The first time I ever acted in an historical play we were coached in the ways of walking as women of yesteryear did. Which didn’t seem at all strange to me at the time: at convent boarding schools we had been taught to walk the nunly walk: which turned out to be exactly the same method. But sanctified.
I didn’t really understand why women used to walk differently then, and neither did my mother; who told me that her mother had also instructed her that a woman’s footprints should always be in a straight line: — one foot directly in front the other, as we’d been taught on both stage and in convents.
Yet it was only about 6 months ago that I suddenly had a lightbulb moment: women walked in that way because they menstruated!
This thought didn’t arrive out of the blue; I had, by then, been researching the history of menstruation for months. With the help of the Brighton Museum I’d been able to start my research back in the Palaeolithic. Since then, I had become aware that apart from one or two anomalous examples, the entire corpus of information concerning menstruation had been written by men until the late 20th Century. Medicine had based its information regarding women’s menses in some instances on nothing more reliable than guesswork. I had discovered along the way that most of it was codswallop and yet had been accepted, unquestioned, by the august body of non-menstruating people concerned with medicine.
As a result, though we live in a technological age and may study most aspects of history in a plethora of different ways, I found that few of us have any idea how our foremothers historically coped with the one thing which unites women down through the ages: our periods. It follows then, that we have little idea of how much female menses have impacted upon our society: medically, sociologically, educationally and spiritually. In fact, when it comes to historical research we are accustomed to a big, flat blank space where women's personal habits & conventions are concerned.All the time knowing full well, from lived experience, how much our periods impact us from our early teens and throughout our working lives. Yet it’s as if our foremothers were a different species: one in which female menses do not occur.
So, keeping in mind that one half of the human race which we study regularly produces menstrual blood as naturally as it does saliva, while the other half, until recently, pretends it doesn’t happen; I feel I can’t be held too much to account for not starting to make connections of my own a lot earlier than I did.
The Victorian was the first era in which advertisements for ‘sanitary products’ for women began to creep self-consciously into print. They were discretely tucked away in the back pages of catalogues: similar to the back pages of graphic novels to-day, which teem with often questionable ads. It wasn’t quite respectable to mention, let alone produce images of, any products that might lead to disrupting the myth that women don’t shed unneeded uterine blood every month. This attitude was the default position right up to the 1950’s. It still persists to-day: as with the differing attitudes which are heard in reference to advertising these products on TV or public spaces.
Like so much of our social history, the way Victorian women managed their periods was very much dependent upon Class.
Women at the very top of the social ladder — Royals, Titled Ladies, Old Families — were simply ignorant about their bodies. One bled every month. When one stopped bleeding every month one had fulfilled one’s duty and was pregnant. That was quite enough knowledge.
Not only was curiosity about one’s own body — if female — considered “un-feminine” (yes, the irony in that verdict is not just palpable, it almost requires cognitive dissonance in order to digest it.) Variations of the modesty shift for bathing are not simply a trope from the movies; in strict, god-fearing households women were never able even to see their own bodies. They were required to wear a large enveloping garment and to wash under its cover. To discourse upon what went on in the unchartered waters beneath one’s shift was unnatural and showed coarseness to a degree that disqualified one from being a Lady.
The mechanics of how they coped with their periods was to fold large linen squares into rectangles — or to fold a larger piece of linen into one compact rectangle; wedge it between their thighs; and clench for grim death. The best way to keep it there was to walk languidly and with small steps which leave a single line of footprints in the dusty streets. I undertook the experiment — though not in a dusty street - and discovered that it took large amounts of concentration to retain the necessary muscle-crunch.
Once I had connected the two, much about Victorian women became clear. All those ‘headaches’; the inexplicable confessions of exhaustion; the lying about on chaises longues; the disappointments that some particular lady had not appeared at a soiree after all. The stressing of women’s capriciousness; their extreme delicacy; their inability to play sport, or wear shorter skirts — even the number of petticoats they wore — were because one could hardly go prancing the Dashing White Sergeant; nor on a bracing country walk, with ones thighs glued together.
Advertisements, of course, can only have appeared when it became known to men that women themselves attempted different ways of securing these menstrual clouts. None of them could have been very effective, as there are word-of-mouth accounts right up to the early 20thC of occasions when the whole messy lot gave way to gravity and fell to the floor. There is also a somewhat strange poem written in the 17th Century about just such an accident.
The one thing one could do, however, was to ride. Sidesaddle. And here I experienced a complete about-turn: from imaging side-saddles as objects which constrained women, I suddenly understood them instead as liberating.
Mounting a horse and riding astride would be out of the question for most women until the mid to late Victorian era, simply because women did not wear knickers.
Though I have not come across these correlations before, I once again turn to lived experiences as a woman. From this perspective such correlations would seem not merely plausible, but expedient. What girl would feel competent enough to mount a horse if she risked a gratuitous beaver shot to the sniggering grooms each time she did so? And, if she were surfing the crimson tide it would be impossible to both mount, retain one’s modesty and keep menstrual cloths in place. Being able to mount and to sit side-saddle at least reprieved the better-off sort from the boredom of inactivity dictated by one’s (female) bodily functions
The other problem which exaggerated the way in which our Victorian fore-mothers became proscribed by their own bodies was the material of which these cloths were made. Linen, most would agree, is not the most absorbent of materials. The amount of material one can discretely keep in place is limited: "accidents" were commonplace. Stains were inevitable. Women — especially those at the top of society — paid outrageous sums for their gowns. Often, even one of their silk petticoats would cost more than the woman who washed it would see in three years of work. Gowns were not laundered , but spot cleaned. The threat of both shaming oneself and one’s family, and of ruining an expensive gown or petticoat if bloodstains were to have become visible, would also have to be considered if one was to venture from the house.
Middle Class Victorian women tended to be more involved in community life than the majority of those in the class above. They served on committees, involved themselves in good works, and more often went out to do their shopping, rather than have milliners, dressmakers, glove makers, et al, come to them. By the end of the nineteenth century women were beginning, though slowly, to take over the running of business from deceased fathers, husbands or brothers — just as their predecessors in the seventeenth century had done.
It is tempting to think that it was among this earlier, Early Modern group that the ideas not just for securing their cloths, but for protecting their garments, had first surfaced. And it is here that I take issue with a trope which keeps recurring on websites all over the Internet: that most Early Mods (and here, also for no reason I could verify, German women are often cited as the source from which this idea originates) did nothing at all, but simply bled into their clothes and left snail-trails behind them as they walked. No matter where I searched, and which primary documents I scoured, nothing I was able to access provided any proof or source from which this idea sprang onto the world wide web. Each site on which it was cited referred to another site from which it was taken; and so ad infinitum in ever-diminishing circles. *
However, once again calling on lived experience, I cannot imagine any woman being happy to go through the day constantly wet, sticky, and smelly; soiling ones stockings, shoes, pantaloons, petticoats, gowns, shawls, chairs, sofas. One could even leave aside aside practical considerations of economy as mentioned above in regard to replacing soiled garment. The sheer burden of work involved in cleaning and washing involved in the aftermath alone, would — at least in my eyes — preclude such regular home blood-baths.
I would tend to think that those practical Early Modern women who helped keep businesses and estates going through war and revolution, would have learned how to protect themselves from regular inundations, and found a way to free themselves from the home during their Time of Flowers. The ‘sanitary aprons’ advertised in the mid-19th century may not, as is thought now, have been a ‘new’ idea. It is, I think, safe to conjecture that women in previous centuries, under exactly the same circumstances, had improvised ways around the limitations of sanitary protection. These Victorian advertisements were merely the first time such things had been advertised.
To country women, on a much lower rung of the social ladder however, such matters as one’s moon-courses were part of the cycle of nature. And just as nature had always been relied upon for country matters, it was relied upon to help women. In the fields grew herbs to relieve menstrual cramps, herbs to delay or bring on a period, and the various kinds of moss which absorbed the flow of blood.
It has been the habit of the careful housewife through the ages to coax as much life out of cloth as possible. A petticoat becomes a smaller petticoat, and then napkins or tray cloths, the embroidery is recycled and, when all that’s left even of the tray cloths, is a few good patches, they are turned into clouts: — the rags for dirty messes, or for babies nappies — or for use as sanitary napkins.
Cloth, even old cloth, would not have been as plentiful in a working class household as it would be in the middle or upper classes. Washing bloodstained clouts and bleaching them white again took a lot of trouble. Unlike the Middle Class, the busy farmer’s wife or dairy maid would have had to launder these themselves — and to dry them away from the male gaze. It's known that in many countries women made cotton, washable pouches which could be stuffed with mosses; or mere scraps of cloth; and the wool from un-shorn sheep which snagged itself of gorse and prickles,
Even in the absence of elastic or rubber, doubtless some women found ways to make harnesses to which to pin their clouts — but the necessity of changing soiled clouts for fresh could not be performed in the marketplace or other places of business, for the soiled cloth was not disposable — and could not be popped into a plastic bag until home-time. Thus, from a purely practical point of view, knowledge of tampons was the key to allowing women to participate more fully in the world.
It becomes obvious, from the plethora of advertisements which started to appear in Victorian times for sanitary products, that women recognised that it was their bodily functions which were a barrier to allowing them to function in a man’s world. However the use of tampons carried with it a label of loose morals. In the eighteenth century their use was more widely discussed, but was attributed — by men — only to prostitutes. Considering the alternatives, I would consider a chance to replace clouts would have been seized upon gladly. However once invested with the mantle of ‘loose living’ the subject of tampons appears to have gone underground. I don’t doubt that they were still in use — I don’t doubt either that the occasional Lady’s maid introduced them to her mistress. But their usage — indivisible from the trope of the Unruly woman — would have been carefully shielded from husbands, brothers and fathers. It was my own Great-Grandmother who told my mother how they had made tampons from certain mosses and the tufts of wool left on bramble and thorn by unshorn sheep.
Historically, the 19th century was a time of accelerated change: production and technology advanced to a stage where this change became known as a revolution — The Industrial Revolution. Leisure time became available for the first time to many of the working or lower middle classes; and activities connected with this new concept of leisure were adopted eagerly. It was also a period when education finally became not only available universally, but was the subject of Legislation to guarantee literacy across all social classes. Women no longer sat on the outside looking in to the world of ideas: they were able to participate in that world.
One of the greatest revolutions for women which appeared during the Victorian period was the appearance of Bloomers or Drawers for women. I have yet to come across any discussion which explores this evolutionary milestone: — yet the adoption of ‘nether garments’ deserves more recognition. It was this which paved the way for: the death of the crinoline; freedom of movement; for the inclusion of women in sporting activities; and, after millennia, shorter garments. Bloomers also allowed pioneering women to ride a horse astride. Most exhilaratingly, bloomers enabled a woman to ride and even own, a bicycle.
It also, I am convinced, worked to let women feel less vulnerable and allowed them more confidence.
Unfortunately, for the poor, the homeless, and women working in mines and other ‘dark satanic mills’, nothing much changed in the Victorian era in the way they handled visits from Aunt Flo. However, research going back as far as the Paleolithic, has confirmed that historically women menstruated less in all time periods than do women in modern times. For the more comfortable classes this was because of multiple pregnancies: but for those unable to eat regularly, or to take care of their bodies, menstruation ceased altogether. During the Industrial Revolution large numbers of marginalised women, then, were able to work free from the constraints of monthly indisposition. A double-edged sword
In the 1890’s the first commercial sanitary napkins were produced. By now, towels — traditionally made of linen — had become more similar to those we use today.. Women were quick to recognise the advantage of this more absorbent material, and it was this which was being used by many as menstrual clouts. Thus the first commercial product was named a ‘Sanitary Towel’ in order to circumvent laws governing pornography which governed the advertising of women’s menstrual products.
Which again speaks volumes about men’s attitudes to women’s natural functions.
Victorian sensibilities made the public purchase of such items not just problematic but, in most cases, prohibitive, and Johnsons and Johnson’s “Lister’s Towels” tentatively advertised itself and was given the cold shoulder for its impertinence before shyly sliding from the market. It was not until post WW1 that ‘women’s things’ unabashedly began to make their way into the marketplace.
Homemade re-usable towels, however, have been in use in various countries around the world as part of the unspeakable ‘country matters’, so it is feasible to imagine their use by our own foremothers. These consisted of a rectangular pouch with a buttoned flap, into which was pushed absorbent materials: certain kinds of moss — as for tampons — and even scraps of wool gleaned from hedgerows before sheep were shorn. Sheep were important to British economy and so, in many areas, gathering wool tufts for all manner of uses was a common practice.
The Victorian age then, was that which ushered in more physical freedom for women from all strata. It paved the way for the freedoms many of us take for granted and, I am convinced, it was this which contributed to women demanding more social inclusion as well as political reforms.
However, it is only relatively recently — since the 1970’s — that women themselves have begun to realise that all our information regarding our bodies and functions have been written by men. Most of it is composed of folk-lore, superstition, ignorance; and is based upon classical ideas by men such as Hippocrates. These ideas became enshrined in male medicine with the Renaissance.
But that, itself, is a whole other perspective from which to view the subject of menstruation — a field which is the last to shed the prudery, marginalisation, taboos and mysteries which have been attributed to it by men for millennia.
Indeed, we have come a long way, baby.
And it’s time more of us started learning about how, exactly, we did that.
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