By bonnet I mean the kind of hairdress worn by women and made from (white?) fabric. When and why did women in Europe start wearing bonnets? Did women of all classes wear some kind of bonnet? What would've been the reaction to a woman not wearing a bonnet?
Just a quick question to clarify - by bonnet, do you mean the caps these two women are wearing, and the white headgear worn by women from (roughly) the Renaissance through the mid-19th century? Or something more specific?