The Virtual Coffeehouse

One of the questions that Teufelsdrockh faces deals with the importance that people place on appearance, and what the consequences are of making appearance so important. Throughout Sartor Resartus, Teufelsdrockh discusses his philosophy of clothes, which seemed ironic to me, since he is ascribing deep philosophical ideas to something so superficial. It seemed like Teufelsdrockh comes to the conclusion that clothing has essentially replaced religion and philosophy.

Teufelsdrockh remarks on this replacement of religion and inner character with shallowness and materialism when he talks about the Dandy in chapter 10. Teufelsdrockh ironically uses religious language to talk about the Dandy, saying he embodies the "divine idea of cloth" and listing the many "articles of faith" that dandies follow. In this way, the Dandy serves as a symbol of the modern shallowness that Teufelsdrockh speaks of.

Oops, I just realized that we only had to read the selections in the anthology and not the whole thing (I was away for the weekend and didn't have my book with me, so I found the whole thing online). My bad.