Why is menstruation so dirty?

Gah, posted to soon. But yes, was going to agree, though I don't really know as I'm not an early modernist.

The liturgy for churching changes, I know that. And that's got quite a lot to do with similar issues, I think.

I do have an impression that from the early modern period, people do start getting a bit more ... refined? Less earthy. Possibly because they all have to think about religion and whether they're Catholic or Protestant, rather than it just being part of life, and more in the background. I don't know. And I'm not a mediaevalist at all, so haven't really read any mediaeval literature, other than the odd bit of Chaucer.

But equally I could be totally wrong.

Oh, yes, that's true.

Missed courses is only a sign if someone is regular and even now with better understanding of nutrition and medical care loads of people aren't.

Someone checked the book upthread.

Philippa Gregory wasn't contemporary to then, but neither is Hilary Mantel.

I haven't read WH yet (and am not in the UK, so haven't seen it either), but I would be very surprised if HM shied away from talking about 'courses'.

If anything, it's a TV-spin that has been put on it, and the conclusion is that modern audiences are still too squeamish to hear talk of periods on TV...?! Depressing, if so.

But, I do think men talked about periods earlier on. Dunno about Tudor. Medieval men did, though, in a medical way.

My user name is extremely apt for so, so many threads on different topics .

No no no E- but what I mean is that she reveals a world of intimate communication between women that is closer, in her opinion, to what would have happened than what is written down in the history books. Even in her books, though, all this speculation and sharing around menstruation is never referred to in front of the men.

fei - I'm not suggesting everyone was a walking Timotei ad, all I'm getting at is, clearly at some times in history, some people were pretty clean. And they still seem to have the same taboos, so far as I know. I dunno, is it way too simple to think like that? Maybe it is.

stubborn - YY, and while I know she's not that highbrow, there is shitloads in medieval lit where people talk a lot about periods and midwives and so on, so I think people did.

Your name is amusing me in the context of this thread btw.

Stubbornstains I agree re Gregory. There's a bit in The Other Boleyn Girl where Mary Boleyn is bleeding after giving birth to Henry's child and is told to stuff some sheep's wool up there and get back in his bed. Possibly historically tenuous but viscerally evocative.

But Philippa Gregory wasn't contemporary to then, was she - more 20th century. So I am not sure that proves much about taboos, other than it is less taboo from the latter half of the 20th century. Less taboo, but not entirely gone.

I thought that too, stubborn - I'm surprised Wolf Hall would take about letting corsets out as a sign, before missed 'courses'!

I believe tanneries traditionally had a very distinctive smell (I think they used dogshit as part of the processing, didn't they

They did indeed and called it "pure" I'm sure this is mentioned in Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor which deals with Victorian London so not that long ago.

jeanne Philippa Gregory's books are stuffed full of medieval/ Tudor women interrogating each other about each others' "courses", or lack thereof.....I know she's not very highbrow, but she evokes the perfect storm of gossip and whispering on that subject amongst the servants and ladies in waiting to characters such as Anne Boleyn extremely well.

I dunno Jeanne, maybe I'm way off the mark. But I just don't see how 15th, 16th, 17th, etc Century people could possibly have managed to keep themselves squeaky clean down there, in the manner we do now.

Plenty of countries still manage without modern loo paper - it's not actually essential to keeping yourself clean.

You do get used to smells, so if you live with it all the time, you would notice it less than if you were suddenly landed in the middle of it all from an averagely clean 21st century home in the western world. (By it, I mean the overall background of general smells, rather than any one in particular.)

But I agree that it does seem a lot more taboo than that. I don't really remember reading it in anything - even when you consider the majority of published writers across history have been men, you'd think some would have mentioned it at times, but even in something like Fanny Hill, the only bit I remember of there being blood is in faking virginity loss, rather than periods. (Not that I've read it at all recently, so I could be misremembering.) Admittedly most of my knowledge of Latin literature is from translations at school, but Catullus had some dodgy stuff, and I don't remember him mentioning it either. This may all be down to my lack of reading and knowledge of relevant areas, but I remember reading Fear of Flying, where she bleeds on the floor towards the end of the book, and that's about the only bit of the book I remember - it stuck with me because reading stuff about periods is so unusual, apart from books like Judy Blume, where it's partly to educate 20th century girls and make them feel it's normal. Mostly, it's rarely mentioned at all.

'I think we can safely assume there were probably enough only reasonably (as opposed to perfectly) well wiped arses going about their business, day-in-day-out'

Why?

I think I'm with you on menstruating women not standing out, but I am confused by this one!

Um, didn't women wear clouts (cloths) quite far back?

That's true, Countess - but I think we can safely assume there were probably enough only reasonably (as opposed to perfectly) well wiped arses going about their business, day-in-day-out - as opposed to menstruation - which only happens once a month.

It's more the very idea that menstruatuing women would stand out, above and beyond everyone else at that time due to their odour, that is extremely questionable!

The thing is, though, the taboo doesn't really seem (to my knowledge, which is obviously patchy) to vary in correlation with what we know about how smelly different people at different times were. Maybe it's too simplistic of me to think it would, I don't know.

It's a good point about all the other smells but I don't think we should assume they all had stinky arses - other alternatives to toilet paper work as well.

Also, a lot of industry was more open - I'm thinking particularly of things like tanneries and tallow candle-makers. I believe tanneries traditionally had a very distinctive smell (I think they used dogshit as part of the processing, didn't they? And urine was used in fulling wool material.) Glue-making involved boiling up animal hooves and bones.

I am not sure what tallow smelt of (I've only known candles made of paraffin wax or beeswax), but I'm guessing rancid fat might feature. I am sure candle-makers must have been fairly common businesses, and they didn't have fridges to keep the rendered animal fat and so on in. Must have been especially delightful in summer. I should think a traditional shambles would have been lovely in a hot summer, too, all that blood running down the street. Fishmongers. No fridges, so fruit and veg would have started rotting sooner. All that manual labour, no modern deodorants. Lots of animals in the streets and so on. No modern sewers. No antibiotics, so if someone got an infection, it wouldn't clear up easily (if at all), and it could get smelly. Etc, etc, etc.

A bit of menstrual blood isn't going to be easily noticed in among all that.