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Subversive Performances, Masculine Pleasures
the general body make one of their number unhappy by glancing meaningfully at a new
coat that he has got on and telling him that “it fits him too much” that it is “like a ready
made shirt, fits where it touches” and much more to the same disheartening effect. 52
Saturday nights and Sundays, for Wright, presented the one opportunity for the
display of more individual tastes without risk of censure, though his own preferences
appeared to lie with the functional grace of work dress. The contrast between
the two modes was significant. Thus
When the workmen, with newly washed hands and their shop jackets or slops rolled up
under their arms, stand in groups waiting for the ringing of the bell, it is a sight well
worth seeing, and one in which the working man is, all things considered, perhaps
seen at his best. He is in good humour with himself . . . in his working clothes, in which
he feels and moves at ease, and not infrequently looks a nobler fellow than when
“cleaned” . . . Some of the higher paid mechanics present a very different appearance
when cleaned up . . . working class swelldom breaks out for the short time in which it is
permitted to do so in all the butterfly brilliance of “fashionably” made clothes, with
splendid accessories in collars, scarves and cheap jewellery. But neither the will or the
means to “come the swell” are given to all men, and a favourite Saturday evening
costume consists of the clean moleskin or cord trousers that are to be worn at work during
the ensuing week, black coat and waistcoat, a cap of somewhat sporting character, and a
muffler more or less gaudy. 53
For Paterson, writing after the turn of the century, the ritual transformation from
work to pleasure retained its drama when he observed that
the programme of spare hours begins almost invariably with tea in the kitchen, a wash at
the tap in the yard, and the putting on of a collar and another coat. The exact order of the
preparation varies, but it is quite clear that the washing and dressing is not in honour of
the tea . . . but a tribute to the publicity of the street . . . Percy’s working clothes are old
and worn, bespattered with mud and oil; hence the efflorescence of bright ties and new
suits. 54
Surviving images of working-class groups, assembled for a Whitsun outing, or
even posing unawares on street corners, sporting bowlers and tight suits with a
jaunty pride, gain a further resonance from their juxtaposition with documentary
and literary evidence, which provide nuances that graphic or photographic
representations themselves can no longer convey. From simple visual comparisons
of middle-class and working-class clothing, the mechanic’s “Sunday best”
suggests only a clumsy emulation of bourgeois conservative respectability.
Contemporary attitudes reveal a more studied and critical negotiation of gendered
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