Attitudes Towards Menstruation and Menstrual Blood in Elizabethan England

Abstract

Menstruation and menstrual blood are topics that have been neglected by many historians yet they are vital concepts to use in understanding early modern society. This article attempts to resolve this tack of historiographical coverage by offering a concise analysis and discussion of the flux and its consequences in the Elizabethan period—an age that, in many ways, was torn between tradition and innovation. In doing so, it covers issues such as conception, phlebotomy, gender and health. The article, however, is by no means comprehensive—such is made impossible by the vast range of attitudes and considerable ambiguity with which menstruation and menstrual blood were treated. However, it does provide the first step in discovering more about this little-discussed but deeply significant flux, which future historians may build upon and use to inform their understandings of the early modern period.