Masking Status: Costume and Ego Veiling in Literature. A Comparative Study in Literary Textures. The Jewish Identity’s New Clothes. American-Jewish Clothing Habits in Fiction.

                                                                                                          Ph.D. Cristina Deutsch

     In the last two decades, one can notice easily a solid relation developed between comparative literature in general and fashion studies. But this connection, seen at a more theoretical level, isn’t, in fact, such an innovative peculiarity as we may think. Roland Barthes was the first to elaborate a “fashion theory” seen as a social discourse in his book, published in 1967, The Fashion System. Of course, Barthes isn’t interested in fashion as such, but he focuses his attention on the history of semiology, creating a structural analysis of the descriptive language used in fashion magazines. But, what seems to be very important for the future development of “fashion theory”,  is that Barthes creates a delineation between what we can call “visual fashion” and the “descriptive fashion”, namely the one that relates the term fashion to the text itself, no matter if literary or not: “on the level of its syntagm, which is that of reading, written fashion seems to refer to an organized body of signifieds, in short, to a strongly institutionalized, if not even naturalized world... From the syntagm to the system, the signifieds of fashion thus seem the object of a magic trick, whose secret we must now discover. In all signifying structures, the system is an ordered reservoir of signs and thereby implies the mobilization of a certain tense: the system is a memory; to pass from the system to the syntagm is, we may say, to actualize a memory.”1 According to this meaning, the relation between literary text and fashion is different from the relation between real life and “real” fashion, in the same way that fictional characters are, of course, not real persons, this last relation being interesting anyway when we have to deal, let’s say, with an anthropological type of link with literature.
     On the other hand, from a comparatist perspective, we are always interested in research fields related to gender studies, multiculturalism, stereotypes applied, for example, in Jewish or Afro-American Studies. In this direction, we can use a very clear assertion of a researcher like Patrizia Calefato who, in her study about “Fashion Theory”, said that “fashion, or better said fashions – in plural – constitute the devices that organize, in time and space, the signs of the re-dressed body, almost as if they would forge the language, and, in the same time, they represent the possibility of melting the reference codes , building hybrids between analogical sings namely to the linguistical and cultural hybrids within which there is build the idea of identity itself.”2
    In fact, talking about “fashion” doesn’t mean “talking about clothes”, there is always a connection between clothes as such and bodies on which they are displayed and also between garments (as an expression of inner-self or as assertion of belonging to a certain group) and the outer world, what we generally designate as “society’. For this reason, the famous saying that “fashion is a visible language with meanings that change over time and within cultures”3, applies best in fiction viewed in the perspective of comparative literature.
    But this could prove to be a very broad field of study, including a lot of other sub-domains and research directions, form the minorities’ literature to gender and Post-colonial Studies a.s.o.  Generally speaking, we can first talk about two main levels on which the discussion could be grounded: one descriptive and the other one symbolic. In the first category, at the descriptive level, we can include almost everything that we are able to find, as far as the characteristic is concerned, in universal literature:  fictional characters aren’t, at least from this point of view, different from real human beings; they are all dressed in one way or another.  Or else, as Patrizia Calefato asserts, “the dressed body is the cultural physical territory where the performance is made visible and sensitive to our external identity: inside this, cultural composite text and tissue find their way of expressing individual and social traits that draw on general elements like, for example, taste, ethnicity, sexuality, transgression...”4 But, turning back to the first issue in this discussion, the descriptive one, we’ll notice that clothing as such could play the part of giving a “reality effect” at a visual level of a certain fiction piece or another. And we could also notice that this, in general, seems to work very well with historical fiction and with geographically well-set narrations.
     As a transitional movement, without going to the symbolic level, we’ll have also clothing as part of a system of signs, in a social comprehension. This doesn’t mean that we are necessarily dealing with a “key” of a piece of fiction that can be translated in fundamental meanings only because of the presence of certain clothing items, but there are, definitely, certain literary texts that deliberately use clothing as “signs” related to certain characters, in order to better sketch the imaginary world they populate. Therefore, we are able to arrive at the second level, the symbolic one, that includes the ambivalent nature of fabric – mask and represents the key to another type of textual comprehension. 
     At the first level mentioned, “Text” and “Fabric” go in the same direction, in the same time. The texture enriches (or, on the contrary, depletes) a certain character (no matter if male or female), it builds him or her up together with the setting and also establishes the relationships with other characters. At the symbolic level ‘Text” and “Texture” are layered, they accumulate one upon another, giving potential interpretative powers to the reader. 
     We can say that what we have called “descriptive level” is particularly more “attractive” and more playful to the eye, giving us the possibility of depicting a certain character dressed in a certain determinate manner. We have in here, plainly, what we generally denominate as “fashion”, in a quasi-realistic manner, even if in this case we are dealing with fictional characters. And, as a consequence, we can find, as it happens in “real life”, also “top10’s” lists of “the best dressed characters” of all time, for example. First place goes, according to Judy Berman 5, to Lily Bart, Edith Wharton’s character from The House of Myrth: “Her vulgar cares were at an end. She would be able to arrange her life as she pleased, to soar into that empyrean of security where creditors cannot penetrate. She would have smarter gowns than Judy Tenor, and far, far more jewels than Bertha Dorset. She would be free forever from the shifts, the expedients, the humiliation of the relatively poor. Instead of having to flatter, she would be flattered; instead of being grateful, she would receive thanks.”6 In this lists, inspired by the social-glamour schemes of tabloids - we’ll also find, of course, male and female characters of all types, in the same way as it happens in “real life”: Dorian Gray, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – “the original androgynous fashion icon”, Scarlet O’Hara with her “new green flowered muslin dress”, Jay Gatsby, Madame Bovary, Hemingway’s Brett form The Sun Also Rises a.s.o. And it is obvious that fashion, gossip and visual appeal to the reader aren’t perceivable only in historical fiction, not even only in realistic fiction, but in almost any literary work that needs a character, a fictional body that has to be dressed, covered and, sometimes, uncovered.  Another type of “top ten” focuses, for example, on “haunting items in literature” and we may deal in here with Gogol’s overcoat which becomes for the main character, Akaky Akakievitch, a mesmerizing obsession till his death. Another outstanding example at hand is Miss Havisham’s wedding dress, a fashion element used by Dickens in order to reinforce the ghostly traits of his character in Great Expectations. Among other examples we can include Gatsby’s shirts, Desdemona’s handkerchief or the fairy-tale’s Invisibility Cloak. These are only a few examples, but the list can go on and on without any problem and without being forced to choose a certain type of fiction or a determinate literature.
     But, we must not forget that, besides these aspects, there’s also a transitional passage to what we previously called “the symbolic level” which goes deep inside into the structure of what constitutes the “skeleton” of a literary character. So, as Clair Hughes says in Dressed in Fiction, “first of all, references to dress for both reader and writer contribute to the «reality effect»: they lend tangibility and visibility to character and context. From a sociological and historical viewpoint, it is worth our while to look closely at descriptions of dress in a novel, because dress is a visible aspect of history, a material index of social, moral and historical change which help us understand and imagine historical difference: clothes are, as John Harvey says in his study of male dress, «values made visible»... Dress is also a language, part of a social system of signs: white clothes may denote purity and virginity, for example; black may be used to represent formality, drama or death. But dress within a novel does not simply follow widely accepted social codes; it can also operate as the author’s personal sign - system, conscious and unconscious.”7
     It is absolutely obvious, therefore, that there is a deep and intricate relationship between text and texture also in minorities’ literature, linked not only to the ethnicity element, but also to an entire sub-section of comparatism, that of Stereotypical Studies. In this context, Jewish-American literature may give a sparkling example that covers all the hues of this direction. Clothing is a key component, both in real life, reflecting sociological related aspects, and in literature; in both of them we must see the delineation between how the American Jew dresses himself  “for real”, how the American Jew would like to dress, and how he is dressed by the others.  
     We easily notice that the immigrant, for example, in real life as well as reflected in literature – no matter if Jewish or member of other American minority group - has been forced, in order to protect his own individuality, to adapt himself, on one side, to the public, social dimension and, on the other, to the structure of a personal, private universe. As far as other minorities are concerned, this private component has been fundamental (both as denial and attempt of canceling the dominant social component). In what the Jewish minority is regarded, the slight difference is that there will always be a balance between the two levels: there is a desire – even if, as we already know, the Jewish immigrant we’ll have a lot of difficulties - of assimilating the values of this new society at a general level and on  a personal scale (this implying especially family relationships and life inside a personal group), being more reserved mainly in what concerns marriage, children’ education, feasts and everything that has to do with the religious sphere, including dressing codes: “Immigrants took the first steps toward becoming American when they put on ready-made American clothes. Working in garment factories and therefore familiar with the latest fashions, which changed more dramatically in ladies’ than in men’s wear, young women were often the first to outfit themselves in American styles and influenced the entire household’s clothing purchases. But dressing well did not mean spending a fortune. Jewish women become adept shoppers and learned how to put together a fancy outfit at little expense. As immigrants experienced upward social mobility, a wife’s clothing and jewelry signified a family’s success.”8   
     As far as the Jewish American community is concerned, it is already obvious that we’ll have to deal with a lot of costume issues, from various perspectives. There are two main directions that apparently   are contrasting: conserving the tradition on one side and, on the other, the idea of assimilation. The two extremes (not always “extremes” in a contrasting meaning, but also reflected together in the same group/person/character) will, have, of course, a variety of tones.
     For example, a contemporary writer as Philip Roth, already a controversial figure among his own community of American Jewish writers, will analyze, in one of his best known short stories, Eli The Fanatic, exactly this conflict that is often simmering   between members of the same race and religion, but in a peculiar manner: referring to the way of dressing as an opportunity of Ego assertion. For Roth, the fear of assuming your own ethnical identity becomes a spiritual illness. Therefore, we’ll notice an antithesis manifested mainly, on literary ground, in relation with the issue of characters’ clothing descriptions, between the American Jewish writers at the beginning of the XX th century (as, for example, it happens with Anzia Yezierska and Isaac Bashevis Singer) and a quite postmodern writer as Philip Roth. He, paradoxically, inclines more towards the “American” label than to the “Jewish” one.  In fact, it comes without saying, knowing his works, that he can’t be a promoter of traditionalism but, seeing the problem from a different perspective than his predecessors, the genuine desire of assimilation manifested in the beginning will become, deep inside the characters’ in Eli The Fanatic, a strange lack of understanding not only of the coreligionists that come from a “backward” world that “ruins their image”, in some sort of rage against these intruders that put the “the assimilated” in an embarrassing posture  in front of their non-Jews neighbors, recalling, in fact, through the way of clothing, in the external aspect, their own roots. The act of depicting the conflict between the assimilated, Americanized Jews, and the Orthodox Jews, old fashioned is illustrated by an intermediary: Tzuref, “the man in black clothes”, who seems more a recall of Singer’s “exotic” Polish extracted characters. “Like food in Goodbye, Columbus, clothing comes in Eli The Fanatic «to bear the meaning of Jewish identity», When Eli pleads with Tzuref to have the «gentleman in the black hat...dress in a manner appropriate to the time and place» of this «progressive suburban community» (189), Tzuref’s response - «The suit the gentleman wears is all he’s got» (190) – implies not just the man’s economic straits as a displaced person but also that his sole identity is bound up in and made meaningful by the significations of this nineteenth century garb. To change his clothes is to change the man.”9
     When Eli, the main character of this short story, will become “himself”, regaining his own ethnical identity, taking on, in a symbolical way, Tzuref’s clothes, the community won’t be able to understand him, people around him will consider that he has a nervous breakdown; he will be grabbed and closed in a mental health institute. But Eli has to learn this lesson; the use of Hassidic clothing instead of American clothing means going against the mainstream, against a force that works with false tolerance instead of using manifest force. As we have already said, we surely don’t have in here Singer’s Jews who are, mainly, historical shaped characters, even if modified and fictionalized, but who, anyway, are Jews that act as such in an hostile environment, but a space where a Jew is supposed to act and to be dressed like a Jew, where the costume is a way of identification. We are dealing, in Roth, with a Jew supposed, of course, to act as a Jew, but in a soft manner, not against de mainstream. Identification through clothing is not necessary and, much more, this is not desired.  The appearance of a person is amended not by the mainstream, as it happens in Singer or, just for giving another example, in Malamud’s The Fixer, but by the minority which assumes the appearance and   the mental mechanism of the mainstream. It is not very clear if we are dealing in here with the mask theme; because the mask, as a distinctive sign, is rejected; so it is the mask as a device used with the purpose of self veiling. Clothing is manipulated as a device of supposed mirroring in the eyes of the mainstream: Roth’s Jewish characters dress not only like the majority, but they become more “correct” than the majority, reflecting a desire of being seen in a certain way.  Regarding Eli’s gesture of changing his clothes, we can find in here  certain symbolic similarities with the Bauta Venetian Mask, used by the persons who didn’t want to be recognized by others.10 By making use of this impersonation device, Eli will become a different person, with an identity defined by this separation of the mainstream. The use of black clothing as such, from the Jewish point of view, has, of course, a relation with tradition and sobriety, but also with something more special and precious: “The use of black clothing on Sabbaths and holy days traces back to a time when black die was rare and expensive, so black was reserved for formal occasions. The Sabbath is a time for honoring God by dressing nicely, so people wore their best black coats on the Sabbath.”11
     Changing his clothes with Other’s garments means not only impersonating “The Fanatic” (because Eli, in fact, becomes a fanatic only in what concerns the desire of redefining himself), but means also giving the Other the possibility of turning “normal”; he takes, in fact, not only the spiritual substance necessary to reconstruct his own Ego, but also the texture, the mere material required for creating a new link. Therefore, masking doesn’t mean anymore veiling and concealment, but this apparent mask will become a path, and clothing will evolve, in this complicated way, a mean of communication: “And sure enough, his apparition appeared around the bend: in a brown hat a little too far down his head, a green suit too far back on his shoulders, an unbuttoned-down shirt, a tie knotted so as to leave a two-inch tail, trousers that cascaded onto his shoes – he was shorter than that black hat had made him seen. And moving the clothes was that walk that was not a walk, the tiny-stepped shlumpy gait. He came around the bend, and for all his strangeness – it clung to his whiskers, signaled itself in his locomotion – he looked as if he belonged. Eccentric, maybe, but he belonged. He made no moan, nor did he invite Eli with wide-flung arms, But he did stop when he saw him. He stopped and put a hand to his hat. When he felt for its top, his hand went up too high. Then it found the level and fiddled with the brim. The fingers fiddled, fumbled, and when they finally made their greeting, they traveled down the fellow’s face and in an instant seemed to have touched each one of his features. They dabbed the eyes, ran the length of the nose, swept over the hairy lip, until they found their home in the hair that hid a little of his collar.  To Eli the fingers said, I have a face, I have a face at least. Then his hand it was like a pointer – and the eyes asked a question as tides of water shifted over them. The face is all right, I can keep it. Such a look was in those eyes that Eli was still seeing them when he turned his head away. 12     
     But this complex way, between religious tradition and assimilation, of seeing the relationship between body and symbolic garment, changes if we choose to refer to another type of American Jewish fiction. In Anzia Yezierska’s prose we’ll deal with another type of contrast between the Old World and the New World, translated again in the metaphor of clothing, underlining, first of all, another aspect, that of clothing having a major part exactly in the process of Jews’ Americanization, fashion as such working, in the end, for defining an ethnical identity. “Fervently adopting American «modernist» clothing as a way to negotiate the politics of hyphenation and to cleanse the derogatory image of «greenhorn» associated with their «inferior» Old World styles, Jewish immigrants specifically promoted their own Americanization, through agencies including synagogues, Jewish settlement houses, and Jewish men’s and women’s clubs.”13 It would be interesting to notice that in her most important novel, Salome of the Tenements, Yezierska fills large portions of her story not with the characters’ physical description, but with an accurate presentation of their way of dressing.  It is obvious that in this immigrant movement of Americanization, the changes in the manner of dressing played a very important part. And in this context we can recall Abraham Cahan’s famous character David Levinsky who considered of first importance the modification of the exterior aspect through the garments he put on, a hat and a tie making seem “more American”, in other words making him “one of the crowd”, nor a stranger anymore, We are for sure dealing in here with a pre-Rothian vision upon the fictional characters’ perception of fashion, not only from the historical viewpoint but, more important, from a conceptual perspective, because Yezierska and Cahan’s heroes  could be seen as fathers’ of Roth’s characters, seeing that Salome is a novel  published in 1923, white Roth’s Eli, the Fanatic in 1959. These characters assert, through something that could be considered a little superficial and without substance, why for the Jewish immigrant – as well as for the other immigrants arrived on American land, no matter of their origin - “being American” means “being dressed like the Americans”, this becoming, in a practical way, a manner of “changing conscience”, of giving up the Old World for another kind of life in a New World (or, on the contrary, in the case of Jewish traditionalists, the “fanatics”, the rejection of this adaptation and the creation of a parallel world, trying to preserve the old-fashioned way of life). The problems that Yezierska tries to bring in the foreground may seem minor issues and the way in which she presents them, melodramatic, but it is, in fact, very challenging that she tries to see things from another perspective than her contemporary American Jewish writers.
     Identity is publicly asserted though clothing in an autobiographical novel like, for example, Red Ribbon on a White Horse: My Story, published in 1950; touching the same subjects as in Salome, where she was able to create that model of the immigrant woman artist, Sonya, who, like Yezierska herself, tried to impose her own schemes and patterns upon the surrounding world, giving up outside models.  Salome is the one who is narrating this double growing up process of Sonya, both as a Jewish immigrant and as an artist, all this being made through the use of the metaphor of clothes, no matter if we are dealing with creating, using, transforming garments, or with dressing herself or the others.  Yezierska, in her autobiography, was in fact asking herself, underlining the importance of this subject: “Why had I never dressed like other women? It wasn’t just a matter of being poor. The poorest shopgirl with her mind on style managed to look as smart as other shopgirls. I never could or would else wore, Even now when I no longer had to search through bargain basements, now that I had money enough to shop at the best stores, perversity made me cling to my pushcart clothes.”15
     But what Yezierska does, in fact, in her novels, is to “put new clothes” on the American Dream’s body: yes, it is also true that she introduces the reader into “ghetto’s experience”, but she also universalizes this world with the purpose that others, coming from a completely different background, are able to assume the problems of this environment as an experience of the immigrant in general, and more, as an experience that could be lived by any young person, no matter if man or woman.
     For this reason, the relationship between clothing and everyday life, between personal experience and communitarian development is of first importance: “In much of Yezierska’s fiction, clothing and money together function to present the idea of investment as opposed to speculation. Speculation involves a wager, and even when its gains are great, they do not reflect or embody what was invested: labor or material, for instance. Investment, on the other hand, suggests the notion of a vested interest, of measurable input into the system, especially in the form of money, but also, symbolically in the form of identity in the case of Yezierska’s work. Yezierska’s novels present an idealized economy in which her protagonists invest in the American future with tangible and intangible labor and “capital” from the European past. Physical labor, cloth and clothing organized around communal ideals from Russia constitute the wealth that is invested in a new life in urban America.”16 Putting new clothes on the American Dream means to create, it is an artistic assertion supposed to lead to success, clothing is no longer only a way of defining one’s Ego, but also a way of gaining money, therefore of becoming a positive product of the American Dream.
     Another American Jewish writer that touches the relation between identity and clothing is Isaac Bashevis Singer, but in here we won’t refer to his traditional manner of seeing the things, to clothing as a way of preserving tradition, or, on the contrary, to personal rebellion reflected in dressing, but to another peculiarity: clothing as a transgender device, as it can be seen, for example, in a very well known short story, Yentl the Yeshiva Boy : “fashionable clothes”, asserts Diana Crane in her book dedicated to fashion related to class, gender and identity, “are used to make statements  about social class and social identity, but their principal messages are about the ways in which women and men perceive their gender roles or are expected to perceive them... A basic premise of the dominant ideology concerning women was the belief in fixed gender identities and in the existence of major differences between men and women.  For women in the nineteenth century, fashionable clothing had elements of social control, since it exemplified the dominant and very restrictive conception of women’s roles.17 Yentl, Singer’s character, is a young Jewish girl that challenges tradition not only by being interested too much in theology, but also by assuming a role that was completely prohibited for a female, that of a Yeshiva boy, a disciple for the study of Talmud. A rabbi’s daughter, when her father dies, she cuts her hair and dresses like a man in order to pursue her dreams: that of continuing her studies. She doesn’t only change her clothes with masculine ones, but she also assumes a different identity: that of “Anshel”, her deceased brother. Yent will become close to Avigdor, another student and, for inflict vengeance for his rejection, Anshel-Yent will marry Hadass. In Singer’s short story, Anshel-Yentl’s identity isn’t revealed not even in the end, without giving a solution to this reversed, abnormal situation. Recalling also another Singer’s short stories that are dealing with the issue of androgynous identity, like Zeitl and Rikel, Androgynous, Two and Disguised, Warren Hoffmann was noticing that “in these stories, it is not simply that the characters self-identify with a different gender but that this move enable homosexual relationship to develop.”17 Yentl is a Jewish character who challenges the traditional boundaries not only in clothing, in a prohibited manner, but also by assuming the social status of these clothes in all their effects. It is an impenetrable mask, a dense texture that completely transforms one character into another. Costume as texture in this case should be transparent, giving the possibility of “seeing” the character’s inner self, as in fact it happens in the homonymous movie with Barbra Streisand as Yentl. In Singer’s story, garments are used as a device not only for achieving the characters’ goal, but also for making come back to life, symbolically, a deceased person. Yentl dressed as a man becomes Anshel, not any man without identity, and, disguising herself as a man, she ends by becoming one. Stephen Whitfield, discussing Yentl, noticed that “Singer invited questions about what is normal and what is natural; his tale provokes conjecture on what is timeless and assumed about the social conventions that are associated with gender... The presence of Yentl thus implicitly defies the binarism that is integral to Judaism, that divides sacred from profane, kosher from unfit, the Sabbath from the rest of the week, and – ineluctably – Jew from Gentile. Yentl is ensnared in the mystery of what a category is and what function it serves, and, as Anshel, she challenges the viability of the distinctions upon which particular cultures – if not culture itself – are founded.”18
     With Singer’s characters we are able to underline exactly the powerful influence that clothes have on the wearer’s psychological transformations. Of course, there is also a symbolic importance of garments’ meaning and also the corporal experience of the character wearing them. In this case, as well in the other discussed till now, it is obvious that clothes – both as image and as material texture of fiction – have a deep and very well constructed line of consequences both from the psychological and from the behavioral point of view. But, in all three cases, that of Roth’s characters, that of Yezierska and that of Bashevis Singer, putting on certain clothes was an assumed act, it was a personal choice with various implications. 
     But, for having a complete picture of the links between Jews and fashion, we should refer also to another two aspects, besides that one which takes a glance of how fictional Jews wants to dress themselves: that concerning how Jews really have been dressing themselves (and how this fact was mirrored in literature) and how the Jews were dressed by the others. What happens when the situation becomes the opposite? When the Jew, as a character, doesn’t choose his own clothes, but he is dressed up by the others? 
     Clothing as fashion and clothing as a literary device are, therefore, related to one another: the bodies to be dressed and undressed remain an auctorial choice, no matter if we are talking about immigrants, Jews, Americans, anyone has a symbolical “personal wardrobe”  which is able to gain major importance in the interpretation of its owner. 

     

NOTES
1.	Roland Barthes, The Fashion System. Translated by Matthew Ward and Richard Howard. University of California Press, London, 1990, p. 209.
2.	Patrizia Calefato, “Fashion Theory” in Dizionario degli Studi Culturali. A cura di Roberta Coglitore e Federica Mazzara. Coord. Michele Cometa. Meltemi Editore, Roma, 2004, p. 199.
3.	Cynthia Kuhn and Cindy Carlson, Styling Texts: Dress and fashion in Literature. Cambria Press, U.S.A., 2007, p. XIII.
4.	Patrizia Calefato, op. cit., p. 199.
5.	Judy Berman, “Literature’s 10 Best-Dressed Characters”, Flavorwire. Cultural News and Critique, 31 dec., 2010.
6.	Edith Wharton, The House of Myrth. Penguin Books, England, 2000, p. 77.
7.	Clair Hughes, Dressed in Fiction. Berg, New York, 2005, p. 2-3.
8.	Paula E. Hyman, “Eastern European Immigrants in the United States” in Jewish Women. A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 march 2009. Jewish Women’s Archive
9.	Debra B. Shostak, Philip Roth – Countertexts, Counterlives. The University of South Carolina Press, 2004, p. 120.
10.	“The Bauta mask is square and pointed at the bottom, elongating the face and adding mystery to the person wearing it. Worn with a cape and a tri-cornered black hat, this mask is favored by people who don’t want to be recognized at all through their features. This mask can be titled upwards to allow the wearer to talk, eat and drink without having to remove the mask. In the 18th century, this mask had become a society disguise that was actually regulated by the Venetian government. Certain political decision-masking events required that the participants wear the Bauta masks, and act anonymously as peers. Only Venetian citizens were allowed to use the Bauta and thus non-citizens were easily spotted.”(from “Type of Venetian Masks and Their Meanings”, www. 1001venetianmasks.com).
11.	“Traditional Clothing of the Hasidic and Hawaiian Cultures”, 2012.
12.	Eli, the Fanatic in Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories. Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1959, p. 282-283.
13.	Christopher N. Okonkwo, “Of Repression, Assertion, and the Speakerly Dress: Anzia Yezierska’s Salome of the Tenements in “Melus”, march 22, 2000.
14.	 Anzia Yezierska, Red Ribbon on a White Horse: My Story, Persea Books, 2004, p. 56.
15.	 Babak Elahi, “The Finacial and Sartorial Fictions of Anzia Yezierska”, Ch. 6, in The Fabric of American Literary realism. Readymade Clothing, Mobility and Assimilation. U.S.A., Mc. Farland &Company Inc., Publishers, 2009, p. 139.
16.	 Diana Crane, Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender and Identity in Clothing. University of Chicago Press, 2000, p. 16.
17.	Warren Hoffmann, The Passing Game: Queering Jewsih American Culture. Syracuse University Press, New York, 2009, p. 128.
18.	Stephen J. Whitfield,  “Yentl” in Jewish Social Studies, New Series, vol. 5, no. ½, American Jewish History and Culture in the Twentieth Century. Autumn, 1998 – Winter, 1999, Published by Indiana University Press, p. 170.