THE VICTORIAN INFLUENCE ON THE CORSET

BY MISTRESS MICHELLE

[ part 1 ]

Although, as we have seen from a previous article, corsets in one form or another have been with us since medieval times, there is no doubt that these garments reached the peak of development during the Victorian age. In the name of fashion, they became so rigorous as to be classed almost as instruments of torture.

Stays began to be composed not simply of whalebone or hardened leather but of bars of iron or steel three to four inches broad and many of them no less than eighteen inches in length. A ladies' magazine reported that it was no unusual thing `to see a mother lay her daughter down upon the carpet and, placing her foot upon her back, break half a dozen laces in tightening her stays.' The excuse put forward for subjecting young girls to such arduous constriction was that, if one started the practice early enough, it would not become such a torture in later life! At the beginning of the Victorian era there were even `schools' where girls underwent a form of figure training. There is a report of a pupil at such a school, aged but 13, who was fitted with corsets which did not open in front and were fastened by the under governess in such a manner that to attempt to unlace them during the night would be immediately detected at the morning's inspection. After the first week or two she felt no discomfort or pain of any kind though, as she was still growing, her stays became proportionately tighter.' Who can say, one is forced to ask, that this helpless young creature did not feel any discomfort or pain?' Surely it would be impossible for anyone to endure such a crushing garment without the most acute discomfort and for the whole night long. It seems at this distance impossible to approve of such practices, yet there were plenty of people ready to speak and write on the benefits a girl or a woman received from such restrictive practices. Ancient history was even dragged up, with hour-glass illustrations, as proof. Examples of the tight lace cult came from Java, Ceylon, the South Seas, Circassia, Egypt, Persia, India, Palestine and even Greece and Rome. The intervening interval of the Middle Ages was always lightly passed over for that was a period when the waist was allowed to be its natural self. At least to a very considerable extent.One can only assume that the advocates of such a cruel fashion must have been sadistically minded. At least, they wished to see women placed under some form of restraint, thus emphasising the domination of the male. One must also assume that many women must have been masochistically minded to submit to such things. Still, as we still know, women have always been so vain and such slaves of fashion, they will put up with practically anything to outdo another woman or capture male attention. The recent horrible outcrop of platform soles and high- wedge heels is a typical example of this.

Naturally not everyone was in favor of such tight corseting. In 1828 a middleclass tradesman wrote as follows:

`My daughters are living instances of the baleful consequences of the dreadful fashion of squeezing the waist until the body resembles that of an ant. Their stays are bound with iron in the holes through which the laces are drawn so as to bar the tremendous tugging which is intended to reduce so important a part of the human frame to a third of its natural proportion. They are unable to stand, sit or walk, as women used to do. To expect one of them to stoop would be absurd. My daughter, Margaret, made the experiment the other day; her stays gave way with a tremendous explosion and down she fell upon the ground, and I thought she had snapped in two.'

Afew years later, in 1837, an article in a magazine called `Female Beauty' stated:

`Women who wear very tight stays complain that they cannot sit upright without them, they are compelled to wear night stays when in bed . . when the young lady spends a quarter of an hour lacing her stays as tight as possible, and is sometimes seen by her female friends pulling hard for some minutes, next pausing to breathe, then resuming the task with might and main, till after perhaps a third effort she at last succeeds and sits down covered with perspiration, then it is that the effecL of the stays is not only injurious to the shape but is calculated to produce the most serious consequences. Despite the obvious dangers and discomforts, women were not deterred, however. Many adult women boasted waists of no more than sixteen inches. One such, writing in the magazine `Queen' claimed such a waist and perfect health as well, saying: `if the various organs are prevented from taking a certain form or direction, they will accommodate themselves to any other with perfect ease.'

Somehow such a fantastic statement is so typical of the Victorian era. Their knowledge of medicine and science was still remarkably small yet, in their arrogance, they already assumed `they knew it all!'

Considerably later on, in 1868, a woman confessed in the `Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine' that she had never laced tightly before being married. Then she discovered her husband was very much in favour of a small waist. At the time, her natural waist was twenty three inches (which many women today would be quite content with!) but undeterred, she ordered a pair of fourteen- inch stays and, on the very day of purchase, managed to lace her waist down to eighteen inches. Then, sleeping in her corset at night she got her maid to tighten it one inch every day, until the laces met and her waist was fourteen inches. For the first few days the pain was very great . . but in a month or so I would not have taken them off on any account.' This lady added that the admiration she received from her husband amply rewarded her for her pains!

Forty or fifty pupils at a well known boarding school were subjected to the tightest of lacing every day . . . however much they might protest. One of the girls in a letter of protest wrote:

`We are daily imprisoned on vices of whalebone drawn tight by the muscular arms of sturdy waiting maids . . . all entreaties are in vain and no relaxation of the cruel laces is allowed during the day under any pretext except decided illness.

When this letter was published it aroused quite a furore. Not one in sympathy for the girls, however. Masses of letters came from school-mistresses who practised similar cruelties on their pupils. Tight-lacing was defended to the death and excused on grounds that ranged from `She did not experience any inconvenience after the first two years' to `it only makes girls temporary sufferers.'

In the 1830's things became just fractionally easier for some women. India rubber had arrived and there were such advertisements as: