Why did 19th century women wear their sun bonnets, or not?
Women who don’t wear bonnets…
- make themselves “as rough and coarse as ever [they] can, by way of being independent.”
- look– at age 26– “like a runnet* bag that had hung six weeks in the chimney corner”
- make themselves “too ugly for any use except scaring the crows off the corn”
…according to a Missouri newspaper column published in 1849.
* A rennet-bag is the fourth stomach of a ruminant (cow), a traditional natural source of enzymes for making cheese.
A humorous condemnation of women who seemingly don’t take enough pride in their health and appearance.
In 1849, James K. Polk occupied the White House, 30 states had thus far been admitted to the Union, and Mrs. Swisshelm had a bee in her bonnet about the behavior and attire of Midwestern, backwater women. The weekly newspaper serving the town of Glasgow in central Missouri published a saucy opinion column entitled “Letter to Country Girls,” attributed to Mrs. Swisshelm. In her 800 word rant, the writer lays into women who, in her view, have their priorities out of order with regards to skincare and other health habits.
In addition to advice about the wearing of bonnets, the essay also includes a host of additional opinions about what happens when women do not wear protective gloves, spend too much time sacrificing their bodies to household chores at hoe and hearth, and maintain a crude diet.
Read the full text of the newspaper column:
LETTER TO COUNTRY GIRLS.
Mrs. Swisshelm in a late number of the “Saturday Visitor,” has the following letter to country girls. She talks “right out” to them:
You know I said that I could quilt almost as fast as two of you. The reason is, I take care of my hands. One half of you are too proud to do this.– You would not be caught putting a glove on to sweep, or hoe, or weed in the garden, because you think it would look as if you wanted to be fine ladies. If you see any one take care of her hands or careful to wear a sun-bonnet to preserve her complexion, you say she is “proud and stuck up.” But it is you who are proud. You have an idea you look well enough at any rate. So you just make yourself as rough and coarse as ever you can, by way of being independent. Your hands grow as stiff and hard as if you held a plough and swung a scythe, and when you take a needle you can scarcely feel it in your fingers. This is wrong.
There are many things which woman ought to do, which require their hands to be soft and pliable, and they should be careful to keep them so, in order to make them useful. Every woman who lives in the country should knit herself a pair of woolen gloves, with long fingers, closed at the tops– not mits, to let the fingers get hard.– There should be a piece of ribbed work at the wrist to make them stay on.– When you use your hoe, rake or broom put on your gloves–when you take hold of a skillet, pot, or kettle-handle, take a cloth to keep your hands from being hardened. When you wash clothes or dishes, do not have water so hot as to feel unpleasant. Many girls scald their hands until they can put them into water almost boiling. Such hands are unfit to use a needle or a pin. They are not so good to hold a baby or dress a wound. Take care of your hands, and do not forget your faces. I have seen many country girls who at sixteen had complexions like alabaster, and at twenty-six their faces would look like a runnet bag that had hung six weeks in the chimney corner.
One reason of this is, they do not wear a bonnet to protect them from the sun. Another reason is, the habit of baking their faces before a wood fire. I have seen women stand before a great roasting fire and cook, until I though their brains were as well stewed as chickens; and they would get so used to it that they would make not attempt to shield their faces from the heat.– Nay, they will sit down in the evening and bake their faces by the hour; and this is one of the reasons why Americans grow old, withered and wrinkled fifteen years before their time.
But another and the greatest reason is, your diet. People in this country live too well and eat too much hot bread and meal. Country people usually eat richer food than those who live in the cities, and that is a reason why, with all their fresh air, their average age is little greater than that of city folks. Thousands of beautiful blooming country girls, makes old, sallow-faced women of themselves before they are thirty, by drinking coffee, smoking tobacco, and eating hot bread. They shorten their lives by these practices about as much as city ladies with their fashionable follies. I do not know what you think about it girls, but I think it is as much of a sin for women to get old, brown, withered faces, by eating too much, as it is for men to get red noses by drinking too much. Very few people think it a disgrace to have a bilious fever; but I would just as leave the doctor would tell me that I was drunk as that I was bilious.
The one would come from drinking too much; and what is the difference—all this is a serious matter, for it affects health and life; and the reason why I talk about your complexions in speaking of it is, that everybody loves to look well whether they will acknowledge it or not. Now people cannot look well unless they are well; and no one can be well very long who does not try to take care of herself. The woman who roasts her head at the fire disorders her blood, brings on headaches, injures her health, and makes her face look like a piece of leather; when she swallows hot coffee, hot bread, greasy victuals and strong pickles, she destroys her stomach, rots her teeth, shortens her life, and makes herself too ugly for any use except scaring the crows off the corn.
J. G. S.
Glasgow Weekly Times
Glasgow, Missouri, Thursday, May 31, 1849.
[Additional paragraph breaks added for improved legibility.]
What were women’s priorities?
In this humorous essay, we can see what different women of this time and place may have valued. Perhaps women living on isolated homesteads might have done well to take more care and pride in their appearance, as Mrs. Swisshelm exhorts. But, equally likely, constantly dealing with cumbersome bonnets or gloves may have made the daily grind of household labor even more difficult for the women who bore the burdens of subsisting in remote locations.
Of particular interest, is what is missing from Mrs. Swisshelm’s reasoning in scolding these hypothetical “country girls” for not wearing their bonnets. She calls attention to the perceived ugliness of a darkened and weathered face, but neglects to mention the goal of minimizing physical pain, such as sunburn, by regularly wearing a sunbonnet. Using scalding hot water for washing or enduring the heat of a cooking fire can also be painful, but country women choosing to build a tolerance for unpleasant tasks rather than wearing more protective clothing is an ignoble and unacceptable strategy in the writer’s eyes. In present society, people often aim to spare themselves from pain by slathering on sunblock, or instead of building calluses on their hands, religiously wear gloves for gardening tasks. It seems that such a mindset about protecting one’s body may have struck folks as quite alien in the mid-19th century.
A “letter to country girls,” or a letter at their expense?
The delivery of this harsh advice, no doubt, entertained readers through exaggeration. While this piece claims to be the opinion of a single woman, it was clearly published for men and women of all social classes to read and get a chuckle from the unvarnished and sometimes outright insulting language. Though entertaining and hyperbolic, there is likely some accuracy to the general portrayal of behaviors addressed in the letter, or the words would have fallen flat and not have been worth publishing at all. The account of Christiana Tillson, at least, corroborates this portrayal by describing the similarly unrefined habits of her log-cabin dwelling neighbors in 1820’s Southern Illinois, including dressing immodestly or inadequately and smoking tobacco.
Well-meaning advice underlies the sharp words.
This spicy delivery of an opinion about such a seemingly mundane issue delivers a funny perspective on the wearing of sunbonnets and other health habits of the time. Did this article convince more women to adopt practices for health and safety with softer words and pleas? Maybe, maybe not. The harsh delivery of the message may have been just the right approach,— as long as the target audience was literate and receptive in the first place. And, despite the sharpness of her message, the core of Mrs. Swisshelm’s advice is reasonable on some level. It all depends on what goals “country girls” might have. If they wished to live long, slightly more comfortable lives, perhaps wearing a sunbonnet more often would have done them some good.
Do you agree with Mrs. Swisshelm, or do you think she should have kept her opinions to herself?
The original text from the Glasgow Weekly Times
Further Reading:
If you enjoyed this newspaper excerpt, you will likely also appreciate “A Woman’s Story of Pioneer Illinois” by Christiana Tillson, a private and candid memoir of a well-educated Massachusetts woman who experienced first hand the hardships of remote log cabin life. She provides vivid details about her travels and interactions with her rural neighbors.
More to come…
Women wearing sunbonnets: Fact or Fiction?
Were sunbonnets really in widespread use by American women, or is the iconic pioneer woman’s hat merely a popular myth?
More in this multi-part series about 19th Century Sunbonnets is forthcoming, with Mid-19th Century Sunbonnets (Part 2) to be published soon.
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