Déterminisme vestimentaire et évolution sociale à travers le texte littéraire
Sartorial determinism and social evolution in literature

Summary/Abstract: The clothing choices of a fictional character lead to reflections on both their physical and moral portrait, as well as the social conditions in which the author imagines them. Between fact and fiction, the literary work sets, through the clothing trends, typologies with psychological profiles in accordance with the customs of an era.This article addresses the role of clothing as an essential element for the representation of the personality of an individual located in a certain social context. Thus, we visit the French society of the nineteenth century described by Balzac and that of the twenty-first century from houellebecquien novels. If Balzac had retained the physiognomy mechanism to anticipate the moral portrait of his characters, we wonder how this outside inward movement may be revealing today, given the development of a mass ideology that Michel Houellebecq spreads with enough accuracy and a lot of irony. Similarly, the parallel will show the change of field in the combat for rankings, from the social plan as described by Balzac, to the sexual plan found in Houellebecq’s work.

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