No time to waste. Open your eyes. Awaken into your new life. You’re in a sparsely decorated bedroom. The sheets are rough to the touch, the mattress hard, the air so chilly it shows your breath. And someone has left a pot of cold pee under your bed.
You’ve arrived, dear one. The year doesn’t matter, nor the precise place; you don’t have time to wonder at the details. You’re expected downstairs. We must begin our lessons with haste.
So let’s get you dressed, shall we? Pull off that surprisingly coarse linen nightdress and you’ll be standing bare and shivering in your bedroom. Don’t worry; you’ll soon be wearing more layers than a five-year-old on a snow day.
Open your armoire and see if you can find some underwear. Back in the twenty-first century, you loved your underwear, didn’t you? Whether you were sunk snug inside your granny panties, or rocking a sexy Saturday-night bra held together with only a scrap of red lace and pure sexual magnetism, they felt good. That which wobbled was bound comfortably and pleasantly presented; that which might leak or smudge was assured an extra layer of modesty.
I’d best break it to you early: you’re going to be wearing a lot of things under your dress during your time here—but none of them will have a crotch. Your privates are going to be traveling unaccompanied today. Under miles of fabric, to be sure, but with a direct line of sight to the floor.
Ever wonder why the saucy, high-kicking can-can dance at the Moulin Rouge was so popular? It wasn’t because the dancers were showing their stockings, or even their legs.
You have a bare bottom for good reasons. You will be wearing very heavy, long skirts that you’ll never have cause to lift above your ankles. (Unless a good wind comes and flips your crinoline over your head. And if that happens you’ll have to move to a new town and change your name.) So you risk no exposure. Why would you need a crotch? (Well, one reason periodically comes to mind, but we’ll cover that in another chapter.)
“Madam, I don’t mean to alarm you, but I can see your ankles.”
To really understand how terrific it is to have nude nethers, we have to finish getting you dressed.
So put on your chemise. It’s a lot like the nightgown you just took off, except lighter, wide-necked, and short-sleeved. It’s actually quite pleasant. If you were back in the twenty-first century, you might wear it as a fun, simple sundress to a summer barbecue, or Shakespeare in the Park. However, if you do that here in the nineteenth century, you won’t even have to worry about moving to a new town. You’ll be safely tucked away in a sanitarium, where you will be strapped into frigid ice baths and given fantastic doses of opium until your hysteria abates. Remember, the center of a woman is her uterus. Her crazy, crazy uterus.
Now, even though we’re leaving your lady parts free to sway in the breeze, we still need to cover your legs. The bottom part with stockings, of course, knitted and held up with garters. What covers the rest of your leg varies over the course of the century and could include pantaloons, bloomers, chemilets, pantalettes, leglets, or Turkish trousers. They’re all basic upper-leg coverings worn under your chemise, tied at the waist. And until the end of the century, the legs don’t connect to each other at the top. They’re left split, with a slight overlap for modesty.
So, chemise, stockings, garters, and crotchless pantalettes. You are still practically naked. All your wobbly bits—there they are, just wobbling. That won’t do.
Oh, how you’ll miss your cherished bra collection on this journey. Work bras, sports bras, date-night bras, and the fraying, soft-cupped “I’m not leaving this couch until I’ve watched every single episode of Downton Abbey” bras. Brassieres won’t become popular until the 1920s, and even then they’ll be about as supportive as two kerchiefs tied together with wet paper. For now, dear, we’re going to truss you up in your corset!
You’ve seen the X-rays of ribs grotesquely crushed by years of corset use, haven’t you? Isn’t it awful? Those horrid stays (the straight vertical strips that give the corset its power and shape) are made of unforgiving steel, or the nearly-as-unpleasant whalebone (actually whale baleen, but no matter). How are you going to breathe? How are you going to bend over? How are you going to move at all?
“I’m serious, Martha. If you don’t do something to trim down that elephantine rib cage of yours, you’ll never get a man.”
Once you are assisted into your corset (back-laced or front-hooked, sometimes both), you’ll discover something. Corsets aren’t that bad. They don’t have to be tightened to the point of spleen displacement. They can function as legitimate support garments, holding up your bosoms, perhaps even putting off the inevitable day when they will lie exhausted and battle-worn against your belly, flapping like tired little beaver tails with every step you take.
For women are fleshy creatures, and many of us feel more comfortable when that flesh is secure. Corsets, like the Spanx and bras of the future, provide privacy. Privacy that women are willing to sacrifice a little comfort for. In the twenty-first century, if your bust was drooping and your bottom flat and wide enough to shoot pool on, you could arrange your clothing to keep that information to yourself. But now, dear traveler, you don’t have the option of flowing blouses and jeans made of fabrics that were originally developed for astronauts. You have a corset. And it works pretty well.
Corsets were available to compensate for every grotesque flaw, including pregnancy
As for breathing and bending over, there are smaller, shorter corsets that can provide a working woman some support while letting her scrub and sew her way to an early grave. (Your chemise is clean, by the way, because one of your maids spent an hour dunking it in near-boiling water and lye, until her hands cracked and burned, then wringing, hanging, ironing, and starching it. It isn’t uncommon for even a small household to take two days to get the washing done.) A woman who is not of the working class doesn’t have much reason to bend over in the nineteenth century. And if she does, a lady lowers herself, straight-backed, by bending her knees. She does not stick her posterior in the air like a common prairie dog.
Oh, look! Your maid has laid out your dress! This is precisely why you chose this travel destination. What a lovely frock. Such exquisite embroidery and hand-stitching. Such a voluminous skirt! No! Not yet. No touch. First, put on a loose shirt over the corset. Corset covers prevent everyone from seeing the outlines of your underpinnings.
Cage crinoline, circa 1865
Now, fetch the cage!
Cage crinoline, that is. You’ve happened to land midcentury (for now), during the hoop-skirt craze, where the simple flowing dresses of the Regency (think Jane Austen) have been replaced by the biggest, loudest bell-shaped silhouettes this side of Notre-Dame Cathedral. Yards upon yards of heavy wool have been used to construct your dress. To hold it up, you need to strap on your cage crinoline. It is precisely what it sounds like: a wire cage suspended from your hips or shoulders, over which your skirt will rest. These cages, which in their naked state are indistinguishable from something you trap wild dogs in, have a sensible use. Without one, you won’t be able to walk.
The cage structure distributes the incredible weight of the fabric and holds the hem away from your feet so you won’t trip. Well, you’re probably going to trip anyway, because you’re wearing forty pounds of clothing, your shoes are crazy pinchy, and there is an amazing amount of horse poop in the street. But it won’t be because your dress is too close to your feet.
Now we add a petticoat or six, depending on how much ruffle you need to meet this year’s fashion, and hurray! You’re ready to have your maids tug your dress over your head and button you up. You look lovely, dear. Which makes me almost not want to tell you how uncomfortable and smelly your dress actually… you know what? We can just wait on that for a bit. You look lovely.
And now we return to the first question you asked yourself this morning as you looked through your undergarments: “Why don’t any of the forty-seven pieces of clothing I’ll be wearing have a crotch?” Well, let’s do this.
Let me sneak you a pair of your old bikini cuts to wear under everything else. No one will know. In fact, wear them to the ball tonight! There you’ll be, having a lovely time dancing, eating delicate bonbons, and trading even more delicate bons mots. You won’t even care how thick the stench of body odor coated with heavy floral perfumes is. (Bathing, you will soon learn, is a huge pain in the butt in the nineteenth century. Thick perfume is so much easier.)
Now, run upstairs, squat over a chamber pot, pee really quick, and run back down to the party.
Yes. Hoist up that enormous poundage of wool, steel, and cotton with one arm and then pull down your underpants with the other. Go on.
The dangers of the crinoline cage
Yes. And by the time you’re all buttoned and laced up again, everyone will suspect you left the party for some other more embarrassing reason, like kissing the stable boy, or diarrhea.
That is why your dainty bits aren’t covered. Because even though no one in Victorian society will admit to it, a lady has to pee, and “closed drawers,” as they will eventually come to be known (because you “draw” them up and down!), make that practically impossible for a fully dressed lady.
Crotches will come together slowly as the century winds down. First buttons will appear, and then finally crotches will be sewn up altogether. This will most likely be due to the extreme narrowing of skirts that becomes popular by the 1880s. Crinolines will bundle themselves up into bustles, which are a lot like crinolines—just for your rump instead. A lady will not only be able to raise her skirts, but she will once again fit into her outhouse, although that may not be necessary, as most upper-class families will install indoor plumbing around the 1890s.
Speaking of which, it’s time to learn how to navigate your new potty options. I believe you’ll find them far more creative and numerous than you’d ever want them to be.