In colonial times few Americans bathed regularly; by the mid-1800s,
a cleanliness "revolution" had begun. Why this change, and what did
it signify? "It is the author's ability to appreciate and represent
the almost tactile circumstantiality of life that makes Foul Bodies
so special-and so readable."-Charles E. Rosenberg, author of Our
Present Complaint: American Medicine, Then and Now "Brown has
framed an intriguing new area of research and gathered a
surprisingly rich source of textual evidence. Marvelous."-Laurel
Thatcher Ulrich, author of A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha
Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 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 award-winning 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.
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