the effect of the already somber hue. Mourning fashions were chronicled in Harper's Bazaar, with the sense that the dictates of fashion should override one's true feelings about the deceased as well as concern for one's own health:A deep veil is worn at the back of the bonnet, but not over the head or face like the widow's veil, which covers the entire person when down. This fashion is very much objected to by doctors, who think many diseases of the eye come by this means, and advise for common use thin nuns' veiling instead of crape, which sheds its pernicious dye into the sensitive nostrils, producing catarrhal disease as well as blindness and cataract of the eye. It is a thousand pities that fashion dictates the crape veil, but so it is. It is the very banner of woe, and no one has the courage to go without it. We can only suggest to mourners wearing it that they should pin a small veil of black tulle over the eyes and nose, and throw back the heavy crape as often as possible, for health's sake. (Harper's Bazaar, 1886, emphasis added)The origin of the increase in the popularity of mourning in the 19th century stem from two sources: the romanticism surrounding death in the literature of the period, and Queen Victoria's forty-year mourning for her late husband, Prince Albert (Chicago Historical Society, 1998). Gothic novels like Wuthering Heights and the works of Edgar Allen Poe harped on death's sentimental aspect, and the importance of the status quo made the loss of a member of society much more shocking and traumatic than today. Queen Victoria's mourning, which began in 1861, set a precedent for British and American widows, and associated mourning with virtue and piety, which had again become popular under her reign. The American Civil War, which followed hard upon Prince Alberts death, was the occasion for many women to put these principles and trends into practice.The veil is, after the traditional black color, perhaps the m...
