Shaping Femininity: Foundation Garments, the Body and Women in Early Modern England

Description

Highly Commended, Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Book Prize 2022 In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. This very structured form, created using garments called bodies and farthingales, existed in various extremes in Western Europe and beyond, in the form of stays, corsets, hoop petticoats and crinolines, right up until the twentieth century. With a nuanced approach that incorporates a stunning array of visual and written sources and drawing on transdisciplinary methodologies, Shaping Femininity explores the relationship between material culture and femininity by examining the lives of a wide range of women, from queens to courtiers, farmer's wives and servants, uncovering their lost voices and experiences. It reorients discussions about female foundation garments in English and wider European history, arguing that these objects of material culture began to shape and define changing notions of the feminine bodily ideal, social status, sexuality and modesty in the early modern period, influencing enduring Western notions of femininity. Beautifully illustrated in full colour throughout, Shaping Femininity is the first large-scale exploration of the materiality, production, consumption and meanings of women's foundation garments in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. It offers a fascinating insight into dress and fashion in the early modern period, and offers much of value to all those interested in the history of early modern women and gender, material culture and consumption, and the history of the body, as well as curators and reconstructors.

Sarah A. Bendall is Research Fellow in the Gender and Women's History Research Centre, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Australia.

"Virtually nothing is known about early modern undergarments, although they were clearly worn by (nearly) everyone. Moving beyond surviving inventories, images and objects, Bendall reconstructed her own garments in order to understand how they shaped the female body The result is a fascinating exploration of a - literally - disguised history, one that shows how female agency shaped and defined notions of femininity alongside the male gaze." - Judges' comments, Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Book Prize 2022 Sarah Bendall's fascinating exploration of women's foundation garments in Early Modern England shows not just how artisans made clothes, but how clothes made their wearers. Richly researched and beautifully illustrated, Shaping Femininity is both scholarly and accessible, and its innovative use of historical reconstruction ensures that it will become the essential study of female silhouettes before the Victorian corset. * Timothy McCall, Villanova University, USA * Body shaping garments determined the social spaces females claimed, an embodied assertion, always political. Sarah Bendall's original and important interdisciplinary study reveals the gendered meanings of shaping garments, in elite and everyday life. History is enriched through her findings. * Beverly Lemire, University of Alberta, Canada * Shaping Femininity provides fascinating insight into female foundation garments in early modern England - their makers and wearers, their materiality and their meanings. With a richly evocative contextual background that takes in a wide range of texts, images, garments and objects, Bendall deftly shows how female bodies were a site of agency and contest, power and beauty. A powerful voice of the role of experiential learning, Bendall charts her own reconstructions of garments. The vital importance of making and experience is at the heart of this book, which insists that we take foundation garments - and the women who wore them - seriously. * Erin Griffey, University of Auckland, New Zealand *