When I was a kid there were certain things we were required to read, and the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder was one of them. This was long before that sappy TV show: the tales were plainly and effectively told, reflecting a simpler but more gruelling time when pioneers broke the sod and made houses with their own hands.
Like Jo March in Little Women, Laura is the feisty, restless and often rebellious younger child, exasperated by the sweet nature and relative passivity of her big sister Mary. When baby Carrie comes along (later to be blinded by smallpox), Laura is caught between her marginalized position in relation to Mary, and the responsibilities of a sister who suddenly must carry a heavy burden of child care.
It's all tough stuff, fed to us in grade school to make us put up or shut up, to be happy with our own cushy situations because "look what those poor girls had to live through". And indeed, with outbreaks of malaria that almost killed them and a winter so harsh they nearly starved, they did have it rough, rougher than we can even imagine.
But I was gobsmacked to discover something I never knew about those little girls on the prairie.
They wore corsets.
I recently stumbled upon this passage from one of the books I never read: Little Town on the Prairie. In this one, the girls are older, coming of age:
[Mary is trying on a new
dress that her mother has made for her, but she is unable to fasten
it.]
Laura had a sudden thought. “It’s
Mary’s corsets! It must be. The corset strings must have stretched.”
It was so. When Mary held her
breath again and Laura pulled tight the corset strings, the bodice buttoned, and
it fitted beautifully.
“I’m glad I don’t have to wear
corsets yet,” said Carrie.
“Be glad while you can be,” said
Laura. “You’ll have to wear them pretty soon.” Her corsets were a sad affliction
to her, from the
time she put them on in the morning until she took them off at night. But when girls pinned up their hair and wore skirts down to
their shoe-tops, they must wear corsets.
time she put them on in the morning until she took them off at night. But when girls pinned up their hair and wore skirts down to
their shoe-tops, they must wear corsets.
“You should wear them all night,”
Ma said. Mary did, but Laura could not bear at night the torment of the steels
that would not let
her draw a deep breath. Always before she could get to sleep, she had to take off her corsets.
“What your figure will be, goodness
knows,” Ma warned her. “When I was married, your Pa could span my waist with his
two hands.”her draw a deep breath. Always before she could get to sleep, she had to take off her corsets.
Ye gods! Laura and Mary had to strap on those awful things, then go out and work in the fields!
I had trouble believing this, until I found some authentic images of "rural women" in corsets: it appears that no matter what sort of work you did, you were required to wear these things, because it wasn't decent NOT to.
The women above are plainly corseted. Like Pa, a man could practically span those tiny waists with his two hands.
A little harder to make out, but yes, these women, threshing hay or thrashing it or whatever-the-hell they did to it, are wearing corsets. The poses look a little unnatural, but nobody knew how to pose in those days because cameras were like something from Mars.
This is my personal favorite. The two cow heads make her waist look even smaller, a great optical illusion. Perhaps she took them around with her, even to the community dances, to boost her chances of a good match.
