This is a presentation I gave at the conference “Developments in dress history” at Brighton University in December 8th-10th 2011. It is not written as an article, but as something I would read out loud (or at least glance at while talking), but since I haven't published any of my, by now considerable amount of, research about clothing and gender in the Middle Ages and the 16th century in English I thought that I could share some of it here.
It is also available at academia.edu, but not everyone is a member of that.
"Clothing and perceptions of gender and body in the medieval an early modern period", presentation given at the conference “Developments in dress history” at
Brighton University December 8th-10th
2011
Eva I
Andersson PhD
University
of Gothenburg, Sweden
©
for the text: Eva I Andersson, for image 2 and 3 the respective
museums, their reproduction in this paper covered by their permission
to use their images in scientific publications.
Introduction
My
name is Eva I Andersson and I am a researcher and lecturer at the
University of Gothenburg in Sweden. My dissertation, which was
finished in 2006, dealt with clothing in Sweden and Norway in the
Middle Ages. Since this was practically a white spot on the research
map a lot of the work was very basic examination of various
documents, which were then compared with period art and preserved
garments and analyzed. After that important work, but maybe not so
exciting for people who aren’t particularly interested in medieval
dress –it does take up 100 pages in the dissertation – I turned
my attention to the role of clothing in medieval society: How
clothing was used to differentiate between social groups such as
peasant tenants, farmers and the nobility – and, which is what lead
me to today’s subject. How clothing was used to differentiate
between men and women and how that is connected to more general ideas
about men and women in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period.
The
Middle Ages and my dissertation
As it
all started with my dissertation on medieval clothing that’s where
I’ll start. Not to mention that it usually is a good thing to start
in the beginning.
While
both the documents and the preserved garments used in the survey are
from Scandinavia, images from all over Western Europe have been
studied and the general discussion is probably valid for at least the
north-western parts of the continent.
A
striking difference between modern dress and medieval dress is the
great similarities between male and female dress in the middle ages.
Most of the terms for garments are used in connection with both women
and men. The exceptions are mainly outer garments, while most terms
for garments that are fitted to the body, like tunics, are used just
as frequently in connection with men as with women. According to the
examined documents the garments that were different for men and for
women were mostly outer garments and headwear - garments that were
neither linked to, nor emphasized bodily differences between men and
women, but, at least in the case of women’s headwear, to their
social roles.
When
we look at medieval Scandinavian wills we find that clothing was not
only willed to a person of the same sex as the donor, but men also
willed their clothes to women and, though less frequent, the reverse
could also be the case. Over ten percent of the clothes most commonly
listed in wills were given to a person of the opposite sex than the
original owner. The figure was probably higher in reality since I
only include those clothes which are clearly stated to be the issuers
own clothes in the wills, something that is rare. Irrespective of how
much more than ten percent of the clothes were willed to someone of
the opposite sex, the fact that it was done show that the garments
looked, and were constructed, alike for both sexes. Preserved tunics
from Herjolfsnes also show that, at least in the fourteenth century,
men’s and women’s tunics were cut in the same way.
Image
1 – Two of the Herjolfsnes tunics, second half of the 14th
century.
Source:
Nörlund, Poul, Buried
Norsemen at Herjolfsnes: an archaeological and historical study,
København, 1924, the image is a redrawn composition of two drawings.
In
mediaeval art, clothes also look the same for men and women, at least
until the middle of the fifteenth century.
Image
2 – Grosse Heidelberger Liederhandschrift, c 1300.
Source:
Grosse Heidelberger Liederhandsschrift at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität
Heidelberg
http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg848
Men’s
clothes were generally shorter, but the body shape that the clothes
emphasized, and also partially created, was the same. In addition,
the beauty ideal appears to be virtually identical for both sexes,
something that also can be seen in mediaeval literature where a young
man frequently is mistaken for a young woman. This confusion is
possible because the concept of human beauty was the same
irrespective of sex; a beautiful young man was expected to look the
same as a beautiful young woman.
To
distinguish between the sexes is one of the most important functions
of dress, one that is found across cultures and eras. However, how
it is done is culture-specific and also varies with time. In the
Middle Ages the most important ways of distinguishing between the
sexes were, according to period artwork, difference in length for
tunics and other fitted garments and in different headgear. The cut
and desired body shape for the fitted garments were, however, the
same. Other items of dress were also used to mark an individual’s
gender, such as the placement of the belt. Gender was, thus,
primarily indicated by use of garments and other items of clothing
that neither was based on, nor emphasized, physical differences
between the sexes.
This
can be tied to what historian Thomas Laqueur termed “the one-sex
model” or “the Aristotelian model”. This is the medical and
scientific view of sex as a difference in degree of development and
not as a difference in nature. The degree of masculinity and
femininity was determined by the balance of the different humours
that were thought to govern the body. According to this view, that
which today is seen as primary and stable, biological sex, was seen
as mutable. The basis for what was perceived as masculine and
feminine was instead men’s and women’s social roles and the
hierarchy between them.
This was also the starting point when the body was interpreted; woman
was not inferior to man because her body was weaker, but her body was
weaker because she was inferior to him.
This
view was also supported by the main authority in the Middle Ages: the
Bible. In Genesis Chapter One it states that God created humanity
after his likeness and that he created them male and female. This
description stresses the likeness between man and woman; both were
made in his image. In Genesis Chapter Two man is created first and
woman created as a helper and company for him. The two versions do
not, however, contradict each other concerning the nature of men and
women, since the distinction made in the second chapter is social and
not physical. She is of the same essence as him and thus also created
in the image of God; however, her social role is inferior to his as
she is his helper. This way of looking at sex, where “man” and
“woman” were primarily seen as social categories, affected how
dress looked and clothes were constructed throughout the Middle Ages.
The one-sex model explains why the principal garments in the Middle
Ages looked the same irrespective of the wearer’s sex; they were
one-sex garments. And since “man” and “woman” in the Middle
ages were primarily social categories the “gender-distinguishing”
elements in the dress were not linked to physical, but to social
differences.
This
fact explains several phenomena in mediaeval dress. That the cut and
appearance of most garments were largely identical is a natural
consequence of a common ideal of appearance and beauty for both men
and women, based on the one-sex model. It also explains much of the
critique directed at fashionable dress. When it was branded as
indecent that a woman wore a belt on her hips, as happened in the
second half of the fourteenth century, it had nothing to do with
exposure of or emphasizing of sexed body parts, or with sexuality.
Instead it was the symbolic value of a belt worn at the hips, the
traditional placement of the sword-belt, with its implications of
knighthood and masculinity that made it unseemly for a woman.
Changes
around 1500
In
the late 15th
century a change in how clothing was used to present men’s and
women’s bodies occurred. The 15th century was a period of
increasing differentiation in dress; the differences between regions,
social classes and age groups grew bigger and side by side you found
loose garments, especially in the mature age group, form fitting
tight clothing and hybrid forms with sewn down pleats.
A
consistent trend was, however, that men’s tunics and gowns got
shorter – by the end of the century so short that they “forced”
trousers return in European men’s fashion after five hundred years
– when the tunic shrunk to a short doublet it became necessary to
sew the hose shut in the back. In the front the opening was covered
with a triangular piece of fabric, a innocent looking piece of fabric
we will return to in a short while. Female dress didn’t get
shorter, but tighter and more low-cut in the bust. Waist seams became
common, making it easier to combine a tight bodice with a wide skirt.
The tight bodice was used to push up the breasts, which accounts for
the much bustier women in late 15th
century art than in art from previous centuries. Both German and
French written sources also mention different garments used to make
the waist smaller.
This
development continued in the 16th century as clothing went from
mainly accentuating body differences to creating them. When we look
at artwork from this period, such as this painting by Lucas Cranach
the Elder, showing two members of the Saxon nobility, we see broader
hips, larger breasts and really wide shoulders.
In
this watercolour we see one silhouette with a narrow lower part and
great width on top and another one which is its opposite with a
narrow top and wide base.
Image 3 – Members of the Saxon princely house Lucas Cranach d.ä, 1540s
Source: Das
Sächsiche Stammbuch, Mscr.Dresd.R.3,
Sächsische Landesbibliothek - Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek
Dresden.
Unlike
the high medieval couple I showed before the man’s and the woman’s
bodies are presented as having distinctly different shape. The outer
sex differences are both accentuated and exaggerated by the clothes
they wear, giving him unnaturally wide shoulders while the difference
between a narrow waist and broad hips are accentuated by her dress.
The
body shape is thus portrayed wholly different for the man and the
woman and shows a change in the relation between clothes and sex.
If
we leave the countries with German fashions and study female fashion
in France, England and Spain you also find another way to broaden the
hips in the form of the farthingale, an under skirt stiffened with
hoops of wicker, whalebone or rope.
In the same regions stiffened bodies, what we usually call corsets,
were introduced towards the end of the century. These of course
changed the look of women’s bodies even more – making them
stylized hourglasses of two cones joined in the narrow end, a sort of
pictogram where only the most obvious attributes of the idealized
female body remained.
In
the Saxon portrait above masculinity is expressed only through wide
shoulders and well formed legs. More generally male fashions of the
16th
century also exposed men’s behinds and accentuated and exaggerated
their penises through the codpiece. Just like women’s breasts and
hips got a more prominent role in fashion there was a wish to express
men’s sexuality in their clothing and the codpiece got both
stuffing and decorations to attract attention to men’s sex.
Portraits from the 16th
century are full of more or less “anatomically shaped” codpieces.
In the regions affected by the German puff-and-slash fashion the
codpiece of course also got slashed and fabric pulled through them.
The combination of the codpiece’s imitation of an erect penis and
the tightness of the clothing covering the backside gives an almost
overwhelming impression of male sexuality – at least when compared
with medieval ideals of dress.
The
most revolutionary change in the relationship between clothes and the
body and its sex thus occurs in the male costume, where not only
secondary sex differences. But also the actual sexual organ gets a
prominent role. The male sexual organ has an old history as a symbol
for strength and potency, for example animals in heraldry were often
shown with prominent penises, sometimes in a different colour to
further emphasize them. It is, however, not until the 16th
century that the same symbolism is applied to humans, at least in a
positive context. Depictions of men and women with clear sex
differences and visible sexual organs are found also in medieval art,
but then always in a negative context: the condemned sinners and
such.
For big
boobs and prominent penises to be incorporated into the idealized
body a radical change in the perception of sex and gender must have
taken place.
Thomas
Laqueur, bodies and fashion
As
I said previously manners of dress in the middle ages were affected
by an Aristotelian perception of gender, where the difference between
men’s and women’s bodies was seen as a difference in degree
rather than in kind. According
to historian Thomas Laqueur the break with the Aristotelian model
occurred in the late 18th
century and even a superficial look at fashion in the beginning of
the nineteenth century supports that a significant break occurred at
this time and affected manners of dress. In the nineteenth century
men’s and women’s clothing differed more than it had ever before.
The clothes were made from different material, light and bright
colours worn now only by women, while men mostly dressed in black or
dark shades of brown, blue or grey. My
study of dress and sex indicates, however, that there was another
break, though less radical, in the perception of sex at the end of
the Middle Ages. Judging from the development of fashion and clothing
the change in the perceptions of sex should be seen as a gradual
evolution from likeness to difference begun at the end of the Middle
Ages, rather than a revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.
Thomas
Laqueur points to political and social changes as one of the main
causes for the changed view of sex and gender – with great changes
in society, there was a need to be able to feel that at least the
relation between the sexes was stable. I do not intend to replace the
18th
century as the crucial turning point in how sex an gender were
perceived with another one, at the end of the 15th
century – what I’d like to do is to point out some similarities
between periods when clothing was used to create difference through
body ideals, such as the period around 1500 and the early 19th
century. Those two have in common that they were periods with large
changes in society. When society’s institutions were questioned and
where people appear to have searched for a sense of security by a
stricter definition of masculinity and femininity. Unlike the 18th
century, which saw the emergence of feminism neither the power
relationship between the sexes nor marriage were publicly questioned
The
increased differences between men’s and women’s clothing and
ideals of beauty can therefore not be seen as a reaction to a
contested gender hierarchy. It was also not an answer to threats to
the institution of marriage – that by stressing the difference
between men’s and women’s bodies a stronger argument for the
complementary roles in marriage could be made. This was, conversely,
periods when heterosexual unions strengthened their position as ideal
in society; especially in the Protestant regions, where
institutionalized alternatives to marriage were no longer available.
So, what can be said regarding marriage and the changes I have
discussed in clothing, what we can say is only that marriage was
under a lot of discussion in the 16th
century and that this probably contributed to changes in how gender
was expressed in clothing and beauty ideals.
More
important than the discussion of marriage was, however, probably the
great political and social changes that came with the Protestant
reformation (and the industrial revolution, but that’s not the
focus in my research) and the Counter Reformation. When the position
and teachings of the Church was questioned, there was a sense of
security in at least being able to maintain strong and well defined
boundaries between the sexes. In the middle ages these differences
were overwhelmingly rooted in religion; in the hierarchy established
already in the story of how Eve was created from Adam’s rib. When
the teachings of the Church were contested, at least in some areas,
there might have been a perceived need to strengthen those boundaries
and that hierarchy by adding arguments founded in the body. Likewise
the changes in dress in the early 19th
century, with it’s sharp division between men’s and women’s
fashions, materials etc can be seen as a reaction of and defence
against the great changes in society brought on by the industrial and
French revolutions, just like the new bourgeois ideals for men and
women were.
In
common for these two periods of greatly increasing differences in the
dress of the sexes is thus a revolutionary changes in society – the
reformation and counter reformation on one hand and industrialism on
the other, that men’s and women’s roles in society were in a
process of redefining, a generally more positive view of marriage (in
theory if not always in practice) and a surge for the idea of the
complementary marriage based on love.
By
studying new, for the historian, categories of sources, in this case
art and preserved clothing, new perspectives of a problem can be
found and the established view of a historical process can be broken
apart and put together in a new and more complex way. By
supplementing Thomas Laqueur’ study of the medical discourse on sex
with a survey on how ideas of beauty related to perceptions of sex
and how these took concrete form in how men and women dressed the
process can be understood more completely. At the same time it
anchors the process in the practices of ordinary humans, how they
interpreted ideals of sex in their everyday lives.
The
development from what could be called a one sex fashion to a
two-sex-fashion isn’t simple and linear where the differences
between men’s and women’s fashions and ideal bodies steadily
increase until the final breakthrough of the two-sex-model and very
different fashions for men and women. The clear distinctions of sex
in clothing and beauty ideal of the early 16th
century were soon followed by a period where the fashionably dressed
bodies of men and women again became more alike. For example the
aesthetic expressions of men and women were much alike in the early
17th
century: long curls, broad lace collars and broad brimmed hats for
both sexes and a similar body shape with broad waists and relatively
loose garments on the upper body.
The later 17th
century and the 18th
century also show as many similarities as differences between men’s
and women’s clothing; especially regarding the choice of materials,
decoration and colours, but also in construction and sewing
techniques.
The
road to essentially different fashion ideals was a complex process
and it is a process which is far from thoroughly examined, but it is
an arena where contemporary ideas about masculinity, femininity and
of the relationship between the sexes took concrete form.
Fashion
and perceptions of gender and body are closely intertwined. Clothes
are thus an important source to often unspoken ideas of masculinity
and femininity. They therefore ought to be useful source also to
historians whose main concern isn’t the history of dress. The
pitfall is that the study of dress requires expertise not usually
found among historians or for that matter most art historians –
collaborations between historians and experts in the history of dress
may thus be the best way to proceed, where the historians’ interest
in society is paired with the costume historians’ knowledge of
style, textiles, craftsmanship etc.
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