Or a fashion of older people in a village. I could observe the same in Eastern Europe when I was a kid. Covering hair by women, actually married women, was a universal sign of ownership by a men (she is taken) in whole Europe and Middle East. I think in India too. It might as well got started by Assyrian aristocracy, spread through Near East, and then with Christianity to the whole Europe. What is interesting not many women realize significance of this custom. They perceive it as a sign of modesty, a proper thing to do, or local tradition or fashion. My mother never enters church with "naked" head.
Funny thing is when I was a kid I thought this was a discrimination against men. They never let me, or any men, into the church in a hat. However all women could wear scarfs, barrettes or hats there.
You're right that no women went to church without a veil. I still have the one I wore when I was young.
However, at least in Italy the kerchief thing was basically a "peasant" tradition. Even women from working class households didn't wear them, and they weren't limited to married women either. Often, it was a way to keep the hair out of the face when working. Middle class women didn't do farm or factory work; perhaps that's why they didn't wear them. Women wore hats, of course, but so did men.
Also, you can't compare this even with a hijab, much less a full body covering like a burka. Those things are like shrouds! One of the things I adored about Oriana Fallaci is that she tore than damn thing off and dumped it right in front of Khomeini.
This total covering up of women is really an Islamic thing...absorbed from the culture of Arabia perhaps, not necessarily religious in origin, but now religious by accretion.
The Near East, like the Balkans, was the home of female fertility goddesses, let's not forget. Judaism had a horror of those rites, and of homosexuality. Some of that passed into Christianity, but some of the older attitudes from paganism in Europe and the Near East also survived.
All you need to do to see the gulf that exists between the Islamic world and the Christian world in their attitude towards women is to take a look at historical styles of dress in the west.
Even when women still wore head coverings, they hardly dressed modestly by Islamic standards...Anne, Duchess of York, who became a Queen, Diane de Poitiers, Madame de Pompadour, mistresses to French kings, and then the scandalous dress of Napoleonic France are just some examples. Josephine and her friends pioneered sheer muslin dresses that they sometimes sponged down with water so they would leave virtually nothing to the imagination.
Diane kept the King with her from the time he was a boy until he died decades later, even though she was almost a full generation older. Maybe her style of dress had something to do with it?
http://www.quizz.biz/uploads/quizz/98901/1_FnD6B.jpg
http://www.gogmsite.net/_Media/anne-hyde-16381671-duchess-2.jpeg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...tier,_Madame_de_Pompadour_en_Diane_(1746).jpg
Ninon de Lenclos:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mb6hU_h-M...yaON7DPRo2o/s400/180px-Ninon_de_Lenclos_2.jpg
http://bp0.blogger.com/_mb6hU_h-MnE...rrel9RA/s1600-h/510px-Pauline_Bonaparte_2.jpg
Also, there is nothing comparable to female circumcision even in Judaism, much less in Christianity. That's doubtless a holdover from the pagan Greeks who held that even male circumcision was an abomination.
Likewise, remember that from a woman's point of view, it's a big deal that Christianity didn't permit polygamy, or easy divorce, although royalty could get annulments, of course, and serial polygamists existed, like Henry VIII, although most men just waited for their wives to die in childbirth...they didn't behead them!
Still, where is the tradition like that of Chaucer's Lusty Wife of Bath in Islam? I don't know of any.
http://english.fsu.edu/canterbury/wifepro.html
Historically, I think there's actually a bit of a consensus that the attitude toward women in Christianity, in terms of marriage, but also in giving women a role, even if limited, in religious institutions, was one of the reasons that Christianity gained converts. It was known, before the days of Constantine, as the religion of women and slaves, and the poor.
