The text discusses how women in the past maintained modesty by covering their hair and distinguishing themselves from unmarried women. It emphasizes the beauty and charm brought by proper styling of hair. The passage also touches on how children learn about customary dress, including head coverings, and how they encounter different and unusual styles.
Service and Duty of the Women
Women kept their natural head covering of hair (which young unmarried women shared) and did not have a cover for the face to distinguish themselves from unmarried women, showing modestly that they were not to be desired by others. It was also to indicate that they were not to be uncovered except for their own husbands. This head covering among young women, because they were still to be desired (like the face, one might say, the rear must help a man) has no place. Just as nobody willingly buys a cat in a sack. There is no cover or garnishing that makes women more charming than the proper styling and laying of hair pins. Faces can be largely transformed by this; making them more beautiful or distorted. Thus hair and its arrangement can make a long narrow face fuller and more distinguished; those that are too full can trim and better refine what is there. Those who've never sufficiently heed this, or believe we pin a quack upon the sleeve; can have them shown by young children and by the sucklings. For just as most children are commonly handled and trained by their mothers, wet nurses, babysitters and the like, they gradually gain a sense of a certain daily covering, be it cap, kerchief, hair arrangement, or other head coverings, and with that gain knowledge. It often happens that when they by chance encounter someone with different and unusual headdress, be it then a black pirate...
Translation Notes:
- "Maaxel en Dienst der" translates to "Service and Duty of"
- "Hayr-Tuyten" refers to hair pins or hair arrangements.
- "Swart Kaper" translates to "black pirate" or could be figuratively referring to an unusual style.