Ellen G. White and Her Critics

An Indictment of Dress in 1862

Another reformer, Ellen Beard Harman, said this, concerning women’s dress, in a lecture in 1862: EGWC 139.5

“Viewed in any aspect, the common style of dress for women is one of the greatest barbarisms ever known, especially considering the age in which we live. Only think of the women of the nineteenth century wearing apparel incompatible with the laws of their being—with health, comfort, and convenience, protection and neatness, disproportioned to the body, awkward and burdensome! What are we, indeed, that we should be rigged off like a ship of war?—encased in iron, wood, whalebone, and steel; encoiled in cording, ropes, and sails; and freighted with a useless cargo of dry goods? Was there a mistake made in our construction, that we must go to the mines of the earth or the trees of the forest for material to gird us round about? A mistake was it, that we must rob the whale of his bones, and place them perpendicularly when nature has placed our own bones horizontally, and thus hinder their motion and use? If so, then have we reason to pity the poor men who, like us, were unfortunate in their construction, and are without these mitigating helps.”—Dress Reform: Its Physiological and Moral Bearings, p. 26. (Italics hers.) EGWC 139.6

Of the dress of those times, the crinolines and hoop skirts, a twentieth-century writer, looking back over the period, observes: EGWC 140.1

“It seems almost incredible that women of judgment and taste could ever have adopted this monstrosity of fashion.”—ELISABETH MCCLELLAN, Historic Dress in America, 1800-1870, p. 263. EGWC 140.2

A noted twentieth-century woman preacher, Dr. A. Maude Royden, reminiscing on the strange customs of the past, says this of the hoop skirts worn in the days of her mother: EGWC 140.3

“My own mother, who is in most things a great admirer of all that is old-fashioned, told me she considered crinolines the most absolutely indecent garments ever invented for feminine wear. Yet she herself and every respectable woman wore these indecent crinolines, and though, like herself, others may have deplored this vagary of fashion, yet they obeyed it, and would have looked exceedingly odd had they not done so.”—Ladies’ Home Journal, March, 1924, p. 31. EGWC 140.4

A minister writing in the 1860’s offers this comment on the current styles: EGWC 140.5

“The objections to the common style of dress are numerous, among which the following are a few: 1. The feet and limbs of the females are imperfectly clad, having generally only thin stockings and shoes to protect them. 2. The modern hoop skirt throws the clothes far away from the limbs and then exposes them still more. 3. Hence the feet and limbs often become chilly and cold. This prevents a proper circulation of blood in those parts.”—D. M. CANRIGHT in The Review and Herald, June 18, 1867, p. 9. EGWC 140.6

Note the name of this writer. Canright is the critic from whose 1919 book against Mrs. White the charges in this chapter have been quoted! EGWC 140.7

It was inevitable that such folly in fashion should produce a reaction, an indictment of the styles of the day and an endeavor to reform them. About 1850 we see such reform endeavors beginning to take definite shape. These reforms sought to deal effectively with the three defects of the current styles: (1) Remedy the unhealthfulness by lighter weight garments suspended from the shoulders and fitting more closely to the limbs; (2) remedy the inconvenience of them by making them shorter, and removing the hoops and trailing length; (3) and by the foregoing changes, make them also modest. EGWC 141.1