A Passing Fashion: Appearance and Transcendence in Doris Lessing's The Summer Before the Dark and Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow

Elizabeth Wilson points out in Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity that appearance became entwined with identity in the nineteenth century (123) so that in fashioning dress identity could also be formed: "It is this shift from clothing as part of a social project to clothing as part of an identity that really launches it into its most 'modern' manifestations" (218). Kate finally resolves her dilemma when she returns home on her own terms, her newly authentic identity made manifest in her refusal to dye her hair: "The clothes, hair style, manners, posture, voice of Mrs.\n Vowing to bring her grandchildren to the Landing every summer in Tatum and to tell them - and all who will listen - the story of the Ibos, Avey finally embraces the mission her great-aunt had entrusted to her and reclaims her true name, Avatara.