Katherine Klingerman

Binding Femininity Katherine Klingerman

The corset in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe was a complex and often contradictory social and cultural symbol. It symbolized both the sensual female body and the chaste virgin; the female control over male desires, and the male's control over the female body. Reports of women who have died as a result of the tightness of their corsets abound in the literature. Medical case studies provide information on the changes corsets wrought in the soft tissues of the women who wore them. However, to date, no systematic studies have been conducted which detail the changes in the bony pelvis. This study examines the effect of corseting upon the female pelves of the Spitalfields skeletal collection in order to determine the changes in pelvic size and shape that may result from such practices, and the resulting change in fecundity for the individuals in question. Many historical and present day sources offer up the corset as the source of infertility, deformation, and even abortion. This book adds quantitative data on the bony changes wrought by corseting, and is adrdressed to any scholar of osteo-archaeology, women's studies or history.