Influenced by the peasant shirt, “Pure Emotion” revolves around the fragile woman narrative pushed by 18th and 19th-century European literature; a young, naive girl becomes infatuated with a man she is forbidden to marry and, overwhelmed by her emotions and devastated by heartbreak, she tragically takes her own life because she cannot bear the weight of her feelings. The portrayal of the woman in this story is often through a lens of pity, as the male author or narrator tends to view such female characters as weak and delicate. “Poor Liza,” a 1792 Russian novella by Nikolay Karamzin, follows the story of the peasant Liza who falls hopelessly in love with a wealthy man of status while selling flowers in Moscow. However, after her lover takes her virginity and loses interest in her because of her loss of purity, he becomes engaged to another woman and rejects her upon his return; pure misery and despair take over her, and she drowns herself in a monastery pond to end her suffering.

The flower and water symbols enrich the story and add depth to Liza’s tragic tale. The lilies of the valley, which she sells in Moscow, symbolize her delicacy, fragility, and vulnerability to the harshness of her surroundings. The water represents a place of spiritual and emotional reflection where she loses her virginity while taking shelter from intense rain, seeks refuge by the river in several emotional scenes, and where the depth of her emotions climax at the pond. As the location for her suicide, the water represents the hopelessness and misery in which she drowns. 

The garment serves as a representation of the heroine’s loss of purity through innocent love, with the garment hanging off shoulders and showing an undergarment, revealing collarbones yet nothing else as the garment obscures the curves of the female body. The garment also depicts a girl who drowned herself due to the weight of the emotions, with heavy layers of fabric draped on the body, voluminous sleeves, and excessive gathering. Liza’s fragility is shown through the lightness and visual delicacy of the garment and the symbol of the lily of the valley is demonstrated in the garment’s silhouette. Finally, the peasant shirt inspired the use of gathers to shape and emphasize the silhouette of the garment, the shorter collar, and the slits that are placed along the sides of the shirt.