Why did women continue to wear corsets through the 19th and early-20th centuries?
“Certainly, women’s reluctance to abandon the corset was closely related to their interest in fashionable dress. But “Fashion” can not logically be reified as a magic power that causes women to behave in ways contrary to their own best interests.” Valerie Steele. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven, Connecticut Yale University Press, 2001, p. 35. “Older women, not men, were primarily responsible for enforcing sartorial norms. Within the family, the patriarch usually deferred to his wife’s or even his mother’s authority in deciding how the females of the family should be dressed. The cultural weight placed on propriety and respectability made it difficult for women to abandon the corset, even if they wanted to.[…] “During the nineteenth century, many aspects of life were rapidly changing but some traditions, especially those surrounding women, were all the more anxiously retained. Moreover, since most women’s socioeconomic lives depended on marriage, it was understandable that the
