A bit of
Corset History
(based on a chapter in Collector's Guide to Vintage Fashions)
“One of the highest
entertainments in Turkey is having you go to their baths,” Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu wrote in Godey’s Lady’s Book in the 1850s. “When I was first
introduced to one, the lady of the house came to undress me—another high
compliment they pay to strangers. After she slipped off my gown and my
stays, she was very much struck by the sigh of them and cried out to the
ladies in the bath, ‘Come hither, and see how cruelly the poor English
ladies are used by their husbands. You need not boat, indeed, or the
superior liberties allowed to you when they lock you up in a box.’”
“The box” in which every Victorian lady
came gift–wrapped was the corset. Today, it seems amazing that women went
about their daily lives—shopping, keeping house, rearing children, dancing,
even
playing sports—while barely able to bend over in their corsets. Did every
Victorian woman cry “Tighter!” to her maid, as the fictional Scarlet O’Hara
did? Did not one ever suspect that a tightly–cinched waistline and the
“vapors” were somehow related? Though Scarlet turned up her nose and pouted,
“Pooh! I never fainted in my life!” the truth is that “to lace or not to
lace” was a major concern for many women.
A c. 1900 corset ad.
Some experts did tell Victorian women that
corsets caused everything except old age and war: “What a host of evils
follows in the steps of tight–lacing,” Victorian author Mrs. Merrifield
wrote, “indigestion, hysteria, spinal curvature, liver complaints, disease
of the heart, cancer, early death!” At the same time, other sources warned
of the dire consequences of not wearing corsets. “We have just received a
letter,” wrote the editor of Dress in 1888, “in which the writer
declares that a woman’s waist, left to itself, will grow larger and larger
every year, until it measures nearly or quite as much as the bust!”
Actually, 19th century ladies felt
fortunate that the corset of their era had evolved into such a comparatively
“modern” (and relatively comfortable) contraption. Peterson’s
remarked in 1864: “The long, ungainly corset, as unbending as a coat of
armor, and filled with whalebone and steel, oppressing the chest and keeping
the body in close and painful imprisonment, has now been discarded, much to
the benefit of the health and comfort of ladies...No French lady would think
of wearing the old ‘instrument of torture,’ as it is now called.”
Although the new corset was a far cry from
the old steel cage, which flattened the entire upper body, as well as
whittling the waist, it had a marked effect on women’s everyday lives. Not
only were corsets required garments while “in society,” but there were
rust–proof corsets for swimming, short corsets for horseback riding, corsets
with elastic inserts that made housekeeping chores easier, “electric”
corsets that replaced whalebone with magnetic strips and claimed to “ward
off and cure diseases...”—a corset for every occasion and for every
imaginable costume.
Corsets even dictated how a lady
dressed—not only what she wore, but how she put it on. Her morning routine
began by slipping on her stockings and (if her corset did not have attached
garters) separate elastic garters to hold them up. Then, she would most
likely put on her shoes, since it would be difficult to bend over once her
corset was on. Next came her drawers and then her chemise—worn under the
corset to protect it from body oils that would otherwise quickly make it
necessary to have the corset cleaned by a special laundress. Without a maid
(or at least a sister) to help her into her corset, it would take about a
quarter of an hour for her just to lace herself up. She would, as one writer
described the process in 1837, “pull hard for some minutes, next pausing to
breathe, then resume the task with might ‘til after perhaps a third effort,
she at last succeeds and sits down, covered with perspiration.” An 1871
issue of The Metropolitan sarcastically described the method that had
been used a decade earlier by ladies, “when the size of the waist was of
more importance than the size of the brain.” Said the editor, “There were
bed–posts in those days, and any young lady who hadn’t fortune sufficient to
maintain a strong dressing maid took a little friendly assistance from those
posts by looping her corset laces about one of them, and then pulled her
body away with all its weight.”
Even when this process was complete, the
lady was still less than half dressed. A corset cover (necessary to help
hide the corset’s bones once she was fully dressed), a bustle or crinoline,
several layers of petticoats, and then, finally, her dress, was put on.
It was a lot of work, but in a society
where marriage was essentially a woman’s only career, looks were crucial.
And, as one Victorian mother put it, while she could not change the color of
her daughter’s hair, her height, or her facial features, she could very
easily make her waist the fashionable ideal. Young girls of six or seven
were often fitted with “training corsets;” though less heavily boned than
adult versions, they were made up of stiff cloth that fit snugly from the
waist up to the armpits with wide shoulder straps to keep the child from
stooping her shoulders.
By the time their daughters were fourteen,
strict mothers graduated them to full–fledged corsets—but the transition was
far from easy. “My daughter wore [the stays] the first night after much
protestation, but on the second I found she had taken them off after I had
returned to rest,” one mother admitted. “I then took the precaution of
fastening the lace in a knot at the top of the lace holes, and for a night
or two this had the desired effect; but she was not long before she cut the
staylace. I have punished her somewhat severely for her disobedience, but
she declares she will bear any punishment rather than submit to the
discipline of the corset.” But the young woman eventually gave in, after a
month of the hated corseting brought her compliments at a party. “[Now] her
only objection is that the corsets are uncomfortable and prevent her from
romping about...” Which was just the point: corsets altered more than the
figure; they also affected the demeanour, and—it was believed—the character,
of the women who wore them.
Although such accounts seem cruel to us,
Victorian society insisted that a mother who corseted her unwilling daughter
was only showing the proper concern for her future as a marriageable maiden.
After all, some gentlemen found a small waist alluring precisely because it
signified the capacity for self–sacrifice that they associated with true
femininity. “There is something to me extraordinarily fascinating in the
thought that a young girl has for many years been subjected to the strictest
discipline of the corset,” one man wrote. “If she has suffered, as I have no
doubt she has...it must be quite made up to her by the admiration her figure
excited.” Another man opined, “I am certain that half the charm in a small
waist comes, not in spite of, but on account of, its being tight–laced, and
the uneasiness caused by [the corset].”
Other men disagreed, emphatically. “I
believe that this supreme folly is perpetrated by women solely for the
admiration of one another,” a gentleman wrote. “I never yet met with a man
who admired a small waist. Personally, I cannot conceive [a figure to be]
elegant which approximates that of the wasp, an insect I could never bring
myself to think handsome.”
Whatever the opinions
of the general public, doctors continually inveighed against the dangers of
extreme tight–lacing. “What is most singular is that women are aware of the
injuriousness of the corset—they instinctively feel that its action is an
unnatural and eminently hurtful one,” a doctor wrote to Godey’s in
the 1860s. “Here is the proof. If...a lady falls ill in a crowded assembly
of any kind, a general cry is raised by the others, ‘Cut her lace!’ This is
done instantly—the compressing machine is opened, air rushes into the lungs,
the victim breathes and recovers.”
Despite these dire warnings, Victorian
fashion magazines are full of letters written by women bragging about their
tightly corseted waistlines. Some ladies claimed to have 17, 16—even 13—inch
waistlines, yet collectors rarely find examples of Victorian women’s dresses
with waistlines of less than 20 inches. The reason for the disparity is that
writers of such letters assumed readers would understand they were speaking
of their corset size—not their actual waist measurement. When worn properly,
the back edges of a corset do not meet, leaving a gap of at least two—and
sometimes as much as 5 or 6—inches. Therefore, a woman bragging of her 17
inch corset would have had a corseted waist measuring anywhere from 19 to 22
inches.
One young lady (who signed herself “Common
Sense”) pointed out in a letter to a fashion journal that even if a lady
cinched her wait in 7 inches or so, she wasn’t really crushing her middle.
“Let anyone draw herself up to her full height by trying to touch some
imaginary object far above her head,” she wrote. “She will find her waist a
good seven inches smaller...[therefore] the corset cannot be said to squeeze
the waist.” And The Metropolitan speculated in 1871: “Statistics tell
us that the number of women is much more than that of men, the world over.
Now, the general use of the corset would very soon, we should imagine,
affect this social distribution, were they productive of the fearful
physical troubles supposed to be generated by them.”
Even if the tiny waists portrayed in
fashion illustrations were hardly a realistic image of the Victorian figure,
corsets remained a lady’s “indispensable.”
Uncomfortable as they were, their advantages out–weighed their inconveniences. Not only did the corset make a beautifully fashionable figure available to most every woman, but as one period magazine stressed, it gave “evidence of a well–disciplined mind and well–regulated feelings.” In the meantime, corsets, the true “gilded cage” of the Victorian era, brought the Victorian male to his knees, while it safely held the Victorian lady respectably upright.
(c) Copyright 1999 by Kristina Harris
07/25/2015