Category: Fashion

PRUDENCE: (returning L.) There’s Betsy trying to make out that reading without her spectacles. (takes a pair of spectacles out of her pocket and hands them to Mrs. Tiffany) There, Betsy, I know, you were going to ask for them. Ah! They’re a blessing when one is growing old!

MRS. TIFFANY: What do you mean, Prudence? A woman of fashion never grows old! Age is always out of fashion.”

Mowatt asks: are American values out of Fashion?

While the prologue might simply advertise wit, underneath the farce Mowatt’s piece had a political bent to it. Mowatt comments on a trend she identifies among the wealthy, arguing that fashion has become “potentially a tool for reshaping society along aristocratic lines,” which is antithetical to American values of independence and economy[1].

Mrs. Tiffany is the most obvious offender of values, foolishly obsequious to anyone with foreign ties that she finds sophisticated, and desperate to impress through ostentatious clothing and affectations. Fashion is not just clothing, it is also behavior. Her husband is no innocent; he indulges her spending and commits forgery to maintain their lifestyle.

Adam Trueman arises as the stalwart American hero, horrified at what fashion has wrought and capable of restoring order. Trueman’s “references to Tiffany’s happier days as a simple peddler in rural New York,” and Tiffany’s move to trade his daughter to save his own reputation allow Mowatt to question “the object of Americans’ obsession with financial success.[2]” Trueman’s age, rhetoric, rural background, and diction all associate him with the times of the revolution, and his name underscores it all. Because of these cues, “his social judgment gains added weight from the audience’s sense that it is grounded in the principles of the nation’s founding political struggles.[3]”

The complexity of the social commentary in a piece that otherwise conforms to the melodramatic writing style elevated Mowatt’s writing, and added the work into the American dramatic cannon. Fashion has been called her “major contribution to the drama” and “a landmark in the process of American social comedy.[4]”

[1] (Richardson 100).

[2] (Richardson 102).

[3] (Richardson 101).

[4] (Meserve 87).

Characters and Plot Summary

Characters:

ADAM TRUEMAN: a farmer from Catteraugus

COUNT JOLIMAITRE: a fashionable European Importation

COLONEL HOWARD: an Officer in the U. S. Army.

MR. TIFFANY: a New York merchant.

T. TENNYSON TWINKLE: a modern poet

AUGUSTUS FOGG: a drawing room appendage

SNOBSON: a rare species of confidential clerk

ZEKE: a colored servant

MRS. TIFFANY: a lady who imagines herself fashionable.

PRUDENCE: a maiden lady of a certain age.

MILLINETTE: a French lady’s maid

GERTRUDE: a governess

SERAPHINA TIFFANY: a Belle

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Ball Room

A Plot Summary:

A milliner turned respectable wife of high society, Mrs. Tiffany urges her daughter Seraphina to snag a husband of particular grace and class, the “Count” Jolimaitre, and to ignore the poet Twinkle except as a recipient of patronage. Jolimaitre is a fraud, and recognized as such by the maid Millinette, but nevertheless assumes all the affections of a fashionable gentleman in order to further his interests, much to the chagrin of Adam Trueman, a Yankee, who eschews both Mrs. Tiffany and Jolimaitre from the first introductions – or lack thereof. Trueman attempts to set things straight by confronting Mr. Tiffany, but discovers the gentleman too is compromised by fashion. Mr. Tiffany has committed a forgery and faces blackmail from his clerk called Snobson, who wants Seraphina as his own wife. Seraphina is particular to the Count, the Count pursues all the women, Prudence pursues Trueman, Millinette has a torrid history with Jolimaitre, Gertrude believes she loves Twinkle, and Colonel Howard is in love with Gertrude.

Despite financial troubles, Mrs. Tiffany insists on throwing a ball and invites the Count to attend. Gertrude, after overhearing a conversation between the count and the maid, attempts to reveal Jolimaitre as a fraud but gets caught alone with him, a transgression that gets her thrown out of the house. Trueman solves the issue between Tiffany and Snobson by pointing out that the two are equally compromised, and reveals the truth about Jolimaitre’s identity. The ending wraps up with Millinette engaged to marry Jolimaitre, and Gertrude to Colonel Howard, who shares in Trueman’s American ideals. Finally, Trueman resolves to assist the Tiffany’s with their financial difficulties on the conditions that they cease overvaluing fashion in their lives and that Mr. Tiffany sends the women in his family to live in the countryside.