs. Small's party dress is given us in "The Man of Property." She was sombrely magnificent this evening in black bombazine, with a mauve front cut in a shy triangle, and crowned with a black velvet ribbon round the base of her thin throat; black and mauve for evening wear was esteemed very chaste by nearly every Forsyte. We may doubt if the writer chose the stuff called bombazine for anything more than the sound of the word. But the black and mauve, the "front cut in a shy triangle," and the black velvet ribbon round the' throat make a significant picture. Galsworthy, however, is sparing of costume if we compare him with D. H. Lawrence. Particularly in ther novel "Women in Love" it is impossible to turn many pages without coming upon a detailed description of the dress of one of the women characters. And if Galsworthy gives us shoes and gloves, Lawrence lets himself all out on stockings. It was indeed suggested by one reader of this book when it first appeared that the title ought to bo "Women in Coloured Stockings." They arc usually woollen stockings, but they are bright green, canary, yellow, rose, and vivid red by turns. Wo wonder where the Brangwen sisters obtained such hose. They never seem to be engaged in knitting them.