I fear this is the last place I can keep this to prevent it from wearing down any further. It has been some years since I first began wearing this bonnet, and now it serves no use to me. It has been torn down to a mere piece of cloth. Lizzie attached it to a note that says “Remember when you used to cover your hair with this? You worked so hard just to fit back in.” I remember how much it seemed that I needed to own it. All the other girls in town had one. With my hair disheveled from when I gave it to the Goblin men, I already stood out. I thought that maybe if I had the bonnet everyone else had, it would make it better. Lizzie never seemed to mind it, but I desired one more and more as the girls in town began wearing them. I begged for one, but it was true that they were too expensive. Lizzie offered to sew me one from hand, but I knew it wouldn’t be the same. The quality that the bonnet everyone else wore was one that anyone who placed their eyes on it would be able to see. I was tired of feeling outcasted, so I began to work. I worked for as much as people would give me until I could eventually trade up. Tireless work for weeks on end as the bonnets became increasingly more popular. When the time came to, I went to the market to make sure it was still there. I must have looked mad, running back and forth like a crazy person searching for it. I reached and pulled it from the pile of clothes that was forming on top of it and ran to purchase it. Placing this on my head, Lizzie knew that it had consumed me, and that this one thing should not have brought me as much joy as it did. But the other girls saw me as an equal.
What we see happening here is Laura’s experience with the high expectations for women in society. This attachment to luxury and wealth and the obsession with perception and acceptance from peers is something we still commonly see today. While in the Victorian age, the beauty standard was held to specific styles of clothing; the modern era sees the beauty standard through expensive jewelry or make up. This obsession with the concept of beauty is one that has been a byproduct of the patriarchy for generations. In this instance, Laura recalls her interaction with the goblin men that had impacted her in her past, and how she had given up parts of her hair to purchase the fruits that they had given her. Following this, Laura tells us about how this changed the perception of her in the views of the women around her. Laura is feeling outcast because her hair, and now with a certain type of bonnet becoming more popular she feels as if she can hit two birds with one stone. In the Victorian Age, following divorce and other separation from men, the societal view on women was altered, the cutting of the hair is a metaphor for taking away the purity of Laura and now the other women in her society are noticing this, and are creating judgmental views of her. As Laura places the remaining scrap of the bonnet with her sister’s note in her scrapbook, she realizes how unimportant the bonnet was to her as her sister never changed her view of her, and she still feels that love.
Historian, Armchair, and Armchair Historian. “Threads of History.” 19th, 15 July 2018, 19thcenturywellington.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/threads-of-history/.