Victorian Secrets

by Sarah A. Chrisman

  After Gabriel left for class and I was alone, I spent a few moments posing in front of the mirror on the bathroom door until I embarrassed even myself with my silly vanity. Then I turned to face my dresser, wondering what on earth I was going to wear. I had effectively dropped two dress sizes in as many minutes, and especially as this was my birthday, I felt like showing off a bit. Unfortunately, my wardrobe had not shrunk with corresponding magic.

  Most of my clothing dated from my original college years, when Seattle was still groping its way out of the grunge phenomenon. (It’s hard for a community to leave behind something that has put it on the world map, no matter how ignominiously.) It tended to be a bit on the loose side, even without the corset. I tried on my various sweaters, former favorites, and rejected them one by one as I saw how unflattering they were. The T-shirts (baggy, unisex, one-size-fits-all things) were even worse, and my jeans wouldn’t even stay up on my suddenly reduced waistline.

  After virtually emptying the contents of my bureau and developing a sizable pile of rejects, I finally settled on a pair of cycling pants coupled with a spandex shirt. If clothing can ponder its surroundings, that old striped shirt must have been as surprised as I was to see its new presentation. It dated from years before and even when it was brand new, it had never fit me in nearly so flattering a fashion.

  Once I’d squirreled away the mounds of rejected clothing into their proper places again, I pulled out yet another birthday present: a new (to me) Japanese manga that was set in Victorian London. A good book, a day off (it was sheer coincidence that I had neither massage class nor work), and the prospect of a late lunch out followed by chocolate cheesecake for dinner. What better way to spend a birthday?

  As I attempted to slump into the sofa in my customary rolled-larva-imitation reading position, I found that the lines of sprung steel up my back prevented it. Truth be told, if I had compared my customary at-rest position in those days to the outline on an evolutionary chart, my posture would have been closer to the ape than to Homo habilis. The corset, however, was thrusting me right through two million years of evolution, smack into the realm of Homo sapien. Welcome to the human race, Sarah Chrisman!

  I couldn’t slump, no matter how I tried. My back muscles rebelled. Sit up straight?! You’ve never asked us to do that before! And on our birthday, too! The indignity!

  However, it was a bit late to change my mind. I had sent Gabriel off to class, and with the laces tied in the middle of my back where I could barely reach them—let alone see them—I was not at all confident in my ability to remove the corset myself. In my mind, claustrophobic visions formed that included trying to untie the bow, but instead accidentally pulling the stays tighter and tighter, strangling myself while muddling the laces into an irrevocable knot . . .

  I decided not to try undoing the laces. I gave up the caterpillar posture on the sofa and pulled a wooden kitchen chair up to the window. In my mind’s eye, I pulled up all the pictures I had seen of Victorian ladies reading and perched gingerly on the edge. As a girl, I had used to practice their posture, thinking how pretty they were with their hands up and books high before their faces. I copied it now, shoulders back, head up, the two covers of the book perched against the palms of my hands. Over the top of the book, I spotted the Seattle skyline outside my window. It was rather an improvement over the dusty floor and my own ungainly feet, which usually framed the edge of my larval-postured reading. I crossed my ankles and tucked my feet beneath my seat.

  When I still had a bit of book left for later, Gabriel came back from classes and spirited me away to lunch. I had decided on the restaurant some weeks previously: The Old Spaghetti Factory, a nineteenth-century warehouse that had been gussied up into a family restaurant known locally for reasonable prices and large portions. The place is a bit of a Seattle classic, and I had fond memories of going there as a child. My mother would urge me to “Eat up!” and get her money’s worth. I’d generally stuffed myself on the free bread and soda refills before the entrée even arrived and rarely failed to go home without a stomachache.

  I could tell, however, that in my current circumstances, that was not going to be an option. I may have been wearing pants with an elastic waistband, but beneath them the corset was compressing my stomach with a force that wasn’t just like steel, but was steel, at least in part. My birthday pancakes had only just begun to settle.

  I dithered and dallied over the menu, finally deciding on the vegetarian lasagna. Since vegetables represent a higher cost to the restaurant than pasta, this was one of the few items with a description that didn’t boast words like “enormous” or “giant.” I’d never tried it before, but had always had a desire to taste it. While we waited for our entrées, the waiter brought around the complimentary bread.

  I could hear the voice from childhood urging me to eat as much as I could hold. “They’ll keep bringing more; don’t waste it!” it said. But I knew that if I did follow the old advice, I’d be too full to enjoy the lasagna that was coming, and that really would be a waste. I limited myself to two small slices of the loaf and tucked the rest into my purse.

  You wouldn’t have gone home with more than that anyway, I reasoned. I figured that I wouldn’t be wasting anything if I didn’t ask for more. The thought was sensible enough, but it took effort to bat away my mother’s repetitive voice from the back of my mind.

  After lunch we picked up my birthday cake and got ready for the party. When the guests started to arrive several hours later, I noticed many of them do a slight double take as they walked into the room. My Japanese neighbor, Yukiko, took an especially long look up and down my torso, but said nothing. Part of me wanted to explain, but because I was embarrassed, an equal part did not want to explain. I didn’t even know the Japanese word for “corset.”

  As for the others, what could I tell my rambunctious, American girlfriends? They were all educated women, all liberated, left-wing, and forging careers for themselves. Could I say, “Hi, thanks for coming. I’m wearing a corset”? At the very least, I needed some sort of context to work the subject into a conversation.

  The context came when I was urging everyone to take more cake. (I had my heart absolutely set on a chocolate cheesecake from the Dilettante chocolaterie, and they make their cakes only in a size intended to feed twenty. There were only eight of us at the party, and Gabriel doesn’t eat cheesecake.) After a chorus of protestations from all quarters that everyone was full after their second or third pieces, someone piped up, “Why don’t you have another piece? You’ve only had one, and it’s your birthday!”

  “Well,” I took a deep breath. “I have an excuse.” It was now or never and gods alone knew what my friends would make of my confession. “I’m wearing a corset.”

  To my surprise, there was no chorus of hisses, and my friends, bless them, did not descend to strip me of bondage and burn the symbol of oppression. Instead, there were simply a few curious ahhhs, tinged, incredibly, with approval.

  “I thought you were!” said one friend, a woman likewise named Sarah. She grinned, and I was rather encouragingly shocked to see a roomful of smiles.

  Now that the subject had been broached, everyone wanted to talk about it. “I’ve been thinking about getting one of those,” someone said to my astonishment. Other women want to do this? I’m not a backward, masochistic freak? “What does it feel like?”

  I considered the question, shifting a bit. How does it feel?

  “A lot more comfortable than I would have thought,” I answered truthfully. Sure, I was feeling full after one—admittedly large—slice of cheesecake, but I’d suffered none of the cataclysmic maladies prophesied by numerous sources. I could breathe and I hadn’t fainted. My shoulders were looking forward to a darn good slouch when the corset came off for bed, but deep down I knew that an upright posture was better for my back. “I’ve actually been surprised at how comfortable it is.”

  And surprised by the genuine interest—and even envy—shown by my modern, liberated
female friends. The only one who didn’t lean forward with approving intensity was Yukiko, but I wasn’t sure whether this was a cultural difficulty, a linguistic one, or simply a preoccupation with the exceptionally large piece of cheesecake I had forced on her. (By Japanese standards, it probably would have fed an entire family.)

  After everyone had gone home, I examined my own form in the mirror once more. “Everyone seemed to like it,” Gabriel commented.

  “Yeah . . . ” I ran a hand down my side, marveling at how firm it was. “I was surprised.”

  Gabriel laughed at that. “They’re nice people.”

  “True. True . . . ” My hand came to rest on my hip. But what happens when I meet people who aren’t so nice?

  “Do you want me to help you off with the corset?”

  I nodded. “Yes, please.” My back was aching from being straight for so long, and there was an especially irritated spot right at the base of my spine. Sore curves pained me under my breasts where the underbust corset had been pressing the underwire of my bra into soft flesh. I could breathe more easily than I had expected, but not sigh deeply. I hadn’t died, but I was ready to be comfortable again.

  “It wasn’t as bad as you thought it would be, was it?” Gabriel asked as he untied the corset, loosening the laces at my back.

  I fidgeted with the line of clasps, experiencing brief claustrophobia before I got the sliding motion correct and the grommets parted from the hooks.

  “No, I guess not.”

  I felt an immense relief with release, as the two halves of the corset parted and the stiffened silk fell away. I looked down at my skin, at the red pressure lines the steel boning had left on my stomach and sides. I turned around and saw angry red x’s on my back from the laces.

  “But it’s not something I’d want to do every day.”

  2

  Ribbed Rumors and Stayed Truths

  “French Strip Corset” from the Montgomery Ward Catalogue, 1895. This model sold for 50 cents each, or $5.50/dozen.

  My first taste of corsetry had intrigued me, but I was frightened by what it might do to my body. For years, I had been hearing how bad corsets were—that corsets deformed women’s bodies, broke their bones, tortured them, even killed them. When I had sighed over the bygone Victorian era as a child, my mother had threatened me with the admonition: “If you had lived back then, you would have had to wear a corset!” (This was said in the exact same tone she might have used to say, “If you had been born in Salem, you would have been burned as a witch!”) In high school, my German teacher had told us how women used to break their two smallest ribs to fit into corsets because that was the only way to make their figures small.

  The Saturday before that fateful birthday, I had at-tended a cadaver lab at Bastyr University (an accompaniment to a host of anatomy and ­kinesiology classes I was studying at a different school for my massage practitioner certification). I had seen dissected corpses flayed open, the marks of the vices they had chosen in life etched far beyond skin-deep in their most intimate parts. I had seen the blackened lungs of smokers and held the liver of a woman who’d died of alcoholism; the latter still reeked of alcohol, long after her death.

  The scent of mortality had seemed to come away on me with the cloying formaldehyde fumes and lingered in my mind long after shower and soap had taken the smell of death from my skin. It scared me. Yet, the damages that had turned those living beings into corpses were things in which millions of people—modern people, enlightened people—indulged every day. How would a body be affected by something so archaic it had been abandoned nearly a century before, when radiation was considered healthful and cocaine had only recently ceased to be sold over the counter in drug stores?

  It was clear to me that I needed to do a bit more research. Luckily, I was married to a graduate student of information science (i.e., library school.) Gabriel found me a selection of books on corsets from the University of Washington’s extensive libraries, and he tracked down several websites devoted to modern corsetry. (Sometimes, it seems like a person can find practically anything on the Internet.)

  Since I was starting from a position of complete ignorance, the first things I learned about corsets were highly basic terminology and history. I had only recently learned the difference between an underbust corset (one that fits under the breasts, such as Gabriel had given me) and an overbust one (which supports the breasts, and therefore does not require a separate brassiere). Launching myself into research, I began to develop a core knowledge of corset facts.

  The metal strips attached to the clasps and running down both sides of the front are, together, called a busk. Originally, the busk was a single piece of wood, metal, whalebone (i.e., baleen—but more on this later), or other stiff material; its function was to support the corset. Being highly intimate and close to the heart, early one-piece corset busks were sometimes carved with romantic sentiments and given as gifts to lovers.

  Back in the days when a corset’s busk was a single, solid piece, a woman would have to unlace the corset completely to remove it—or else loosen it significantly and pull it over her head like a sweater. (Later, I had the opportunity to watch a historical costumer putting on a Renaissance-style corset in this manner. It took her a full five minutes to drag out the laces as far as humanly possible, then subsequently wriggle and squeeze her way headfirst into the stretched-out corset. She resembled nothing so much as a bloated boa constrictor trying to force its way down a shrew hole.)

  In the nineteenth century, someone had the clever idea of splitting the busk and putting clasps on it. This did away with the quaint custom of lovers’ engravings upon the busk (since it was split and covered with clasps), but meant the laces could mostly stay in place. They needed to be loosened only a few inches to slacken pressure on the clasps for the corset’s removal, no wriggling required. The clasps (which I had seen as a needless complication) were, therefore, actually in place down the front to make it easier—not harder—to put on and take off the corset. I read with interest of the spoon busk, a late Victorian innovation that was said to make corsets dramatically more comfortable, but could find no specific pictures of it and so I filed the knowledge away for future examination.

  Left to right: Spoon busk (the curved shape at the bottom is to cup the wearer’s belly), straight busk, corset bones.

  The corset itself can be called a “figure,” “form,” “body,” “set of stays,” “pair of stays,” or simply, “stays.” The lines of stiff material supporting the corset are “stays,” “ribs,” or “bones.” The first of these terms for the little metal supports is self-explanatory; the second comes from their placement on the body: they’re stiff things on the torso, though one would not expect them to be called “knuckles.” The term “bones” comes from the most popular material for them in the nineteenth century, which was whalebone. More properly called baleen, it hangs from the upper jaws of certain whales and is actually made of keratin, like human fingernails. However, early whalers were not exactly known for their scientific sophistication (the sperm whale got its name from their odd belief that it stored extra semen in its head) and their misnomer stuck.

  Some might call this attention to etymology pedantic, but it is vitally important. The worst slanders that the twentieth century heaped on the corset hinged upon that one word—bones—and the critics got it wrong.

  I was absolutely fascinated to learn most nineteenth century writings that reference “broken bones” refer not to women’s ribs, and not to human bones at all, but to the whalebone ribs of corsets.

  Any garment that is worn regularly will begin to show wear over time, especially if it is worn under tension. Moreover, it must be remembered that the substance in question is a protein analogous to fingernails: It is thicker and tougher, but it was supposed to hang in large plates constantly exposed to sea water. It was not meant to be chopped up into fussy pieces and put under strain on dry land. Baleen gets brittle over time. Understandably, it breaks, just as finge
rnails break. The notorious “broken bones” and “broken ribs” were actually a millinery, not a medical, emergency.

  Learning this opened up an entirely new realm of fascination for me. How many other lies had I been forced into believing over the years, and what truths were they deforming? I devoured research books while nibbling my meals and lurked through web pages to expose the facts.

  Another misconception I was fascinated to see de-bunked was the idea that stays were worn only by privileged, upper-class women. Modern, glossy-paged popular books about beauty and body image are quick to perpetuate this myth1, but upon examination, they never offer any actual evidence to support these claims—or at least, none that hold up to analysis. The actual truth of the matter is that corsets were worn by all classes of Victorian women, not just the idle rich. Isaac Singer’s invention of the sewing machine in the mid-nineteenth century revolutionized the millinery industry, and corsets were one of many garments that became widely and cheaply available after its universal adoption.