Project Details



Niki WillisAbstractIn the Victorian Era, the way goods were advertised and purchased changed as industry exploded and the new industrial middle class began to buy the merchandise rolling off production lines. Examining the ways that goods were sold to middle class women allows a better understanding of how shopping and advertising intersected to create new opportunities for women to interact with the commercial world. Their entry into a world dominated by commerce changed the ways that items were sold. Using mourning goods as a case study creates an opportunity to closely examine the ways advertising targeted women and pushed them toward a new kind of consumerism during the Victorian Era. Project Details If the middle class of the Victorian Era were summed up in two words it would be these: avid consumers. This time saw the creation of massive of wealth and a culture consumed with spending that wealth on inexpensive, mass-produced goods. The Victorian middle class participated in a rapidly commercializing world where the trinkets that made life comfortable quickly moved from store shelves to consumer households. The ways those goods were marketed and sold changed drastically during the second half of the 19th century as merchants realized advertising to middle class women drove business and with that realization retail was forever transformed.As advertising shifted to sell directly to women and merchants created retail space where they felt comfortable, women began to participate in consumerism in ways not previously considered appropriate for the “weaker sex.” This was due in part to their desire for respectability, which created a lifestyle that demanded a constant turnover of goods, a lifestyle to which merchants happily catered. Even mourning emporiums grew in size and scope by carrying the items women needed. Jay’s Mourning Emporium began life as a shawl warehouse at #217 Regent Street, but by 1876 it was exclusively focused on mourning and expanded to occupy spaces 243-251. It is no coincidence that Jay’s increased the size and complexity of its advertisements during this time period. In 1866 a standard ad for Jay’s looked like this: By 1890 both Jay’s Mourning Emporium and Peter Robinson’s House of Mourning used large advertisements that included ornate fonts, pictures, and claims of royal patronage. Merchants did not just use advertising as a way to bring female shoppers into their stores; they looked at the reasons women bought. Retail establishments dedicated to mourning advertised their goods to middle class women knowing that the desire for sentimental links to the dead created selling opportunities. For 19th-century Victorians in England, sentiment was a cultural construct that allowed them to re-live an emotional experience or, in the case of mourning, remember the dead. Many customs created a link between the living and the dead in an intimate and personal way. Touching a necklace containing a lock of a hair removed from a dead loved one’s head brought that person vividly to mind and, in a way, back to life. Remembrance pieces allowed wearers to grieve, and at the same time prove their knowledge of the changing and intricate rules surrounding loss and mourning during the Victorian Era. Many middle class housewives felt the pressure to prove social position by purchasing the correct type of mourning goods. This obsession with status created an opportunity for merchants to link consumption, morality, and middle class life in order to sell goods. Examining the mourning customs of the Victorians alongside their advertisements and marketing practices creates a deeper understanding of how merchants used advertising to encourage the newly created middle class that was thriving in London to purchase the goods thought necessary to live a proper life. Once middle class women bought the idea that consumption was vital to respectability, consumer spending exploded. The era of clutter began and created a specific lifestyle. Furniture, mantle clocks, and trinkets made of china and crystal filled parlors across London. The middle class who filled their homes with such affordable mass produced goods often came from the new industrial middle class. These new middle class employees consisted of factory managers, accountants, clerks, lawyers, doctors, and civil servants. As part of their attempt to maintain their class status, they adopted the mourning customs established and practiced by the aristocracy, and in many cases elaborated upon them. The middle class housewife followed mourning rules often enforced by neighbors who read the same newspapers and magazines as she did. Conformity was crucial, and women with questions often turned to magazines that offered guidance to anyone unsure of proper mourning etiquette. Not only did periodicals give middle class women advice, they also created a window into the life of Queen Victoria and her family. The monarch’s popularity waxed and waned during her long reign, but the public interest in her life did not. The Court Circular included insider gossip on life at court and details of activities and was published daily in popular newspapers. Queen Victoria represented respectability and security in a world that often had little of either. Her daily presence in the lives of the middle class created the idea that there was an intimate and personal connection. When she lost her husband unexpectedly in 1861, her subjects felt the blow as if they had lost a family member, and they mourned with her. Prince Albert’s death created a lasting wound in the heart of the Queen from which she never fully recovered. Middle class woman followed her example and practiced elaborate and complicated mourning rituals, which almost always necessitated a trip to the local mourning emporium. Businesses that related to death, like the jet industry based in Whitby, grew quickly as all of England wanted to buy the objects they saw the Queen wear. Jet’s deep black color and the softness that ensured it was easy to carve meant it was the perfect symbol of grief. When the queen began to use jet during her long mourning, the demand for the easily carved stone rapidly increased and by 1870 Whitby employed over 1500 workers in the creation this type of jewelry. The death of Prince Albert created an opportunity for merchants of mourning goods to expand upon newly formed ideas about advertising and media in order to sell goods. These businesses drove sales using advertising and began to sell middle class women on the idea of a new kind of consumerism. Shops increased the goods they carried to cater to the busy middle class woman, and shopping went from a necessary chore to a pleasurable experience. Advertising proved successful. The era of the department store began changing shopping and the way Victorian women participated in commerce.The shift to massive department stores created a shopping experience with female customers in mind. These well-lit, modern stores showcased goods using elegant displays that drew attention to the merchandise for sale. They staffed their floors with friendly, knowledgeable staff available to help customers with their purchases. Instead of hiding prices and charging based on the appearance of the shopper, items were clearly marked so customers knew the cost before buying. They added restaurants for women to sit with their companions and relax over tea. Clean, safe cloakrooms offered the privacy and comfort women needed to take care of personal needs while outside of the home. Department stores also switched to cash-only policies making it easier for women to buy goods. Day trips to the city were no longer frustrating experiences undertaken only when necessary and with great planning. All this was accomplished by merchants using advertising to sell women on the idea of consumerism as a vital part of creating a proper middle class identity.By examining the role advertising and mass media had in selling mourning goods and rituals to middle class women of the Victorian Era, we gain a better understanding of how the nature of commerce changed as women embraced the idea of consumerism. Shopping went from an occasional practice undertaken to outfit a house or procure goods to a safe outing where women admired, and sometimes purchased, the latest merchandise decorating store shelves. While the aristocracy continued to shop in more familiar ways, the middle class embraced a new world of buying power. Department stores drew women into their businesses by advertising goods they believed women wanted, and ended by offering them power and choice in the market. Examining three major forms of mourning--clothing, hair work jewelry, and post mortem photography--allows the opportunity to see how advertising changed over the course of the latter half of the 19th century. Mourning was so much a part of Victorian life that observing how goods and rituals were sold to the middle class gives a clear picture of the ways advertising intersected with lifestyle to create new opportunities for women to interact with commerce, an area of the Victorian world considered part of the male sphere of influence. Middle-class women using their influence to shape commerce remains largely unknown to the general public. With my project, I hope to rectify that. Because mourning rituals were practiced in almost every middle-class household, I can use the sale of mourning goods as a case study to show how merchants advertised to women and how women changed the way they interacted with the commercial world. The purchase of this type of consumer good can also be used to examine the growing role women had as consumers during the Victorian Era. I plan to create a project that educates the public regarding mourning during the Victorian Era by making a series of 5-7 minute videos that focus on two women of the Victorian Era talking about where to find advice on how to mourn properly, where to purchase the goods necessary for mourning, and the inevitable consequences of life after death and how different middle class women dealt with the loss of a husband. By creating these videos and posting them to the internet I have the opportunity to reach a wide audience and introduce them to how death, commerce, and women of the Victorian Era interacted in powerful ways that managed to shift how business was done. Literature ReviewThe Victorian Era arguably ended with the death of Queen Victorian in 1901. As the new century ushered in sweeping changes, the Victorians became an example of a staid, stuffy, and overly fussy past. The cluttered and overly decorated culture of the Victorians was dismissed as maudlin by most academics. The 20th century saw a rise in peer reviewed academic work, but much of the research completed on the Victorian Era focused on colonialism, the Queen, or the great men of politics and science. Women remained hidden in obscurity and they remained so until the last decades of the 20th century brought sweeping social changes which introduced new ways of examining the past in the form of social history.While pre feminist histories tended to ignore women, this changed in the last decades of the 20th century. The 1970s became a time when the knowledge on women of the Victorian era expanded considerably. Many of the historians who examined the Victorian Era with new focus emerged from the feminist movement that began in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s. They used this political lens to focus their ideas about Victorian culture. Historians like Helene E. Roberts, Deborah Gorham, Cynthia White, and Martha Vicinus looked at the lives of Victorian women and compared that to the status of modern women. They wanted to create academic studies regarding the ideas of Victorian femininity and female power in order to advance their social/political agenda. These first forays into writing about the Victorian Era with a focus on women instead of powerful and famous men were colored by the politics that surrounded the fight for equality that exploded in the 1970s and 80s. Historians who took on the mantle of feminist writers tried to establish, as Vicinus wrote, “an academic respectability to the study of women.” The desire to create a revised history that saw women as victims of male domination caused many female academics to review the Victorian Era with fresh eyes. This is seen in essays such as Roberts’s “The Exquisite Slave: The Rise of Clothes in the Making of the Victorian Woman.” Roberts focused on clothing as a way Victorian men subjugated women. In Suffer and Be Still, Martha Vicinus laments the fact that many women of the 19th century were condemned to live small lives of servitude and compared them to women of the 20th century. Cynthia White analysed media targeted at women and concluded that women’s economic and social influence during the Victorian Era was dismissed by modern historians and sociologists. She compared this historical lack of interest in women and women’ issues to the hostility directed at modern publications dedicated to a female agenda that moved beyond recipes and clothing. She concluded that women of the Victorian Era were as locked into a domestic identity as modern women and placed the blame on men. Deborah Gorham’s The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal made the point that women of the Victorian Era sought refuge from industrialization and massive cultural shifts through the “cult of domesticity” that rose during this time. She argued that femininity was used as a psychological concept, a model for female personalities used to justify female subordination. In her view this created a reason for historians to dismiss women and their contributions. In his 1983 analysis, A Prison of Expectations, Steven Mintz illustrated how Victorian and modern families reacted similarly to social pressures. Mintz believed that new roles being created by industrialization caused stress within familial hierarchies, stress that caused an increase in paternal authority at the “walled garden” of home. He compared the pressures and patriarchal reaction to what was occurring during the modern era. These first serious attempts at research on women of the Victorian Era created a platform that future historians used to advance more study on this subject. Some of these early histories might be seen as militant by modern standards, but they must be examined in the context of the time they were written. Doing this creates an opportunity to view the Victorian Era through the eyes of early feminists and allows us to see the difficulties these trail blazing academics had breaking through the academic stagnation of the 1970s. The debt that is owed to these pioneers who first raised the idea that Victorian Era women were more than side notes is huge. Yet almost all of the articles and books written during this time period were based on the idea of women as victims. Academics of the 70s and 80s saw Victorian women as victims of men and society with no agency of their own. This idea of a powerless female created a martyr that academics used to put forth their own ideas and theories. For these historians, the best way to advance modern women in social and political power was to compare them to Victorian women and show the small amount of progress made in order to shock the system into advancing the feminist cause. Much of the peer-reviewed published work of the 1970s and 80s was politically motivated, and the very politics that infused the work limited the analysis of Victorian woman. Indeed, feminist writers used a well-known caricature of the “ideal” Victorian woman to make a point and in doing so lost an opportunity to create a rich, nuanced portrait of real 19th century women. While it is important to review this kind of work, the focus is too narrow to be the definitive word on the women of the 19th century. Victorian women certainly had specific roles to play, and they existed within a domestic sphere, but much of the historical analysis of the 1970s and 80s does not look at the ways middle class women of the Victorian Era influenced and controlled their households. While their work might not be nuanced, these early advocates for women’s history created a solid platform on which a more thorough analysis of Victorian middle class women was built. The 1990s saw a move beyond the view of Victorian middle class women as victims of male power. This was a decade of rapid technological and social change and massive consumerism. It is no surprise that many of the works created during the ‘90s focused on consumption practices of the Victorians. Both Lori Anne Loeb in Consuming Angels and Thomas Richards in The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle; 1851-1914 examined how Victorian families dealt with the same kind of industrialization and rapid social changes that occurred in the 1990s. Loeb’s analysis determined that the middle class often saw advertising as lacking in respectability. Women were, according to Loeb, voracious consumers, and that was reflected in the advertisements of the time. Richards focused on how anxiety, driven by rapidly changing social constructs, combined with the creation of cheap goods through industrialization, drove consumerism during the Victorian Era. Richards pointed out that “fundamental imperatives became tangled in cultural forms” and class was identified by items purchased and displayed to others. These efforts built on the previous works while expanding them beyond the scope of female victimization. By looking at women through the goods that they purchased, Loeb and Richards created a new picture of what life in a Victorian household was like. Many women from the new industrialized middle class found the climb up the social ladder was not easy. To maintain their position they continually purchased and displayed the trappings of a middle class life. To find out what goods were necessary to prove status, they looked at those they wished to emulate. They also bought magazines and newspapers that sold advertising space to merchants who happily told middle class women what they needed to buy. The goods purchased by Victorian Era middle class women, and the marketing techniques used to sell goods, tells us about the middle class and the ways advertising changed their buying habits.The 1990s also saw a rise in Victorian women being studied in ways that went beyond how they interacted with, or were affected by, men. Jeanne Boydston’s Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic and Margaret Beetham’s A Magazine of Her Own: Domesticity and Desire in the Woman’s Magazine 1800-1914 examined the women of Victorian England. Boydston and Beetham attempted to present 19th century women as complex and complicated human beings and move beyond the idea of Victorian women being simple-minded and obedient. Boyston argued that the contributions made by middle class women were vital to the survival and material prosperity of the family. By looking at the work women did in the household, she presents the idea of a woman well versed in management and hard work. The middle class housewife had to know how to handle any situation that arose as men’s work moved them away from the home.Beetham looked for the voices of middle class Victorian women in the magazines that they read. She did not read magazines of the 19th century in order to present women as victims of domestic ideology. Instead, she saw in their pages the voices of real Victorian middle class women with real needs and problems. By looking at the stories written by and for women and the columns offering advice, a clear picture of the Victorian middle class woman begins to emerge. Beetham also points out that the success of women’s magazines in the 19th century created room for more militant magazines that called for women’s suffrage and the advancement of the status of women. Early ladies magazines proved that Victorian women provided a significant audience which paved the way for progressive magazines that called for change, especially women’s suffrage. By attempting to find the real woman behind the myth, Beetham and Boydston showed that Victorian middle class women exercised control over many aspects of the domestic sphere. This control included ensuring that her household was following proper mourning etiquette which often meant a trip to Black Peter Robinson’s or Jay’s Mourning Emporium putting a good-sized dent in the household budget.Mourning during the Victorian Era allowed women to express grief through the consumption and display of goods. These practices were also used to cement social standing and create relics whose purpose was to tie the living to the dead. Geoffrey Batchen’s Forget Me Not: Photography & Remembrance, Larry West and Patricia Abbot’s Tokens of Affection and Regard, and Helen Sheumaker’s Love Entwined all looked at the links between death, sentiment, and commerce during the Victorian Era. All of these books examined how relic jewelry and post mortem photographs became commodities used by consumers to memorialize the dead and by merchants to increase sales to a newly emerged middle class housewife. The increase in sales seen during the Victorian Era can be partly attributed to a technological shift that made goods affordable and created a middle class with sufficient money to spend on nonessential goods. However, the role advertising played in pushing middle class women towards consumerism cannot be overlooked. Merchants had a large role in creating an atmosphere that made consumer spending moral. By examining how they used advertising and social anxiety to do this, we gain a better understanding the middle class housewife who saw such goods as an absolute necessity. Public History Literature ReviewHistory has the ability to move beyond the written word. Using techniques that combine historical accuracy with theatre, living history allows tourists to interact with the past in ways that are impossible using only books. In 1984’s Time Machines: The World of Living History, Jay Anderson addressed the problems institutions face when they create living history at historical sites. He thought that creating a persona was vital to the success of narrative history. By creating a unique, historically valid character that includes an appropriate name and circumstances the historian brings an accurate representation of history to life. This persona is only a representation, however. There is no way to create a person from the past. Modern sensibilities inform interpretations and as time changes so does understanding of events. The goal of first person interpretations is to create a learning environment. As a professional historical interpreter John Salicco understand this better than most. Salicco is a historian who creates and presents first and third person interpretations throughout the Pacific Northwest. He has been performing history for over 30 years and believes that entertaining and educational history is created by combining a deep knowledge of the era being presented and an understanding those watching. The audience, according to Salicco, comes to see the way history worked; for a hands on experience that cannot be gained at a museum where patrons do not have the ability to touch artifacts. Living histories allow the audience the opportunity to interact with the past in a very personal way. For many, this will be the closest that they ever get to stepping back in time and seeing, smelling, and hearing a world long gone. This kind of history, according to Salicco, is the most effective way to involve the audience in a hands on way with the past. He maintains his persona throughout his presentations and answers questions put to him by audience members in a way he believes authentic to his character. He cautions that this interpretation is done through the filter of modern sensibilities. No matter how thoroughly researched and prepared a first person historical interpreter is, the portrayal cannot be 100% accurate, it can only present an idea of the past.Knowing that those interested in history attend these kinds of first person presentations for entertainment and education places a huge responsibility on historical sites and interpreters. Michael Bowman and Jane Malcolm-Davies explore the responsibilities historical tourism sites and the audiences that they entertain. Bowman looked at the Antebellum South in Performing Southern History for the Tourist Gaze: Antebellum Home Tour Guide Performances. Bowman argued that the very nature of historical interpretation at tourist destinations can devalue history because the players are often furthering a myth of the past, in part to keep visitors happy and comfortable. He advised that historic sites take care to present the positive and the negatives of history. He warned that historical sites need to make sure that historical interpreters are well versed in the history they are acting out in order to honestly answer audience questions. Ignoring the unpleasant parts of the past in order to present a product that customers will continue to spend money to see devalues history. Jane Malcolm-Davies explored what tourists want when they come to heritage sites. She discovered that most want to learn, to feel a connection to the past, and to have fun. She concluded that education of first person interpreters is the answer to many of the issues facing heritage sites. In order to facilitate a fun learning environment that addresses the positive and negative aspects of the past, employees must be properly trained in two ways, narrative and historical content. When the employees are knowledgeable about the history of their site, they are able to pass on information when it is about a less positive part of the past. Malcolm-Davies believed that visitors to historic sites want to know the realities of the past, even when they do not match up with an idealized vision. Creating an intensive training course for employees will allow first person interpreters the opportunity to give the audience what it wants, a fun and educational afternoon. It also allows the site to maintain a high level of quality programs that keep tourists coming back and spending their money at the site. MethodologyAnyone considering a first person interpretation of Victorian Era mourning rituals must consider the influence of consumerism, advertising, and death during this time. Mourning was a large part of life that examining the links between consumerism and advertising using this medium will allow for a complete picture of how merchants pushed women towards consumerism using respectability as a motivator for buying goods. Mourning jewelry, post mortem photographs, and mourning clothing are all intrinsically entwined with letters, advertising, and magazine articles that pertain to mourning. Analysing how material culture and documentation came together at this time will create a clearer picture of how class, gender, material culture, and industry intersected during the Victorian Era and how mourning goods became commodities purchased to show social standing as well as create a way to connect with the dead. Because I have two distinct types of sources--artifacts and documents--to analyze, the most effective way to interpret my data is through the use of a multidisciplinary method. With this in mind I looked for an approach that allowed me to use both the material culture and the written records for my interpretation. My research on historical theories led me to the works of Jules Prown and James Deetz. By combining these two methodologies I believe that I can thoroughly analyze both the objects created to mourn and the documentation left behind that contextualized why sentiment and commodification were linked to mourning during the Victorian Era. James Deetz is considered one of the fathers of historical archaeology. In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life he argued that material objects need to be interpreted in conjunction with written records. . While primary documents were an important way to discover cultural impact, they needed to be used in conjunction with artifacts because records were written by individuals with their own “interests, biases, and attitudes.” The value of historical archaeology lies in its view that material culture and the written record complement each other. It also allows for an analysis that accepts that objectivity is not entirely possible when analyzing the past. The weakness of this method lies in its specific approach. While each artifact must be viewed within its own context, there must be a methodology that gives specifics on how to approach the artifacts. Deetz is vague on how to approach analysis of historical artifacts. By contrast Jules Prown explicitly states how he wanted artifacts analyzed in American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture. Prown argues that by completing a visual analysis of an object, a historian sees patterns of thought that are hidden. He believes that artifacts embody metaphors for the human condition; “states of being, activities, relationships, needs, fears, or hopes.” Objects subjected to careful observation are an essential primary source. Using such objects uncovers cultural information in ways that primary documentary research cannot duplicate. He believes that those living in the past created artifacts for a specific purpose. By looking at the way an object was created, we gain a better understanding of culture based on how artifacts look and feel. Prown’s methodology is especially useful in the analysis of mass-produced objects because they often appeal to the largest portion of the population. The Prownian method calls for a thorough written analysis and description of the object that includes an emotional response to both the object and the analysis, which can be problematic. This is where I believe Prown is weak. He argued that his approach creates a truly objective history, yet by including this highly subjective step, the analysis of the objects becomes more about the analyst’s interests and beliefs. This removes focus from the significance of the objects within their historical context. This project uses a novel synthesis of Deetz’s and Prown’s methodologies, though the penultimate step is research.I believe combining the Prownian method of analysing physical objects and Deetz insistence on using written records for context strengthens my analysis. Examining the material culture of mourning from the late 18th century to the late 19th century will show how those goods changed as technology advanced. Hair work was not an invention of the Victorian Era, but it changed with the cultural needs of the time and the availability of affordable goods. Looking at a locket from 1826 titled “Portrait of a Lady” contains a miniature painting of a young woman dressed in black wearing a black necklace. The back contains a large piece of braided hair under glass. This well-crafted piece was, as the title indicates, created to memorialize someone of the aristocracy. Comparing the above locket to several small mourning brooches produced in the 1850s shows a definite decline in quality. While not of the same quality or individuality as “Portrait of a Lady,” these mass produced brooches had the benefit of affordability. They were available through several jewelry retailers as indicated by the different manufacturing techniques. I found representations of this style of brooch at the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. left25654000 Marketing these pieces increased the sale of mourning goods which in turn caused an expansion of the industries associated with mourning. Women were the focus of these advertisements which can be ascertained by a close study of the wording and pictures contained within them. An examination of advertisements from the early 1860s to the late 1890s shows that as time moved forward the ads increased in size and used drawings of women wearing mourning clothing. Advertisements by jewelers also increased in size and they began to use drawings of specific pieces of jewelry for sale because these objects were available due to mass production. Customers came into the store and looked through a large catalogue of available objects. Once the proper piece was found, it was ordered with consumer specific additions of hair and/or photographs of the deceased, making the jewelry unique to the purchaser. Both clothing and jewelry retailers used larger and more ornate fonts in the later decades of the 19th century, calling attention to the goods they offered for sale. This increase in the size, complexity, and frequency of the advertisements indicates that retailers attempted to attract the attention of customers. That these ads also frequently talked of “black silks for dresses,” included line drawings of ideal female customers, and were published in women’s magazines indicates they specifically targeted women. Even the tone of the advertisements changed. Instead of politely asking shoppers to come into their stores, they featured the goods sought by middle class women. Businesses targeted women because of the power they had in the domestic sphere, and mourning was part of that sphere. It was often women who ultimately chose the stores in which they shopped for their needs. By advertising that they carried the items women wanted and creating a safe environment for women to engage in commerce, businesses ensured that women spent money in their stores. Outcome My goal is twofold: first, I want to create an entertaining, educational program that will show high school-age students that the curriculum they are being taught can be used in a multitude of ways, such as video presentations, audio files, dramatic performances, or comedy. Common Core standards emphasize students’ understanding of multiple forms of communication as a way to present information, and by observing this project’s example students will hopefully learn that when presenting history, the only limit is the historical record and their own imagination. Second, I want to provide small regional museums with an example of how effective technology can be in offering their visitors a more entertaining and theatrical, and educational experience. Blending technology and storytelling by creating a series of videos allows me to reach a greater number of students. I believe that Victorian women are frequently misunderstood. In spite of what most outside of the academic world believe, these highly complex and hardworking women were tasked with creating a home that was an oasis of peace and serenity for their families in spite of tight finances and the constant fear of losing their financial security through the death of husbands and fathers. They did this in a rapidly changing cultural landscape where doing the wrong thing created the possibility of social ostracism. They also managed to do this under the severe constraint of long wool skirts and corsets and often on an annuity of ?200 a year. They lived in a world that enforced the idea that women needed to stay within a safe home world, but saw the need of those less fortunate than themselves and found a way to work for the betterment of society through volunteer work with church groups. My goal with this project is to create a better understanding of why the Victorians used mourning rituals that today are seen as foreign and distasteful. I believe that best way to introduce this topic and have a discussion about it is to create a conversation between an older female widow of the late Victorian Era and a younger relative who has also just lost her husband. This allows me to have a conversation between these two women regarding the differences in mourning and why they exist. I will put the women in a Victorian style parlor so that I can introduce the clutter necessary to Victorian life and display post mortem cabinet photographs in a way the Victorians did. This gives me the opportunity explain the importance of such items and how they related to the sentimentality of the era. My characters can also talk about how they found mourning emporiums through reading advertisements. Having two women in similar circumstances gives me the opportunity to talk about what happened after mourning and it gives me the opportunity to show how social pressure was used to help women conform to expected standards. At present I do not have the resources to produce these videos but I plan to write detailed scripts so that I can create this series of videos at a later date.This plan will include more than just be two women sitting in a parlor talking. As these women introduce a topic, I will cut it with pictures of mourning jewelry, post-mortem photographs, and Victorian Era magazine drawings of women in mourning. I can use quotes from articles of the time discussing proper mourning and pieces of letters discussing grief. I plan to use images of historical documents taken by me or posted by the Victoria and Albert Museum and posted to their website. Photographs taken by the V & A and placed on their website can be used as long as they are credited in whatever project I create. The photographs I took of magazine and newspaper articles and advertisements are owned by me. My characters will be dressed in clothing appropriate for the early to mid-1880s. I will order the costumes from an online retailer that specializes in period clothing. As was proper for widows of the time, the outfits will be black and without a lot of ornamentation. One of the women will be an older aunt, filled with unwanted advice, and the kind of judgement that is only produced through years of practice. She will wear completely appropriate mourning attire and jewelry as she is a stickler for the rules and believes that progress is unacceptable and youth dangerously unstable. Her young niece will be tolerant, to a point, of the advice and will be wearing a more relaxed and modern take on mourning wear. I am putting quite a bit of humour in the form of snark and judgement, something that all teenagers can relate to. If possible I will purchase genuine artifacts. Victorian mourning jewelry is very collectable and can be purchased online or in antique stores. However, many of these pieces are quite expensive and such items can also be recreated using modern pieces made to look Victorian. Three scripts that cover mourning attire, hair work jewelry, and post mortem photography and the advertisements involved in selling all three will be completed by mid-November. I am gearing my project toward high school students. The Common Core standards want students at this level to be able to analyze primary and secondary sources and integrate that knowledge in a multitude of formats to answer a question or solve an issue. High school students often have units or entire courses on European or World History. Teachers may use my project to inform their students about death and commodification during the Victorian Era. It can also lead to a discussion of changing class roles, industrialization, and the role of men and women in Victorian culture, and I will provide discussion questions and activities teachers may use in conjunction with the videos. Common Core encourages students to present their findings in imaginative ways, including visually. My video will be broken into three segments (clothing, jewelry, and post mortem photography) with each clip running approximately 4-7 minutes. This will allow me to discuss how mass media expanded the role of mourning. I believe this format will allow teachers to use them as a way to get a conversation started. I also believe they will present history in a way that will be familiar to teenagers. The success of video series like Drunk History, Ask a Slave, and Horrible Histories prove that this format can be both entertaining and informative. In addition to high school students I believe that my videos will be useful to many smaller museums that do not have the budget or skills necessary to create such content. My videos will offer institutions the opportunity to enrich exhibits by embedding links to their websites or linking to my videos. This offers them the opportunity to explore different ways to integrate technology into their systems without committing any funds to create content. ................
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