Handkerchief history and debates

[allergyboy2001]

http://www.common-place.org/vol-07/no-02/carlson/

A really excellent essay about what people thought about handkerchiefs in the 19th century. There was a debate whether it was appropriate to think of them as fashionable or sentimental items, to be exposed in public, or if they were just utilitarian items which should be hidden away. It was actually a moral controversy, and I thought a few of the arguments struck a little close to home, in terms of my own fetish. Both interesting and thought-provoking.