Meaning & Analysis
Farthingales—wide, hooped skirts fashionable in the 16th and 17th centuries—were so wide that ordinary doors could not accommodate them, so the suggestion is to send them to Broadgates (the broad gates of Oxford), where they might fit through.
Insights
Unsuitability and Excess
The proverb ridicules things that are excessively large, showy, or impractical for normal circumstances, suggesting they belong only where there is unusual accommodation for them.
Social Satire
It lampoons fashion trends and the folly of conspicuous consumption, mocking those who adopt exaggerated styles that are out of proportion to real life and its constraints.
Historical Symbolism
Farthingales were notorious for their impractical size, and their wearers often struggled to enter buildings with standard doors. The proverb reflects social commentary on the excesses of fashion, as well as gendered views about women's dress and modesty.
Cultural Resonance
Broadgates (now Pembroke College, Oxford) symbolized the rare exception—doors wide enough for the most outlandish fashions. The proverb thus humorously comments on the clash between extreme fashion and everyday practicality.
Moral Undertone
Fuller's account hints at a moral dimension, connecting the invention of farthingales to attempts at concealing 'shame,' linking the proverb to longstanding anxieties about female display and decorum.
Rhetorical Devices
Irony
There is an ironic humor in proposing that only an unusually wide gate is suitable for such fashion excesses, exposing the impracticality of the trend.
Hyperbole
The proverb exaggerates the width of farthingales to highlight the absurdity of styles that cannot fit through ordinary doors.
Place-based Allusion
The specific reference to Broadgates in Oxford grounds the proverb in a real location, lending it specificity and wit.
Transcription
Quotations
Alas poore verdingales must lie in the streete: To house them, no doore in the citee made meete. Syns at our narow doores they in can not win, Send them to Oxforde, at Brodegates to get in.
(Send Verdingales). *With these Verdingales the Gowns of Women beneath their wastes were pent-housed out far beyond their bodies . . the first inventress thereof . . a light House-wife . . sought to cover her shame, and the fruits of her wantonness . . Their wearers could not enter (except going sidelong) at any ordinary door; which gave the occasion to this Proverb.
(Send Verdingales to).
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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