Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset / Edition 2

by Leigh Summers, Joanne B. Eicher

Overview

Corsets, and the corseted body, have been fetishized, mythologized, romanticized. This Victorian icon has inspired more passionate debate than any other article of clothing. As a means of body modification, perhaps only foot binding and female genital mutilation have aroused more controversy. Summers provocative book dismantles many of the commonly held misconceptions about the corset. In examining the role of corsetry in the minds and lives of Victorian women, it focuses on how corsetry punished, regulated and sculpted the female form from childhood and adolescence through to pregnancy and even old age. The author reveals how the steels and bones, which damaged bodies and undermined mental health, were a crucial element in constructing middle-class women as psychologically submissive subjects. Underlying this compelling discussion are issues surrounding the development and expression of juvenile and adult sexuality. While maintaining that the corset was the perfect vehicle through which to police femininity, the author unpacks the myriad ways in which women consciously resisted its restrictions and reveals the hidden, macabre romance of this potent Victorian symbol.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859735107
Publisher:	Berg Publishers
Publication date:	10/01/2003
Series:	Dress, Body, Culture
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Leigh Summers is at the University of New England and Senior Education Officer, New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, Australia.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgements	vi
	Introduction	1
1	'Elegance Comfort Durability!' Class, Contours, and Corsetry	9
2	Corsetry and the Invisibility of the Maternal Body	37
3	The Child, the Corset, and the Construction of Female Sexuality	63
4	Corsetry and the Reality of 'Female Complaints'	87
5	Breathless with Anticipation: Romance, Morbidity and the Corset	121
6	Not in That Corset: Gender, Gymnastics, and the Cultivation of the Late Nineteenth-Century Female Body	143
7	Corsetry, Advertising, and Multiple Readings of the Nineteenth-Century Female Body	173
	Conclusion	209
	Notes	215
	Bibliography	257
	Index	297

Editorial Reviews

In this engaging latest book in the Dress, Body, Culture series, Summers carefully exposes the corset's dual role in Victorian culture.” —Publishers Weekly

“Bound to Please is an absorbing and illuminating book, and will be of great interest not just to fashion historians but to all readers interested in the everyday lives of women in Victorian Britain and North America.” —Feminist Review

“It's a thrilling story and Summers tells it well.” —London Review of Books

“Summers delivers the classic feminist denunciation of the corset - that instrument of over-bearing patriarchy. [This book is] a concentrated piece of independent scholarship.” —Dress

From the Publisher

Summers delivers the classic feminist denunciation of the corset - that instrument of over-bearing patriarchy. [This book is] a concentrated piece of independent scholarship.

Dress

It's a thrilling story and Summers tells it well.

London Review of Books

Bound to Please is an absorbing and illuminating book, and will be of great interest not just to fashion historians but to all readers interested in the everyday lives of women in Victorian Britain and North America.

Feminist Review

How odd that a single article of clothing could be experienced as a sign of middle-class superiority, an emblem of eroticism, a medically necessary support garment and a device for stemming childhood masturbation. In this engaging latest book in the Dress, Body, Culture series, Summers carefully exposes the corset's dual role in Victorian culture: it kept women physically subdued, while at the same time presenting them as sexually alluring, exaggeratedly feminine objects of display. Summers, senior education officer at Australia's New England Regional Art Museum, argues that corsetry was undeniably sexy, since its physical effects mimicked the signs of sexual arousal (shortness of breath, blushing, overheating); at the same time, it was a leading cause of fainting fits, uterine failure and severe abdominal damage. By far the most original aspects of this study appear in the early chapters on corsetry for children (some as young as two years old) and expectant mothers, who were told by fashion magazines and medical experts alike that "tight-lacing" might damage fetuses or, alternately, contribute to a healthy pregnancy. Everywhere, critics decried corset-wearing for pregnant women, accusing them of causing birth defects, "race degeneration," etc. Summers also traces feminist battles against the corset's hegemony. Her arguments on the role of the female body in advertising and connections between dress reform and the struggle for women's suffrage, will already be familiar to readers interested in women's history and Victorian studies. 107 b & w photos and illus. (Oct.) Forecast: While the book's likely readership will be academic, its gorgeous cover and clever title should draw browsers'eyes. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly