1) What is a Corset?
For hundreds of years women (and men) have employed restricting devices to mould their form to the fancy of the day. In Queen Victoria's time, the corset reigned consummate - a body-shaping undergarment gripping the torso from bosom to hips. Unbelievable to actually hold a woman up, it was stiffened with 24 steel or whalebone vertical stays. It complete at the front with metal fasteners and laced at the back as tightly as two maids or a strong husband could manage.
2) The Shape Must Undulate
While other centuries favoured the cone, the tube, the triangle, the Victorians went mad for the hourglass form with a "wasp" waist, so tiny a man could circle it with his two hands. Remember Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, so proud of her 17 inch waist? Well Scarlett fell short of the ideal 16 inch hand span and a 13 inch waist, according to legend, was sometimes managed, all, apparently, without the women's heads exploding.
3) For the Mechanical Engineers
The pressure applied to women's bodies to attain this corollary ranged from 20 to 80 pounds per quadrilateral inch.
4) Too Weak to Stand Up By Themselves
Since women were thought about too fragile and delicate to exist without help, the corset was thought about a curative necessity to support the female body so that she could sit, stand and walk without falling over. Tiny girls, as young as five, were put into corsets and kept there for the rest of there lives, their future contours dictated by this unforgiving underwear.
5) Guardian of Chastity
Respectable young ladies never left home without a chaperone. But, should their human chaperone fail, the corset proved a qualified prophylactic to any disastrous fleshly impulses. Young ladies were very difficult to undress. By the time a seducer attempted to breach chemise, corset, corset cover, and any layers of petticoats, the impulse gave up and died. "Loose women" were those who did not lace tightly enough or, horrors, did not wear a corset at all.
6) Upper Class Stiffs
Since a firmly laced corset made it impossible for a woman to bend over, they were unfit for work, signaling that they had staff to care for their houses, nannies to scoop up their toddlers. They were bone fide members of the free time class. Corset rigidity also made sure the ladies didn't get ideas about independence themselves. It wasn't until the corset was truly shed that women were able join the work forces of the 20th century.
7) Scrambling The Female Body
The corset had essential corollary on the female anatomy. Internal organs were squeezed and displaced, the spine was pushed out of shape and lung capacity gravely reduced when the rib cage lost 3 to 7 inches to corset compression. With the least exertion, like dancing, tightly laced women could not get enough air. They grew dizzy and fainted so much that the "fainting couch" was invented to receive collapsing lovelies at the ball. Even doctors could not tell what a wholesome female body looked like as all the women they examined had been malformed by the corset.
8) The Dark Side
Since a genteel pregnant woman could not be seen out in society, women used the corset to squeeze down evidence of their condition, escaping their "confinement" as long as they could. Tight lacing, even of special "maternity corsets" has been blamed for fetal deformities, miscarriages and still births. This fact did not leave women who needed a means to end a gravidity they didn't want.
9) The Corset's Unlamented Demise
With arrival of the flapper era and the flat-chested tubular figure, as well as the labour needs of the First World War, the killer Victorian corset disappeared. Its ghost today is the modern elastic girdle and other body shaping undergarments. modern women resort to diet and exercise for the slim grace the Victorian lady achieved so painfully with corset laces. I hope we can say we won.
Nine absorbing Tidbits About the Victorian Corset - Or "Cedic, I Feel Faint!" Interested This:
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