‘Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves’: Ambivalence towards Fashion in Anne of Green Gables

[para. 1]: “The September 1903 cover of The Delineator depicts two ‘bosom friends’ who look strikingly like Anne and Diana. It is dusk and the pair has spent the day together harvesting the final fruits of summer – ‘Blackberries,’ as the title of the colour illustration by Emilie Benson Knipe specifies. The mood is romantic and wistful, appropriate for an early fall issue of the magazine reminding its readers of the fading freedoms of the season. ‘Diana,’ whose dark brown locks are swept up into a stylish braid, is the more conventionally elegant of the two. Her muslin dress, which includes a high Edwardian collar, a pearl necklace, bishop sleeves, and a scarf dubbed a ‘Vandyke bertha,’ is at the height of fashion. Her gaze is frank and direct.”