FWIW, as a sidelight on the persistence of this misunderstanding, the first place I ever encountered the characterization was in Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins (which I loved more than Little Women as a child), where the heroine is rescued from her aunts' misguidedly imprisoning her in a corset by her freethinking uncle. Rational dress reformers themselves characterized their opponents in terms that perhaps came down to contribute to our modern misunderstanding. Propaganda! Fake news! ;-D I learned a more nuanced understanding of that era's corsets only fairly recently, I must admit.
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FWIW, as a sidelight on the persistence of this misunderstanding, the first place I ever encountered the characterization was in Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins (which I loved more than Little Women as a child), where the heroine is rescued from her aunts' misguidedly imprisoning her in a corset by her freethinking uncle. Rational dress reformers themselves characterized their opponents in terms that perhaps came down to contribute to our modern misunderstanding. Propaganda! Fake news! ;-D I learned a more nuanced understanding of that era's corsets only fairly recently, I must admit.