Corsets Were Normal
When writing a historical novel of any kind, it is helpful to posses a basic understanding of the clothing of the period. It is especially important when writing romance, as there is usually at least one scene in which your characters disrobe. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of thing you can pick up by watching Hollywood films (though if you pick the right ones, they can be helpful), or even by surfing the web (a lot of stuff out there is just plain wrong).
When writing a historical novel of any kind, it is helpful to posses a basic understanding of the clothing of the period. It is especially important when writing romance, as there is usually at least one scene in which your characters disrobe. Unfortunately, this is not the kind of thing you can pick up by watching Hollywood films (though if you pick the right ones, they can be helpful), or even by surfing the web (a lot of stuff out there is just plain wrong).
For nearly every period of history there are groups of re-enactors out there who are extremely knowledgeable, and who would be overjoyed to share their obsession with you. Hunt them down on the web. Contact them. Ask them for specifics. Ask if you can attend an event and examine their costumes. These people are an invaluable resource. Play your cards right, and you might even finagle your way into costume for the day . . . then you’ll understand how the clothes feel to wear—and nothing can top that!
There is a common misconception that corsets are uncomfortable, and that independent, forward thinking women of “insert your time period here” wouldn’t have worn them. There also seems to be an impulse to create heroes who are “glad their women aren’t silly enough to wear one of those contraptions” or who outright forbid their lady to do so. Either of which is ridiculous (these are both clear cases of modern sensibilities being projected onto people with quite different experiences and expectations). Much like having a modern suitor forbid his girlfriend from wearing jeans. Corsets were normal, and that’s what’s getting lost.
Myths & A Few Notes
The comfort myth: A corset that is made for you, and you alone (as they were up until the late Victorian age, when “mail order” corsets first became available), is very comfortable. They don’t pinch (it’s impossible), they don’t poke (unless the boning is working its way out), and they don’t make it impossible to breathe. With the exception of the mid to late 1800’s, corsets were not designed to give you a small waist, but to lift the breasts, and to give you a smooth base for your clothes to sit on top of. In fact, until the introduction of the metal grommet (1828) and the 2 part metal busk (1829) tightening a corset enough to dramatically change one’s figure was nearly impossible (the fabric would have given out first). The corset merely provided the right silhouette.
The comfort myth: A corset that is made for you, and you alone (as they were up until the late Victorian age, when “mail order” corsets first became available), is very comfortable. They don’t pinch (it’s impossible), they don’t poke (unless the boning is working its way out), and they don’t make it impossible to breathe. With the exception of the mid to late 1800’s, corsets were not designed to give you a small waist, but to lift the breasts, and to give you a smooth base for your clothes to sit on top of. In fact, until the introduction of the metal grommet (1828) and the 2 part metal busk (1829) tightening a corset enough to dramatically change one’s figure was nearly impossible (the fabric would have given out first). The corset merely provided the right silhouette.
The rebel without underwear myth: Ladies (the class about which most authors choose to write) would NOT have gone about without their corsets, anymore than women today would go around without their bras (barring when one is a college students and still possesses gravity defying breasts). Those of us who don’t wear bras simply because social standards tell us we’re supposed to, wear them because the “bounce” of an unrestrained breast can be downright painful if we don’t. Your heroines are not going to feel constrained or put upon by their stays. Quite the contrary, they’d feel naked without them! And for you Regency authors, remember: the scandalous ladies are not the ones who are naked beneath their dresses, but the ones who are wearing knickers!
Making your clothes “fit”: As I said earlier, the corset’s main job has always been to provide the correct silhouette. You simply can’t look like Lady Jane Grey, Marie Antoinette, the Duchess of Devonshire, or Madame X without one. If you make the attempt, the most you’ll achieve is the look of a Halloween costume: A lumpy and ill-fitting mess. It’s impossible to achieve the lines of an Elizabethan gown without a corset (as well as a host of other “underpinnings” such as bumrolls, farthingales, or hoops). Likewise, Medieval ladies require their tightly laced kirtles, Georgian ladies their whalebone stays and hoops, Regency ladies their long stays, and Victorian ladies their corsets, crinolines and bustles. Regency and Victorian ladies even frequently wore special “sleeping stays” to bed! If your heroine doesn’t wear stays, she’s not going to be able to wear the clothes of her era, or she’s going to look extremely frumpy and odd in them. Even if she chooses to wear them loosely laced, she should still be wearing them.
Men not being able to tell: There is simply no way that a sighted man would not be able to tell that a woman had left off her stays. You can tell if a modern woman has chosen to go bra-less, and believe me, you can tell if a woman in period clothing has left off her stays. The entire line of the dress would be off (even if she had had them made for her un-corseted figure, they wouldn’t look like what everyone else was wearing). Breasts still bounced, even hundreds of years ago, and the position of the breast, and the shape of the rib cage are simply different when corseted. So the frequently employed ruse of the hero only noticing that his lady has chosen to go corset-less when he touches her, is farcical at best. There is only one historical example of this I can think of, and that’s Lillie Langtry, who supposedly had so small a ribcage and waist that she didn’t require a corset (this was most likely merely a piece of propaganda, however, since she appears clearly corseted in the pictures I have seen).
A few things to note about wearing a corset: To add true verisimilitude to your writing, you need to know a bit about what wearing these garments feels like (plus knowing this kind of stuff can provide plot points, if employed properly).
While corsets are not uncomfortable, they do restrict the wearer in ways you may, and may not, expect. If it has shoulder straps (most especially during the Georgian/Regency and Victorian periods) your heroine is going to have a limited range of arm motion. Her elbows will most likely not be able to move past parallel with one another (she could cross her arms, as though angry, but not tightly hug herself). If the era calls for a busk, she’s not going to be able to bend freely at the waist, but will do so from the hip. The busk also encouraged excellent posture. The rule about a lady’s back never touching the back of her chair is essentially superfluous. Lounging back is not really an option in a corset with a busk.
When you loosen your corset, the first “free” breath is glorious. We call it “an out of bodice experience”. It’s almost like a lightening fast nitrous or nicotine buzz. You get a little lightheaded for a moment. Most people I know hold their breath until the corset is unlaced enough for them to draw a deep breath.
While corsets are not uncomfortable, they do restrict the wearer in ways you may, and may not, expect. If it has shoulder straps (most especially during the Georgian/Regency and Victorian periods) your heroine is going to have a limited range of arm motion. Her elbows will most likely not be able to move past parallel with one another (she could cross her arms, as though angry, but not tightly hug herself). If the era calls for a busk, she’s not going to be able to bend freely at the waist, but will do so from the hip. The busk also encouraged excellent posture. The rule about a lady’s back never touching the back of her chair is essentially superfluous. Lounging back is not really an option in a corset with a busk.
When you loosen your corset, the first “free” breath is glorious. We call it “an out of bodice experience”. It’s almost like a lightening fast nitrous or nicotine buzz. You get a little lightheaded for a moment. Most people I know hold their breath until the corset is unlaced enough for them to draw a deep breath.
True discomfort factors: You may have tiny welts from where the shift has creased your skin. These itch for a few minutes. Rubbing them helps. If you lose weight, your corset can become quite uncomfortable (more so than if you gain a bit), as your breasts may slide down and get “squashed” in a very unpleasant way. Plus, if it’s loose, it may rub (and if you’ve ever spent all day with something rubbing your nipples, you know how painful this can be, there’s a reason why runners tape them). If the boning works out of the channel at the top or bottom, it can really jab you.
Special note about Victorian corsets: When figures were being radically reformed, women “trained” their bodies into these shapes, and were used to wearing the corsets from girlhood. It’s not at all like one of us attempting to suddenly cinch our waist down to a fashionable 19-inches. This training can really make a difference. Most women I know can take 4-6 inches off their waist without any training. With only a few weeks of nightly training you can add an inch or two to this. If you have an exceptionally flexible rib cage (as several of my friends do) you can train down even more. A lifetime of this sort of thing could easily trim 10-14 inches off your waist (though this sort of extreme reshaping takes a toll on internal organs). I’ve heard that Winona Ryder fractured ribs while making The Age of Innocence. I can only image this was the result of some over-zealous corseting by a fool in the costume department. This would not have been a common problem for women of the era, who slowly reshaped their bodies over the course of years (remember, girls were corseted from the time they were small children).
Sex and the corset: Since I’m busy telling you that your heroines should not only be in corsets, but that if they’re going to have any kind of encounter at a ball or other social function that they’d be doing it while still laced up (and in all their other undergarments too), I feel compelled to let you in on the dirty little secret of the corset. Any kind of corset (even the Regency ones) will slightly restrict breathing and move the “bellows” action from the chest to the belly (think, deep abdominal breathing). Even slight breathing restriction will cause mild auto-erotic asphyxiation, which heightens the sexual response. Sex in a corset is intense! And the tighter the corset, the more intense it is. Any Victorian heroine game enough to try this, is going to be in for a revelation.
Too Much & Too Little
Rational Dress, and other corset-less movements: There are a couple of examples during the centuries we are concerned with in which stays were left off. Firstly, during an EXTREMELY short period of time in Directoire France (roughly the mid to late 1790s). But this fashion trend did not really leave the French shores. Frenchwomen adopted a Grecian ideal, and abandoned their stays. This style probably didn’t make it much out of Paris. An Englishwoman visiting Paris during this period may have joined in, but she would just have likely put her stays back on before coming home. The Rational Dress movement of the 1850s (which was strongly aligned with the suffragette movement) called for an end to women wearing 10-14 pounds of petticoats in favor of Turkish-style bloomers (as well as an end to corsets). It didn’t last. Even the great Amelia Bloomer herself was back in skirts by the end of the decade when the lighter crinoline came in. In the 1870s there was a movement to reform undergarments, which resulted in the Emancipation Waist (a support garment not all that different in function from the light stays of the Regency with buttons up the front). These stuck around for middle class, working women, who needed greater freedom of movement, but were never fashionable, or adopted by the haut ton. Mostly the Victorian era underwear reforms will be useful to writers who concentrate on American and Western-set novels.