Impact of Early Modern English Cosmetic Recipes

By Taylor Rowland

Picture of the recipe "To keep the Hair clean, and to preserve it" that is referenced in the essay.

Woolley, Hannah. A Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, Or, A Little of Everything Presented to all Ingenious Ladies, and Gentlewomen. London, Printed by T.R. for Richard Lownds, and are to be Sold at the Sign of the White Lion, 1674. https://go.libproxy.wakehealth.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.go.libproxy.wakehealth.edu/docview/2240889505?accountid=14868.

Impact of Early Modern English Cosmetic Recipes

In early modern England, both published guidebooks and handwritten recipe books, which were mostly written by and for women, served as important sources of domestic information. [1] While many of these books included directions for food preparation, they also contained instructions for relieving medical ailments and for cosmetic practices. [2] Towards the end of the sixteenth century in Europe, beauty recipes started becoming more frequent as the production and use of cosmetics became popular. [3] Hannah Woolley, one of the most famous authors of recipe books in the early modern period, gained prominence as the first woman in England to publish a printed recipe book. [4] She produced guidebooks instructing mostly middle- and upper-class women about the proper way to act in the domestic sphere. Woolley informed her readers by conveying social expectations through discussion of fashion and beauty trends. [5] Recipe books, such as those produced by Woolley, served to educate an exclusive class of women while restricting others through an emphasis on the expectations English society had for women and their cosmetic practices.

Considerable research has been completed surrounding the role of recipe books. Many modern scholars have pointed out the limiting and discriminatory effects these books had on early modern women. Scholars Kimberly Poitevin and Josie Schoel argue that there is a connection between how early modern English women used cosmetics to promote white skin and racialized ideologies with increased colonial exploration. [6] Scholar Edith Snook discusses how cosmetics were an important form of medical knowledge for early modern women. [7] While cosmetic recipes could be restrictive, many women benefited from them as educational opportunities, as evidenced through the writings of Hannah Woolley. [8] This essay seeks to add to the existing literature by arguing that recipe books served a dual role of both aiding a racist and classist ideology as well as being an important source of shared knowledge for some early modern English women.

As a prominent author, Hannah Woolley was a major source of influence in early modern English society. Her recipe books served to instruct women on all aspects of their lives, including the popular beauty techniques of the day. The range of material discussed in Woolley’s writings can be seen in the recipe book A Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet in which Woolley gives advice on the best way to wash one’s hair with a mixture including rosemary and spring water. [9] Woolley notes, “every Morning when you Comb your head, dip a sponge in this water and rub up your Hair, and it will keep it clean and preserve it, for it is very good for the brain.” [10] While this recipe includes important information about maintaining one’s beauty, Woolley also mentions how this practice can preserve the brain. Although it is unlikely that this hair care recipe affected one’s cognitive performance, Woolley mentioning how it helps the brain suggests that recipes educated women about their overall well-being. Poitevin reiterates this idea by mentioning how one’s appearance reflected physical health and emotions. [11] Similarly, Schoel notes that in the seventeenth century, many thought there was a connection between cosmetics and the health of both the mind and body. [12] Therefore, cosmetic recipes did not simply discuss the best method to wash one’s hair, but provided women with important medical knowledge.

Along with providing women with medical information, Woolley also argues for the advancement of women’s education. In the introduction for her book The Gentlewomans Companion, she explains the importance of female knowledge. [13] The first sentence states, “The right Education of the Female Sex, as it is in a manner everywhere neglected, so it ought to be generally lamented.” [14] Woolley criticizes the neglected formal education of women and instructs her readers to support placing more emphasis on the intellect of women. She continues by saying, “Vain man is apt to think we were meerly intended for the Worlds propagation, and to keep its humane inhabitants sweet and clean; but, by their leaves, had we the same Literature, he would find our brains as fruitful as our bodies.” [15] In Woolley’s opinion, women possess the capacity to be just as intelligent as men but lack similar opportunities. Guidebooks like those written by Woolley, however, did not provide much education outside of the domestic sphere. [16] As scholar Dr. Amanda Herbert notes, published recipe books including those by Woolley, taught women how “to behave in ways that were considered in the early modern period to be feminine: they were told and shown how to be friendly, pleasant, good-natured, cooperative, and soft-spoken.” [17] Although Woolley argued for more education for women, she mostly advised how to behave according to social expectations of the era. Recipe books like Woolley’s could be contradictory by endorsing a wider range of learning opportunities for women, but only providing information that pertained to the domestic sphere, exemplifying the narrow benefits of recipes.

Recipe books served as empowering spaces not only for women reading them, but also for the female authors. For example, in one of the medical instructions in A Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, Woolley adds “proved by me” to the end. [18] Woolley sees herself as a useful source of information and also as an authority for medical knowledge. Recipe books facilitated an exchange of information between the female writers and readers, having the potential to advance the expertise of both parties. As scholar Wendy Wall argues, proving the accuracy of one’s recipe was a way in which female authors could practice their own scientific experimentation. [19] When writers like Woolley claimed to have proved their recipes, they were often seen as having specialized knowledge and therefore having authority. [20] Female authors could use recipes to increase their own influence and become experts in their field.

Like printed recipe books, homemade manuscripts informed women on important topics like health through cosmetic recipes. [21] For example, one recipe book written between the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century includes instructions detailing how, “To make Lilp’s Salve,” “To washe the face,” and how “To make Smoothe the skin and take away Freckles.” [22] These recipes all suggest the importance of beauty to the women that were passing around this recipe book. In addition to their aesthetic purpose, recipes like face washes were treated as medical practices since early modern society viewed having blemishes or other facial imperfections as signs of poor health. [23] Cosmetic recipes and recipe books as a whole provided women with a range of educational opportunities, even teaching about medical sciences. Although cosmetic recipes remained within the confines of the domestic sphere, these writings informed female readers how to improve their overall health and wellbeing.

Despite the significant benefits of recipe books, some also had harmful implications. The society in early modern England placed significant value on having a light skin tone, making it a desired beauty standard for women. Recipe books reflected this significance and instructed women on how to achieve fair skin. [24] Woolley’s writing also emphasizes the importance of whitened skin with recipes detailing how “To cleanse the skin of the face, and make it look beautiful and fair.” [25] By reinforcing fair skin as the epitome of female beauty, Woolley and other authors of recipe books reaffirmed an ideal that many women could not achieve naturally. To overcome this obstacle, some face washes contained dangerous ingredients such as mercury that were thought to both cleanse and whiten one’s face. [26] Along with the aesthetic value of fair skin, English society during this period thought that a white skin tone signaled one as being overall healthy. Although recipes claimed their produced whiting effect was meant to improve a woman’s health, these means to achieve a lighter skin tone had dangerous side effects. [27] Recipes that cleansed and lightened one’s face educated women about the popular medical beliefs of the time, but also had serious health risks.

The spread of cosmetic recipes among women did not benefit all classes as these instructions were mostly meant for women of the upper class. One of the most popular beauty trends in early modern England, lightened skin, was epitomized by Queen Elizabeth I. [28] Her excessively white skin tone was linked to “fairness, virtue, class, and Englishness.” [29] Replicating her fair skin became the ideal that English women would try to achieve. [30] Obtaining pristine white skin, however, was not something that was possible for all white English women. [31] Fair and clear skin became associated with women of the upper class while “[having] scabby skin was to risk being identified as lower class.” [32] Working class women were more likely to work outside and be exposed to the sun, causing further difficulties for lower class women to achieve the ideal of fair skin. [33] Although working class women could have attempted to appear as a member of the upper class through skin lightening and smoothing recipes, these artificial methods were unlikely to help them achieve this beauty standard since many included expensive ingredients. [34] The importance of fair skin reflected the superiority of upper class women and reinforced a beauty standard that could only be achieved by a few. As exemplified through recipes to lighten skin, recipe books restricted women by emphasizing standards that only women of the upper class could achieve.

In addition to cosmetic recipes for skin lightening excluding lower class women, these writings also discriminated against women of color and reinforced a prejudicial beauty standard. At the same time that the cosmetics industry was growing, England was having increased contact with foreign entities through trade and colonial conquests. [35] An emphasis on English whiteness reflected anxieties within early modern society as a result of the new associations with indigenous American and African women. [36] Along with new contacts with the Americas, there was also an increase in the importation of foreign goods to England. The increased consumption of these goods fueled anxieties about racial difference. For example, some believed that drinking too much chocolate transported from the Americas could lead to a darkening of skin color. [37] Fearing that consumption of foreign products could cause one to become less white reflected anxieties concerning representing one’s race and therefore their status. Skin color became a tool the English and other Europeans used to characterize superiority, as physically evident through one’s whiteness. [38] As scholar Jennifer Morgan notes, “African women’s ‘unwomanly’ behavior evoked an immutable distance between Europe and Africa on which the development of racial slavery depended.” [39] African women were judged against white English women, with their differences signaling the inferiority of non-whiteness and justifying the system of slavery in the minds of many. The ideal of fair skin formed and maintained this racialist discourse. Recipes that claimed to lighten skin reiterated the necessity of distinguishing racial categories, with whiteness considered superior. [40] Cosmetic recipes contributed to and reinforced the racist notion of white supremacy in early modern English society. Recipe books did much more than simply provide domestic instructions, they also served nefarious purposes.

The prevalence of recipe books during the early modern era in England had important implications as the recipes had both instructional and harmful effects. As seen through some of Woolley’s writings, recipe books encouraged the education of women. Recipes for beauty practices in particular provided female readers with medical knowledge meant to improve overall health. Although recipe books were important spaces for sharing information, most of the teachings only pertained to the domestic sphere. Women received an education while also remaining within their prescribed gender role. The importance of fair skin in recipe books disadvantaged lower class white women as they could often not achieve the beauty standard of white skin. Cosmetic recipes also had discriminatory implications. Recipe books providing instructions for skin lightening supported the emergence of a modern understanding of racial difference and a racialist ideology that emphasized the supremacy of whiteness and the subsequent inferiority of being non-white. Cosmetic recipes and recipe books in general not only impacted early modern English society, but also have lasting effects on present society.

Notes

1. Amanda Herbert, “Cooperative Labor: Making Alliances through Women’s Recipes and Domestic Production,” in Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain, 78-116. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 79-80.

2. Herbert, “Cooperative Labor,”102-103.

3. Kimberly Poitevin, “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race, and Women in Early Modern England.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 11, no. 1 (2011): 60.

4. Lynette Hunter. “Wolley (Woolley), Hannah.” In The Oxford Companion to Food. : Oxford University Press, 2014.

5. Robert Appelbaum, “Rhetoric and Epistemology in Early Printed Recipe Collections,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall/Winter (2003): 10.

6. Poitevin, “Inventing Whiteness,” 71; Josie Schoel, “Cosmetics, Whiteness, and Fashioning Early Modern Englishness,” Studies in English literature, 1500-1900 60, no. 1 (2020): 3.

7. Edith Snook, “‘The Beautifying Part of Physic’: Women’s Cosmetic Practices in Early Modern England,” Journal of women’s history 20, no. 3 (2008): 10.

8. Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion, Or, A Guide to the Female Sex Containing Directions of Behaviour in all Places, Companies, Relations and Conditions, from their Childhood Down to Old Age ... with Letters and Discourses upon all Occasions: Where Unto is Added, A Guide for Cook-Maids, Dairy-Maids, Chamber-Maids, and all Others that Go to Service, the Whole being an Exact Rule for the Female Sex in General (Printed by A. Maxwell for Edward Thomas, 1675), Early English Books Online, 1.

9. Hannah Woolley, A Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, Or, A Little of Everything Presented to all Ingenious Ladies, and Gentlewomen, (London, Printed by T.R. for Richard Lownds, and are to be Sold at the Sign of the White Lion, 1674), 8.

10. Woolley, A Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, 9.

11. Poitevin, “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race, and Women in Early Modern England, ” 68.

12. Schoel, “Cosmetics, Whiteness, and Fashioning Early Modern Englishness,” 9.

13. Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion, 1.

14. Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion, 1.

15. Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion, 1.

16. Herbert, “Cooperative Labor,” 90.

17. Herbert, “Cooperative Labor,” 92.

18. Woolley, A Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, 31.

19. Wendy Wall, “Knowledge:Recipes and Experimental Cultures” in Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen (Penn, 2016), 222.

20. Wall, “Knowledge:Recipes and Experimental Cultures, ” 240.

21. Appelbaum, “Rhetoric and Epistemology in Early Printed Recipe Collections,” 10.

22. “Receipt-Book, 17th-18th Century,” (1690).

23. Snook, “‘The Beautifying Part of Physic,’16.

24. Schoel, “Cosmetics, Whiteness, and Fashioning Early Modern Englishness,” 3.

25. Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion, 174.

26. Snook, “‘The Beautifying Part of Physic,’” 13.

27. Snook, “The Beautifying Part of Physic,” 25.

28. Schoel, “Cosmetics, Whiteness, and Fashioning Early Modern Englishness,” 4.

29. Schoel, “Cosmetics, Whiteness, and Fashioning Early Modern Englishness,” 4.

30. Schoel, “Cosmetics, Whiteness, and Fashioning Early Modern Englishness,” 4.

31. Poitevin, “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race, and Women in Early Modern England, ” 71.

32. Snook, “The Beautifying Part of Physic,” 24.

33. Poitevin, “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race, and Women in Early Modern England, ” 71.

34. Snook, “The Beautifying Part of Physic,” 24.

35. Schoel, “Cosmetics, Whiteness, and Fashioning Early Modern Englishness,” 3.

36. Poitevin, “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race, and Women in Early Modern England, ” 70.

37. Susan Amussen and Allyson M. Poska, “Shifting the Frame: Trans-Imperial Approaches to Gender in the Atlantic World,” Early Modern Women1 (2014): 16.

38. Jennifer L. Morgan, “‘Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder’: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500-1700,” William & Mary Quarterly. (January 1997): 191.

39. Morgan, “‘Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder, 191.

40. Schoel, “Cosmetics, Whiteness, and Fashioning Early Modern Englishness,” 3.

Bibliography

Amussen, Susan and Allyson M. Poska, “Shifting the Frame: Trans-Imperial Approaches to Gender in the Atlantic World,” Early Modern Women (2014): 3-24.

Appelbaum, Robert. “Rhetoric and Epistemology in Early Printed Recipe Collections.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Fall/Winter (2003): 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1353/jem.2003.0008.

Herbert, Amanda. “Cooperative Labor: Making Alliances through Women’s Recipes and Domestic Production.” in Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain, 78-116. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.

Hunter, Lynette. “Wolley (Woolley), Hannah.” In The Oxford Companion to Food. : Oxford University Press, 2014. https://www-oxfordreference-com.go.libproxy.wakehealth.edu/view/10.1093/acref/9780199677337.001.0001/acref-9780199677337-e-2666.

Morgan, Jennifer L. “‘Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder’: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500-1700,” William & Mary Quarterly. (January 1997): 167-92.

Poitevin, Kimberly. “Inventing Whiteness: Cosmetics, Race, and Women in Early Modern England.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 11, no. 1 (2011): 59-89. Accessed November 20, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23242188.

“Receipt-Book, 17th-18th Century,” 1690. https://wellcomelibrary.org/item/b19735029#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=85&z=0.198%2C-0.1898%2C1.3247%2C0.8321, MS.4054. Courtesy of the Welcome Library. Accessed November 17, 2020.

Schoel, Josie. “Cosmetics, Whiteness, and Fashioning Early Modern Englishness.” Studies in English literature, 1500-1900 60, no. 1 (2020): 1–23.

Snook, Edith. “‘The Beautifying Part of Physic’: Women’s Cosmetic Practices in Early Modern England.” Journal of women’s history 20, no. 3 (2008): 10–33.

Wall, Wendy. “Knowledge: Recipes and Experimental Cultures” in Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen, 209-250. Penn, 2016.

Woolley, Hannah. A Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, Or, A Little of Everything Presented to all Ingenious Ladies, and Gentlewomen. London, Printed by T.R. for Richard Lownds, and are to be Sold at the Sign of the White Lion, 1674. https://go.libproxy.wakehealth.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.go.libproxy.wakehealth.edu/docview/2240889505?accountid=14868.

Woolley, Hannah. The Gentlewomans Companion, Or, A Guide to the Female Sex Containing Directions of Behaviour in all Places, Companies, Relations and Conditions, from their Childhood Down to Old Age ... with Letters and Discourses upon all Occasions : Where Unto is Added, A Guide for Cook-Maids, Dairy-Maids, Chamber-Maids, and all Others that Go to Service, the Whole being an Exact Rule for the Female Sex in General / by Hannah Woolley London, Printed by A. Maxwell for Edward Thomas, 1675. Early English Books Online. https://go.libproxy.wakehealth.edu/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.go.libproxy.wakehealth.edu/docview/2240852876?accountid=14868.