While dress is but one way of entering into a text, and a small point of entry at that, analysis of dress in Richardson's novels provides us with insights into the nature of novel writing in eighteenth-century England; into the nature of Richardson's novelistic project of constructing a legible domestic feminine body whose signification remains stable; and into the paradox that Richardson's ideal, sensible (as possessed of sensibility) female body is ultimately coded as male.  It also calls into question the whole construct of the 'domestic woman' and what this construct means in terms of bourgeois ideology:  Is the ideal domestic woman merely a man in drag?

Introduction
PART I: THE BODY AND DRESS OF THOUGHT
Dress and the Discourses of the Mind
Dress in Eighteenth-Century Life and Literature
PART II: DRESSING FOR SUCCESS WITH PAMELA
Ladies, Gentlemen, and Servants: Virtue and the Domestic Ideal
'So Neat, So Clean, So Pretty!':  Dressing Up Virtue
Quaker, Rustic, and Fool: Masquerading with Mrs. B.
PART III: WINDOWSHOPPING THE ESSENTIAL SELF WITH CLARISSA
Virtuous Stays and Sexual Hoops: The Social Self
'Of Her Own Invention': Revealing the Self
'Where . . . Art is Disguised': Concealing the Self
PART IV: REFASHIONING THE WORLD WITH SIR CHARLES GRANDISON
'A Conformist to Fashion': Dressing for Duty
'A Mighty Glitter': Seeing through the Veil
'Dressing in Colours': Changing the Guard
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index

KATHLEEN M. OLIVER is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Central Florida, USA, where she specializes in British Literature of the long eighteenth century. Previous and forthcoming publications include essays on Daniel Defoe, Sarah Fielding, Samuel Richardson and Frances Sheridan.