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In the nineteenth century, the corset was an essential element of fashionable dress. Corsets were a sign of social status, self-discipline, respectability, beauty, youth and erotic attraction. In addition to these elements corsets also had serious health effects on nineteenth century women. Artists such as Maurice Quentin de la tour, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrum, Georges Seurat, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and John Singer Sargent captured women’s silhouettes of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century.
Through their paintings I will demonstrate the use of corsets across the wide spectrum of women in the nineteenth century. ...
Any self-respecting socialite of the nineteenth century aimed for the ideal female form. To the extent to which she would do anything to be perceived as beautiful, the upper class nineteenth century woman cinched her waist down to as little as eighteen inches. ... By contrast in the late eighteenth century painting, “Portrait of Madame de Pompadour” by Maurice Quentin de la Tour shows the waist silhouette as tiny and the fabric is refined, as a demonstration of her high social status. ... Contrary to the nineteenth century corset and over garments, her corset has no breast covering. ... From a twentieth century perspective the “Snake Goddess” may be viewed as a purely sexual object with her bare breasts exposed. ... In the fifteenth century the “basquine”, which was derived from the medieval “cotte”, came into fashion. ...
The first true corsets date from some time around the first half of the sixteenth century when aristocratic women began to wear “whalebone bodies”. In the sixteenth century aristocratic women and girls primarily wore corsets or “bodies”. ... In the seventeenth century fashionable women of Paris began to wear corsets. ... The French word “corps” meaning body, stayed the same, but seventeenth century English preferred term was “stays”- which originally meant, “support”, perhaps implying that the female body was naturally weak. In the beginning of the eighteenth century women began to loosen their “stays” and fashion for the torso was moved to a more comfortable use of the corset. By the nineteenth century corsetry changed again and this time became the most brutal of all. ...
One wonders why, from the sixteenth to the late nineteenth century, the corset was never challenged by the women of the aristocracy or the bourgeoisie. ...
It is noted that many nineteenth century men as well as male physicians objected to women’s use of corsetry for health reasons. ... Men are not used to seeing women without corsets in public.
Approximate Word count = 2011
Approximate Pages = 8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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