The Red Flannel Shirt: The Dynamic Clothing Metaphor in The Maine Woods

Abstract

In The Maine Woods (1864), a work comprised of three essays drawn from three of the six trips he took to Maine (1846, 1853, 1857), Henry David Thoreau’s eye is drawn in the midst of this remote and wild environment to man-made items, clothing. Overlooked by some scholars, the clothing metaphor in The Maine Woods is a classic case of Thoreau’s talent for observing the most ordinary of objects, functional clothing in this instance, from a fresh perspective to imbue it with unexpected meaning. What begins as a joyful attention to the red flannel shirts of the lumbermen to celebrate their type of masculinity, visibility, and commercial success becomes a confused exploration of race and class boundaries by the end of the work.