ElizabethanLife: Hourglasses are In!

The summer of 1571 is rolling to a close, ladies and gentlemen, and hourglasses are in! 

Men, get a headstart boosting your masculinity this fall with a designer doublet, an armor-like breastplate extending to the shoulders and covering the back and chest, embellished with intricate lacing and stuffed with horsehair, wool, or rags. (You think that's uncomfortable? Suck it up—try putting on a corset.) Complement it with boots, a shirt, hose, ruff, long cloak, and hat on a special occasion, and you're ready to hit the floor! Breeches should reach the knees and be joined by a codpiece in the front. Beware of beards and/or mustaches—keep them trimmed nicely and they can be a definite yes. In an outfit like a suit of armor, you can always be a gallant knight in the eyes of that special someone.

Peasant men can look forward to homespun garments of wool, canvas, fustian, or leather, knitted hose, and hobnail shoes. Appropriate field clothes include tunics, loose breeches, canvas leggings, and thrummed hats. (You'll never be royals...sorry not sorry.)

Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset

Ladies, flaunt your fabulous figure in a stylish dress suited to your socioeconomic status. The royal family sports crimsons and other bright hues trimmed with ermine, but that kind of lux just ain't for the lesser nobles, who've got to settle for fox or otter trim on velvet, silk, and satin. Peasants in the nearing autumn weather can expect to don homemade cotton, leather, or wool garments in pastel colors. 

Broad shoulders, wide hips, and a sleek waist are the way to go, girls, via a separate bodice, sleeves, and kirtle reinforced with wire or whalebone farthingale. For the less curvaceous, a bumroll can add an extra boost to your hip volume. (Most importantly, don't forget the ruff!) Peasant women, keep chugging along in petticoats with front-laced bodices with blue or black kirtles. (Bloodstains, ball gowns, trashing the hotel room...)

The paler the skin, the higher your (apparent) social rank! Pamper your face and neck with ceruse: a makeup base of white lead and vinegar, cheek dyes of cochineal or vermilion, drawn-on beauty spots, red lipstick, and plucked eyebrows.

Mary Queen of Scots

Queen Elizabeth of England

At ElizabethanLife, we can't decide who looks more ravishing in her noble ruff and elegant updo: Mary Queen of Scots or Queen Elizabeth of England. Tell us, ElizabethanLifers, who wore it better?

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ Picture This

For my choice memoir, I read Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, a hauntingly detailed depiction of Kaysen's two years in the psychiatric ward of McLean Hospital after being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. Kaysen constantly compares the mental hospital to a "parallel universe", stating that though it is invisible from our current standpoint, the view of the outside is clear from the inside.

Kaysen's major internal conflict is that she struggles to delineate the boundary between the two worlds of sanity and insanity. Thus, for my symbolic illustration, I drew a person sitting inside a snow globe-bubble-like thing, whose outer glass-bubble-thing is fluid, and penetrated as the person inside pushes out. I guess my odd-looking Matched-esque drawing could be interpreted a number of ways, but I intended for the bubble to represent the unclear distinction between the "normal" world and the world of the mental hospital. The person's breaking free of these boundaries symbolizes the fact that Kaysen is in denial about why she has been placed in a psychiatric hospital, and she struggles with a sense of belonging and acceptance of her situation. The bubble could also be thought of as confinement of the person inside, representative of the tight security and oppression faced by Kaysen and her comrades, which is a second major conflict (but not quite what I'm discussion right now. I digress.)

Toward the end of the book, Kaysen directly poses her questions about the boundary between sanity and insanity: "Someone who acts 'normal' raises the uncomfortable question, What's the difference between that person and me? which leads to the question, What's keeping me out of the loony bin?" (Kaysen 124). In a way, she also questions the reasons she was sent to the mental hospital in the first place, as she believes there are many others out there who are not so different from her, and may be wondering the same thing upon hearing her story. She implies that she and others like her were wronged, and forced into lives they did not choose.