In Her Hands: Agency, Comportment, and Period Gestures in Roman Italy

In mid-first century BCE Italy, women adopted a radical gesture, one that, with a single pinch of forefinger and thumb, unravelled generations of social programming through the purposeful handling of the voluminous folds of the palla, the outer wrap tied to performances of ideal femininity in Roman controlled territories. To consider the import of this gesture, this contribution queries the overlap between the categories of dress and fashion through the lens of the period gesture, a term that the paper proposes to engage with the reciprocal interactions of dress, bodies, and time. Highlighting interplays between affordances and gestures, it underscores shifts in material interactions that align with time-based changes in wearing practices. With its focus on gestures associated with the palla from the mid-first century BCE through the first century CE, it proposes that while the palla itself is associated with the traditional etiquette of feminine self-presentation, gestures associated with the palla’s manipulation highlight calibrated movements—fleetingly glimpsed and of limited intelligibility—providing occasion to circumvent societal expectations. The paper suggests that gestures associated with the palla undergo a deliberate shift in the mid-first century BCE, coinciding with the advent of several popular earring types, as women leverage the palla’s form to frame both fashionable accessories and their own presence. With a single gesture, reiterated in interactions and in images, these wearers reinforce their agency while simultaneously subverting the expectations and aims of the palla itself, all through a thoughtfully articulated personal performance that offers little opportunity for societal censure.