Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America
Search in google:
A nation’s standards of private cleanliness reveal much about its ideals of civilization, fears of disease, and expectations for public life, says Kathleen Brown in this unusual cultural history. Starting with the shake-up of European practices that coincided with Atlantic expansion, she traces attitudes toward “dirt” through the mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that cleanliness—and the lack of it—had moral, religious, and often sexual implications. Brown contends that care of the body is not simply a private matter but an expression of cultural ideals that reflect the fundamental values of a society. The book explores early America’s evolving perceptions of cleanliness, along the way analyzing the connections between changing public expectations for appearance and manners, and the backstage work of grooming, laundering, and housecleaning performed by women. Brown provides an intimate view of cleanliness practices and how such forces as urbanization, immigration, market conditions, and concerns about social mobility influenced them. Broad in historical scope and imaginative in its insights, this book expands the topic of cleanliness to encompass much larger issues, including religion, health, gender, class, and race relations. Society for Historians of the Early American Republic — Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Book Award
List of IllustrationsIntroduction 11 Caring for the Early Modern Body 152 Skin 423 Corruption 584 Empire's New Clothes 985 Gentility 1186 Virtue 1597 Reimagining Sickness and Health 1958 Healing Housework 2129 Redemption 23310 Laborers 25111 Immersion 29312 Mission 325Afterword: Toward the Modern Body 357Notes 369Bibliographic Essay 431Index 437
