Whilst a woman’s hat was more likely to be linked to consumerism and fashion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as Diana Crane suggests, it was the man whose hat bore the marker of familial social standing. Being hatless in the street and removing one’s hat at work was not de rigueur. Whilst Crane writes from a purely anthropological point of view, Charlotte Nicklas examines the role of the hat as an implicit indicator of social propriety in literature between 1890 and 1930:

This cultural behaviour is exploited by Katherine Mansfield in a figurative sense to symbolise suppressed or subjugated behaviours, or the inverse, in the last collection of stories published before her death, The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). Linda, in ‘At the Bay’ (1921), recalls meeting her husband, Stanley, as a young man, ‘a very broad young man with bright ginger hair’, his head ‘uncovered’. The Stanley without the hat is the one she loves: ‘Not the Stanley whom everyone saw, not the everyday one’. In ‘The Stranger’ (1920), Mr Hammond’s emotions are quite clearly betrayed by his behaviour with his hat. He is excited to be seeing his wife after months apart. Mr Hammond takes off his hat when anticipating seeing his wife again as he prepares to board the ship – an outward signal of receptiveness and vulnerability (p. 129). He takes it off again in the cabin: ‘The strain was over. He felt he could have sat there for ever sighing his relief – the relief at being rid of that horrible tug, pull, grip on his heart’ (p. 132). In contrast to this, he ‘seizes’ his hat to reassert his authority when his wife goes to say farewell to the doctor, and he is suspicious. Janey, in contrast, has ‘thrown back her veil’, which suggests an openness towards the others on board (p. 132).