Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Sarah A. Bendall, "Shaping Femininity: Foundation Garments, the Body and Women in Early Modern England" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Description: 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: Foundation Garments, the Body and Women in Early Modern England (Bloomsbury, 2021) by Dr. Sarah Bendall explores the relationship between material culture and femininity by examining the lives of a w...