Aren’t You Hot in those Clothes?
This is a question the role-players hear often in this season and the answer is, Yes. Very.
It is deep summer here in Southern New England, and today was the fourth (or was it fifth?) day of +90-degree temperatures with smothering humidity.
The role-players, dedicated to their craft and to portraying the Plymouth colonists as accurately as current research allows, are wearing at least two layers of clothing plus wool petticoats for the women. They hear this question a lot.
It is hard to answer it while in character. The colonists had to protect themselves from sunburn and biting insects without liquid sunscreen and insect repellent, in which case it makes sense to cover up. They also had a mortal, almost pathological fear of cold, which is excellently illuminated in Susan Vincent’s Clothing the Elite. Add to all this the evidence of a letter written by colonist Francis Higginson in the late 1620s in which he marvels to his friends back home that he, formerly always so cold, goes now as lightly clad as any, wearing only a cassock and unlined stuff breeches and only one cap upon his head. Nearly nakey. (By this time the practice of wearing a linen shirt next to the skin was so widespread that we assume he was wearing one under his cassock [Margaret Spufford, The Great Re-Clothing of Rural England] which means two layers of clothing and one hat.)
In addition, every society has standards for appropriate dress in particular situations. The colonists clung to their standards in the face of extreme conditions partly as a way to express their Englishness and maintain what they considered to be civilization in opposition to the perceived wildness of their surroundings.
The funny thing is that the modern visitors toiling around our outdoor sites on such days in t-shirts and shorts (often without sunhats and water bottles) aren’t really any more comfortable than the layered staff.
Even though in modern America our standard for fully dressed in the summer involves much less clothing than the 17th-century colonists wore, there are lines we won’t cross either. Besides which, at a certain point removing more clothing isn’t going to make you any more comfortable.
I realize I uncharacteristically threw a bunch of references in this post without complete citations. I will get them for you when next I’m in the office. I’m home for a couple of days, and have been much of last week (sick kids, husband away, not a REAL vacation) but the fact that my home computer does not like this heat has made my posting erratic. Apologies for that.
Tags: , Francis Higginson, hot, Margaret Spufford, Susan Vincent
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:32 am
Back when I worked on historic sites and now when I go to the occasional reenactment, my response was/is “No hotter than you are”. That allowed an entry into discussions about fiber choices, modesty and cultural expectations.
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:24 am
Yes, this is all clearly true. When you are layered up with wool and linen, and someone asks you about being hot, an appropriate answer is, “aren’t you hot, too?” Because they are. But they are often MORE uncomfortable, as they are getting sun on their skin.
I’ve learned to wear MORE clothes when out in the sun in modern clothes, as a result of wearing my period (18th C). At my daughter’s high school graduation (really hot, unprotected in the sun), my other daughter kept complaining that she’d have been way more comfortable if she’d only worn her colonial clothing (including stays!). She was right, I was regretting our clothing choice, too!
August 21st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I actually visited the Plantation as a *tourist* with some French visitors on July 20, in the midst of the heat-wave. I was very impressed with how the role-players addressed the heat “in persona”. When I came to the top of the boardwalk stairs into the Colonial village, there were two ladies sitting on a bench enjoying the breeze there off the ocean; later, I exchanged comments about the weather with another woman, who recommended I refresh myself at the “spring” up the hill (a nice way of referring to the water fountain at the visitor/craft center). Most of the staff that day were working on tasks outside and in the shade of trees. That was true in the Wampanoag homestead, too. Well done!