Perhaps some women who wanted to avoid wearing corsets and starved themselves to look thin, thus fainting due to lack of nutriton? As in Karen Carpenter, who did the ultimate faint?
A key factor is being overlooked - does the corset fit properly?
I’m involved with immersive theatrical presentations of both mid-19th century London and 15th century Europe, and between the bodices and corsets, I’ve seen quite a few women get themselves into trouble because the thing’s just not the right shape or size for them.
Nobody seems to like corsets much, but quite a few <ahem> full-figured women tell me a bodice is a lot more comfortable than a bra, when it’s made to fit them.
And yes, we do have a few fainters now and then. In really generic terms, first aid step one is try to keep their head from hitting anything when they go down, and step two is cut the lacing.
I read somewhere (no cite, bad poster) that fainting was also a socially acceptable way of removing yourself from a situation. It could be because you didn’t want to be where you were (like a horrible concert) OR because you needed to be elsewhere, mainly for eliminatory purposes.
You see, not only did ladies not sweat, they didn’t need to urinate or defecate, either. 
That’s quite true, but they were forever “powdering their noses”.
Back before antibiotics it was the only effective treatment for syphillis. The patient was given small but slowly increasing doses. Eventually their body became so toxic it killed off the spirochete. This is how the writer Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) was cured.
Might want to suggest she read Flowers in the Attic.
Jake, women didn’t wear corsets to look thin so much as they did to reshape their bodies. Sure, you wanted a small waist, but dieting would not give you large breasts and full hips like a corset did.
Another suggestion-in the days of gas lamps, perhaps in a small, stuffy room, you’d have less oxygen?
There is also the possibility that it is a literary convention.
You have a cite for that? According to Panatti’s Extraordinary Endings Of Practically Everything And Everybody, the treatment for syphillis was immersion in heated cinnabar, a mercury compound. This was known as the “quicksilver cure”.
MissBunny I’m sure another Doper can produce a link to a copy of one of the anti-corset tracts circulated by concerned 19th century doctors.
Guinastasia Not all of life’s problems can be solved by reading Flowers In The Attic.
You ever been to one of those? Boooooooring.
No. And great literature it ain’t. But at the very least, it does show the downside of ingesting small bits of arsenic over a long period of time.
The women in your theatre group might not have properly fitting corsets because they don’t know what one is or how to wear one. I would think that women who grew up wearing one, and who wore them every day for 50+ years, were wearing ones that fit correctly, especially since they were all custom-made to the wearer.
There were also anti-women-working tracts, and anti-females-smoking tracts, and pro-Mariani Wine tracts, and other tracts that advocated or disapproved of all manner of things that we now know are a bunch of BS.
I’m not saying that NOBODY ever fainted because of their corset. Just that the descriptions of it happening frequently and only because of a corset, is also BS.
There is one style of corset (I believe from quite late in the 1800s) that is very restrictive and severely compresses the abdomen and rib cage, to the point of causing discomfort and pain after a few hours. The majority of corset styles are not constructed that way and don’t intend the body to be outlandishly molded like that, and don’t prevent a woman from doing all kinds of physical labor. Yes, it is harder to bend over while wearing one. Maybe it’s harder to do the 440. But regular work, even physical work, is entirely possible and not difficult.
Back in the 19th century, they had a very different idea of how a corset should fit.
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I’m not saying that NOBODY ever fainted because of their corset. Just that the descriptions of it happening frequently and only because of a corset, is also BS.
There is one style of corset (I believe from quite late in the 1800s) that is very restrictive and severely compresses the abdomen and rib cage, to the point of causing discomfort and pain after a few hours. The majority of corset styles are not constructed that way and don’t intend the body to be outlandishly molded like that, and don’t prevent a woman from doing all kinds of physical labor.
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The majority of corset styles sold today. Those styles covering centuries and vast geographic regions.
That depends on the style of corset. Last I checked, the style worn in the US and England in the 19th century did make physical work extremely difficult, made breathing tough, and caused other problems.
Okay, well the last time I checked, and the last time I wore one of my several corsets made from 18th-19th century patterns, and the last time I asked any of the many women I know who regularly wear corsets, physical work was not extremely difficult. Your perception of difficult must be different from mine. That’s fine.
That or you and they have been substituting materials and fitting the corsets according to 21st century sensibilities instead of 19th century ones.
So we are generally discussing a socioeconomic phenomenon among European-descended women of middle-to-high class breeding, yes?
I don’t recall reading about fainting among geishas, courtesans, Amazons, frontierswomen or slaves (in the last – heatstroke, yes; fainting, no).
Harriet Tubman lost consciousness regularly, but she had trauma-induced narcolepsy.
Well I lace it pretty tight. There’s not much you can do to change it: make it looser or tighter. Steel stays and busks are steel stays and busks, whether made in 2006 or 1820. Cotton duck is the same now as then. Corsets - real ones, not that cheap crap at Victoria’s Secret - are constructed the same now as then. If the pattern is an original 19th century pattern, and the sewing instructions are the same, and the materials are the same, I would think they end up being pretty much the same.
I’m right now flipping through Costume in Detail, by Nancy Bradfield, an examination of extant women’s garments from 1730 to 1930.
Evening dress, 1830, purple-black gauze, waist measurement 27 1/2.
Muslin day dress, 1829-33, waist 31".
Evening dress, cream silk, 1836, for a woman about five feet tall, waist, 21".
Cream wool dress, 1840-45, bust 38", waist 29".
Deep violet printed wool dress, 1849, waist 34".
Tartan bodice, 1851-55, bust 32", waist 27"
Black silk taffeta dress, waist 24".
Lilac shot-silk crinoline dress, 1865, waist 26 1/2".
Black muslin half-mourning dress, 1874-75, waist 31 1/2".
Grey cotton day dress, 1880, very fitted cuirass style, bust 36", waist 24".
Unless you assuming that all these women were enormous and considerably reducing their overall bust and waist measurements with tight-lacing, none of these look uncomfortable, and certainly not constrictive enough around the diaphragm to cause fainting. The bust/waist ratios (when specified in the sketch) are normal. Very few women tight-laced. Corsets were designed to give the overall fashionable shape without great discomfort.
Would that be the infamous “S-bend” corset of the early Edwardian period? Yeah, those are said to be bad for you-throws your bust down and forward and your butt out.
But then, high heels are also dangerous to women’s spines. Probably more so than a properly worn corset.
Most women did what was called “waist training”-starting in adolescence, you had a “training corset” and basically got used to it-much like a training bra. Any idiot who was stupid enough to tight lace deserved what she got.
By the way, MEN also wore corsets, especially for fancy military regalia.
There was a book about corsetry I read a while back, but damned if I can remember the name. The author was Victoria Steele. Maybe Lissla, my fellow costume enthusiast or missbunny can help me out.
Have any of you read the corset diary here? http://www.victoriaspast.com/MyFavoriteHouse/diary.htm
It’s a transcript of a man’s great-grandmother’s diary. Very interesting. I don’t know a whole lot about the site, as that is the only part I’ve ever read, but I thought it was neat.
Was it true that women wore corsets while pregnant? Again, back to Gone with the Wind, once you began to “show” you were kept confined at home to avoid parading your “delicate condition.” I wonder how many babies were born deformed or were miscarried because their mothers squeezed into a corset to go to a party when they were six months pregnant.