59 pages • 1 hour read
Jennifer RyanThe Wedding Dress Sewing Circle: A Novel
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Jennifer Ryan
Jennifer Ryan is a British historical fiction author based in the United States; she has written several novels, including The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir, The Spies of Shilling Lane, and The Kitchen Front. She was a book editor before moving to the United States and beginning her work as a writer.
Ryan’s novels are inspired by her grandmother’s stories about living through the war in Britain. She is fascinated by the bravery and hedonism of young women during the Blitz (the bombing of London), evident in her work through the stories of women like Grace, who decides to let loose at a military party and live vibrantly. In addition to the story of women coping with clothing shortages in The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle, The Spies of Shilling Lane focuses on one woman’s mission to discover what happened to her daughter, The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir tells the story of women who take on men’s work after their choir is dismissed during the war, and The Kitchen Front tells the story of women participating in a BBC-sponsored cooking competition during the war. Ryan’s most recent novel, The Underground Library, follows three women fighting to save their library from the bombings in London. Community is also an essential element of Ryan’s novels. Each of her novels follows a group of women who band together in the face of wartime difficulties.
Historical Context: World War II–Era Rationing in Great Britain
The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle takes place in 1942 during World War II in England. The UK and France declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939 after Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Although the primary bombings of the Blitz, Germany’s bombing campaign on London, took place from 1940 to 1941, bombings like that of Cressida’s neighborhood did occur after 1941. Hitler ordered the Blitz to break the morale of British citizens so they would pressure their government to surrender, but as The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle illustrates, Britain’s citizens instead banded together and created innovative ways to survive, maintain morale, and defend cultural heritage sites.
As a result of increasing military needs for fabric, metal, elastic, and other materials—a need worsened by German U-boat attacks on ships carrying commercial goods—Britain established clothing rations in 1941. The purpose of clothes rationing was to limit civilian clothing production and consumption to safeguard raw materials for military purposes and free up factories and workers for war production. The government distributed clothing coupons alongside food ration coupons, and citizens could only buy what their coupons allowed. Clothing rations also applied to buying raw fabrics and other materials. As The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle demonstrates, rations created a situation where innovation and creativity flourished; people (primarily women, who often managed household clothing and food) had to “Make Do and Mend” to make their clothing last longer. People shared tips and tricks for making certain fabrics last longer, and people became more creative with their clothing styles so they could make clothing with less fabric. Showy clothing became unfashionable, but women were still encouraged to maintain their appearance since the government feared a lack of interest in personal appearance would lead to low morale. The government developed and released “Utility” clothes in 1942 to create quality-controlled, affordable clothing for all.
The women of The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle all struggle under the clothing rations. Families with small children struggled to clothe their children with just the coupons they were given, so women like Grace sometimes gave away their own clothing coupons. With restrictions on stockings, women like Lottie came up with creative solutions, like using gravy to paint their legs to look like they were wearing stockings. As for wedding dresses, women did indeed share their own wedding dresses to give other women the opportunity to wear white gowns on their wedding days. The government restricted the purchase of wedding gowns during the war, but like the women of the novel, British women found ways to maintain their traditions and morale during difficult times.
