Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction Chapter 1 Elegance, Comfort, Durability! Class, Contours and Corsetry Chapter 2 Corsetry and the Invisibility of the Maternal Body Chapter 3 The Child, the Corset and the Construction of Female Sexuality Chapter 4 Corsetry and the Reality of Female Complaints Chapter 5 Breathless with Anticipation: Romance, Mobidity and the Corset Chapter 6 Gender, Gym and the Cultivation of the Nineteenth-Century Body Conclusion Bibliography

Promotional Information

Corsets, and the corseted body, have been fetishized, mythologized, romanticized. This Victorian icon has inspired debate that is unrivalled by any other article of clothing. This book examines the role of corsetry in the minds and lives of Victorian women.

About the Author

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

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