On Clothing
I haven’t read Thoreau since I was 15, but after picking up Walden, I can understand his appeal. The call to return to simplicity, to cast off society in order to live authentically, is an appeal to anyone who can romanticize about how earlier times were simpler, more pure, and so forth. It’s the same appeal that made American Beauty popular.
While I’m not willing to judge Thoreau’s opinions yet, having not read the entirety of the book, I will say that his thought can be harnessed for good, although I have some fundamental disagreements with his opinions.
When writing on clothing, he makes some good remarks about superficialty and disordered priorities. I particularly like his insight that we are more inclined to hobble into a room with a broken leg than to walk into a room with a broken pair of pants, that is, a pair of pants with a patch. He’s right that we don’t consider doing the latter, and it’s because we are prideful. He’s also correct that we should live authentically and change our inner man rather than our outer garments first. Finally, I think he’s right overall in that we should realize what is most important and try to live simply.
Yet I think he’s wrong in that his vision is limited. He speaks of clothing as a means of modesty and of maintaining heat. What he fails to acknowledge is the most human element of clothing, its relationship to creation. Clothing is a means of expression, and by designing new fashions and so forth, we are engaging in acts of creation. Aside from some post-modern styles, clothing has been an attempt to emphasize that which is beautiful in man. This search for beauty is an inherent need in humanity that is expressed in ways far beyond clothing. His view lacks a sacramental vision, a notion that matter matters.
He also fails to emphasize that changing the outer garment first can sometimes be an aid to changing the inner garment.
There is also a practical side to the king dressing differently from the blacksmith, and that is that men like to know that with which they are dealing. It’s a type of liturgy, a ritual that makes society possible. Witness the awkwardness one feels when he’s not sure if the baby before him is a boy or a girl and he is required to say something to its mother. Clothing helps us to establish how the pieces of the world fit together.
So Thoreau offers us good insights, but it seems they should be tempered with a bigger emphasis on the divine image in man rather than simply the bestial needs of man.
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