A family photograph of my great grandparents Esther and Patrick Bourke on their wedding day in 1930.
Material culture presents us with a gateway into the past. It highlights the significance of the ‘real’, through the discovery of past objects we can study the process of progress in humanity. “Because something is material, it must be material”, this has been a common attitude of critics when studying material culture. However, clothes are not just clothes; hair is not just cut in a random way; they tell us a story. Material cultures can become artifacts through which social organisation and progress could be determined, according to Marxist ideals. For more information on material culture see: http://0-www.sciencedirect.com.library.ucc.ie/science/article/pii/B9780080449104009718.
I have provided a photo of my great grandparents on their wedding day in the year 1930. Both in their early thirties, they lived in Co. Limerick. Esther worked as a house maid and her husband Patrick worked as a groundskeeper and gardener in a big house. As told by my grandmother, they lived very poor lives. I chose to focus on my great grandmothers chosen hairstyle and hat, although poor, she still managed to keep up with the ever growing fashion of the time; that of ‘the Bob’ and the Cloche hat, both very popular from the 1920’s onward. The development of fashion allowed for a new freedom of women; a disruption of space. No longer would they be shunned on the streets or thought of as prostitutes if seen without the presence of a man. Though these new styles were seen as slightly masculine and inappropriate, it gave women a new lease on life to take back the city in its entirety. Women also sped up the impacts of consumerism and capitalism in this new desire for fashion and material items. They progressed in the city that was increasingly becoming more modern. Women had a new role, not just that of a mother, housekeeper or wife but that of an independent, working woman. Click here for more information on fashions from the 1920s http://books.google.ie/books?hl=en&lr=&id=rj8HLFTv1QEC&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=flappers+style+in+the+1920s&ots=t0WFThnsfc&sig=m4jD2GufCgUCtKWVwGEx_jCOxPM&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=flappers%20style%20in%20the%201920s&f=false
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