Susan North. Sweet and Clean? Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England.

Abstract

Susan North’s Sweet and Clean? Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England offers a trove of information about clothing in early modern England: how it was made, washed, worn, recycled, repaired, and more. There is also a significant long-overdue discussion of underwear. What are the differences between flax and hemp? A man’s smock versus a woman’s shift? Sweet and Clean is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the practical household work of making, sewing, and washing clothes, as well as the history of bodies, health, and hygiene. The book is framed around a clear key finding: early modern men and women bathed. This argument may seem commonplace, but in actuality it is a significant historiographical revision. The prevailing belief, until now, has been that Europeans did not wash themselves frequently. They cleaned only their visible outer layers of clothing, which came to represent propriety, leaving their bodies and innermost layers of linen untouched. North revises this long-held misconception by showing that Englishmen and women did indeed wash their bodies and their clothes, and she provides a multitude of details demonstrating how and why they did so.