Daddy Reissues

A 20TH-CENTURY WOMAN, in despair, will shop. Take Sasha from Jean Rhys’s novel Good Morning, Midnight (1939) or Cléo from Agnès Varda’s film Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962): both try on hats in Paris. Miranda, a dissociative Oxford graduate and the central figure in Dinah Brooke’s 1971 novel Love Life of a Cheltenham Lady, tries on dresses in London. First, she eyes a white one with a low back, then a red frock with puffy sleeves. “While […] I’ve still got my waistline,” she thinks to herself, “I might as well.” The second dress reminds her of blood, a punctured womb, compelling her to faint in the dressing room. After she comes to, Miranda purchases the former, its color a sign of purity.