The fourth epoch is that of the whaleboned corset, which extended from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth.
The fifth epoch is that of the modern corset.
The busk, known since the fourth century, was introduced into France in the sixteenth century; men also wore busks or stomachers. The busk relates closely to the history of corsets. The middle of the sixteenth century is the epoch of transition from the corsage to the whaleboned waist, which constituted a sensible approach to the modern corset.
We find that the reign of Queen Elizabeth was marked by the first use of the whalebone stays. These were much affected by her successor James, who insisted that all his courtiers, male as well as female, should cultivate the appearance of the wasp.
The corset of George II, represented in Hogarth’s pictures, is said to have been one of the most harrowing forms of screw torture. We are told that the doughty warriors of Gustavus Adolphus wore stays almost to a man.
To Catherine de Medici is generally attributed the introduction of the closely whaleboned waist into France, and the corset which she invented resembled in more than looks that instrument of torture—“The Machine Virgin of the Inquisition.” This corset was made of steel, and was as inflexible as a suit of armor, and, like a warrior’s breast-plate, consisted of two pieces. It opened longitudinally by hinges, secured by a hasp and pin, made like an ordinary box fastening. In the front and back a rod or bar of steel projected in a curved direction downward, and on their bars depended the adjustment of the long-peaked body of the dresses and the set of the skirt behind. During the forty years in which she ruled at court a thirteen-inch waist measure became the accepted standard.
Madame de Sévigné, born thirty years after the death of Catherine de Medici, formulated the axiom which has since been a law to the French modiste, “Les hommes ont la permission d’être laid; les femmes ne l’ont’ pas; aussi n’en est-il aucune qui consente à l’être.”
The idea of the waist was unfortunately that which concerned the execution. Instead of being adapted to the body or figure, in accordance with its form, to bend with its movements, as the supple corsage which preceded it had done, this new garment became an inflexible mold, which distorted the natural contours and imposed upon them a conventional mold, and prevented the least variation of size or situation of the contained organs, as well as their continued integrity and the proper performance of their functions.
The use of the whaleboned corset prevailed even among infants scarcely out of their swaddling clothes. This was the natural consequence of the pretended necessity to mold the human form in order to obtain beautiful proportions, to reform nature, and prevent her mistakes, and one could never take too much care to obtain such laudable ends. Mothers would have been considered culpably indifferent of their children who had neglected these first indispensable cares for the regulation of the formation of their bodies.
The Crusade Against the Corset.—From the time of Galen, 130 A.D., to the present day, in spite of the anathemas hurled against it by the state and medical profession, denouncing this great injury which woman does herself, has the corset still prevailed.