Shaping femininity: foundation garments, the body and women in early modern England

Abstract

"Utilizing an array of both well known and rarely seen sources, Shaping Femininity explores how 16th and 17th-century foundation garments shaped the dressed female body in early modern England and consequently how enduring notions of western femininity were established"--Provided by publisher.

Contents

The foundations of the body: foundation garments and the early modern female silhouette -- The artificial body: courtiers, gentlewomen and disputed visions of femininity, 1560-1650 -- The socially mobile body: consumption of foundation garments by middling and common women, 1560-1650 -- The body makers: making and buying foundation garments in early modern England -- The everyday body: assumptions, tropes and the lived experience -- The sexual body: eroticism, reproduction and control -- The respectable body: rising consumption and the changing sensibilities of late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century England -- Conclusion: legacies and misconceptions.