The Looming Empire

This final chapter considers women’s engagement with the industrialisation of the global textile industry, mostly focusing on late-Victorian writers. The women’s narrations of inferior British textiles found for sale in Eastern markets demonstrate a growing cognitive dissonance between their explicit support of the growth of the British capitalist empire and their implicit disdain for the primary means by which the empire facilitated that growth. The comparisons between the unattractive and flimsy materials produced in Britain and the superior fabrics produced in Egypt, Persia, Japan, and China prompt the women to contemplate the relationship between the decline of traditional craftsmanship, class identity, and cultural heritage in Great Britain. Similar to the women’s reactions to industrially-produced copies of traditional Eastern crafts in the previous chapter, the women exhibit a conflict of values arising from a view of traditionally woven materials as signifiers of cultural authenticity and artisanal excellence in direct contrast to the stadial notion that industrial societies represent the peak of civilisation.