A poke bonnet is a women's bonnet (hat) in the shape of a hood, featuring a projecting rim on the front side, which would shade the face of the wearer.
The poke bonnet came into fashion at the beginning of the 19th century. It is called a poke bonnet because all of one's hair could be poked inside it.
It is referred to in a first world war music hall song "In your little poke bonnet and shawl".
By the 1830s, Englishwomen had adopted the poke bonnet. The new styles rendered the aristocracy less visibly distinct from the respectable middle classes than they had ever been, as the image of Queen Victoria makes clear. (J.S. Lewis Sacred to female patriotism: gender, class and politics in late Georgian Britain, (2003), 184)
Famous quotes containing the words poke and/or bonnet:
“I drink the five o’clock martinis
and poke at this dry page like a rough
goat. Fool! I fumble my lost childhood
for a mother and lounge in sad stuff
with love to catch and catch as catch can.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your
sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about
you demonstrating a careless desolation.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)