Jane Austen's World

Excited readers,

ChattyFeet, a cool, funky sock gift site, now features Jane Austoe socks! No, we are not kidding. Our Jane, who loved to walk, has joined the foot pantheon of other great writers: William Shakes-Feet, George Toe-Well, Virginia Wool, Ernestoe Hemingway, and Marcel Proustoe. (Artists like Vincent Van Toe and Frida Callus are also featured.)

Update: We have three winners–Denise, Mea, and Mary! I will contact you regarding your addresses. Thank you all for participating.

Jane Austoes!

These brilliant hysterical, er, historical, socks are available for purchase. Literature Sock Gift Sets are also offered to those who cannot exist without reading great books and who love novel ideas.

ChattyFeet Gift Sets. Note the Literature Gift Set in the top left corner!

To help your summer doldrums disappear with laughter, ChattyFeet will give away three pairs of Jane Austoe socks to three lucky G.B. or U.S. winners of this contest! Simply finish the blanks in one of the following sentences and leave it as a comment on this blog. Be outrageous. Be creative! Make readers smile. And then twirl with delight as you anticipate receiving your very own pair of Jane Austoes.

These instagram images might inspire you to enter the contest!

Q 1: Wearing my Jane Austoe socks will _____________ because __________.

or

Q 2: While wearing my Jane Austoe socks I’ll _____________ and will feel _______________.

The contest ends at midnight, August 22, EST USA time. Winners from the U.S. and G.B. will be drawn by random number generator.

More About Socks: A short history of knitting in Austen’s time and through today

In 1589, the first mechanical knitting machine was invented near Nottingham by William Lee of Calverton. As the stocking frame was refined, the knitting cottage industry dwindled in Britain. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) website offers a short history on hand knitting which includes an image of a pair of Regency socks in their collection. Also view an image of a stocking frame in 1751 at this link in The British Museum.

Women in the late 18^th century and during the Regency era wore stockings held up by garters, but generally did not wear underwear. I find the detail in this cartoon by Rowlandson (Exhibition Stare Case) particularly funny and revealing!

Closeup of Exhibition Stare Case. Image is in the public domain, Metropolitan Museum of Art collection. 

Interestingly, as machines took over the business of making stockings wholesale, genteel ladies continued to knit them. How else were they expected to spend their time? Ladies could not work or own property, and, with a few exceptions, were dependent on their male relatives to oversee every legal aspect of their lives. Days were long and boring for those who had nothing but time on their hands, and so “hand-knitting mainly became the domain of wealthier ladies,” – V&A. When not writing or overseeing household duties, Jane Austen occupied herself with sewing (view her needle case, and the quilt she sewed with her sister in these links). In her letters, Austen discussed sewing men’s shirts for her brothers–in Regency times, these shirts were made by female relatives and not purchased in a tailor shop. View two examples below from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

Public domain images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art of two early 19th century British men’s shirts.

Knitting remained part of the education of Yorkshire’s poor in the late 18th- and early 19th centuries.

…for poorer members of society, [knitting]was taught in orphanages and poor houses. The first recorded knitting schools had been established in Lincoln, Leicester and York in the late 16th century and hand-knitting for income continued in Yorkshire until well into the 19th century. The Ackworth Quaker School in Yorkshire was established in 1779 for girls and boys “not in affluence”. According to records, its female pupils knitted 339 stockings in 1821 alone.” – V&A

To view a knitting instruction book, which was the first publication of its kind, visit The National Society’s Instructions on Needlework and Knitting, 1838, England. Museum no. T.307&A-1979. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

A woman’s duties in the house remained largely unchanged until the early 20^th century, when my great grandmother and great aunts and their daughters (solid middle class Dutch burger women) knitted and darned stockings for their menfolk and for soldiers during WWI and WWII. They crocheted the most intricate doilies for arm rests and neck rests on plush sofas and chairs. Long after their deaths, when I went through their sewing baskets, I beheld and assortment of wood balls and finials for darning stockings and tatting pointed lace doilies. Thick wool socks were reused until they literally fell apart.

A small doily Tante Dina made for my dresser in the 1960s.

My Dutch mom’s sewing basket held different colors of wool scraps, and some of my favorite memories were of watching her at night darning a big hole in my wool stocking. These female skills were considered so essential through late mid-century Holland (and in the U.K., as described in The history of handknitting, The V&A Museum), that I learned to knit, sew, embroider, and crochet during my first 3 years of school in Den Haag. My brother was given no such instruction.

I assure you that ChattyFeet’s socks will need no darning, but they will keep your feet warm, pretty, and smart. I encourage you, fair reader, to enter the contest by leaving a comment at the bottom of this post, using one of the two questions listed at the top as a prompt. Remember that the contest ends on August 22nd. And do visit the ChattyFeet website! It is so much fun.

Find more information about Regency underdrawers on this blog: Ladies Underdrawers in Regency Times