Mothering Sunday

After sex with Paul, Jane comments on how “the sunshine only applaud[s] their nakedness, dismissing all secrecy from what they were doing, although it was utterly secret” (11). Nakedness in Mothering Sunday symbolizes existential honesty. It represents the ability, as seen with Paul and Jane in Paul’s room, to cast off arbitrary markers of class or status and to properly be oneself in the eyes of the other. It especially signifies authentic and liberated sexuality, underpinning much of the joy Jane and Paul feel on that day. Conversely, clothing often signifies superficiality, sexual repression, and conventionality. Jane’s inability to picture Emma naked is a case in point. This impossibility is in part due to the fact that, for Jane, Emma represents conformity, propriety, and an unwillingness to be anything other than one’s preordained social role. Jane’s mocking reference to Emma’s “flowery dress over the chair, her silky underwear” shows this (40). Likewise, Paul’s return to stifling normality and the world of social expectation is suggested by his putting on of a ring and cufflinks: “[I]t was these little trinkets, this boys’ jewellery that seemed now to claim him, confirm him” (46).

At the same time, clothing also has an allure that Jane is not immune to.