Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, no. 24 October 1859 | Page 9

rained!--But look at these stomachers, stiff with embroidery and jewels,
and with points that reach half-way from the waist to the ground! See
those enormous ruffs, standing out a quarter of a yard, and curving over
so smoothly to their very edges! What a protection the fear of ruining
those ruffs must have been against children, and--other troublesome
creatures!
Grey. It is true, that ruffs and stomachers seem to indicate great
propriety of conduct, including an aversion to children and--other
troublesome creatures; but students of the manners and morals of the
period at which those articles of dress were worn do not find that the

women who wore them differed much in their conduct, at least as to the
other troublesome creatures, from the women who nowadays have
revived one of the most unsightly and absurd traits of the costume of
which ruffs and stomachers formed a part.
_Mrs. Grey_. What can you mean? Our fashion like that frightful rig?
Why, see this portrait of Queen Elizabeth in full dress! What with
stomacher and pointed waist and fardingale, and sticking in here and
sticking out there, and ruffs and cuffs and ouches and jewels and
puckers, she looks like a hideous flying insect with expanded wings,
seen through a microscope,--not at all like a woman.
Grey. And her costume is rivalled, if not outdone, by that of her critic,
in the very peculiarity by which she is made to look most unlike a
woman;--the straight line of the waist and the swelling curve below it,
which meet in such a sharp, unmitigated angle. Look at the Venus
yonder,--she is naked to the hips,--and see how utterly these lines
misrepresent those of Nature. You will find no instance of such a
contour as is formed by the meeting of these lines among all living
creatures, except, perhaps, when a turtle thrusts his head and his tail out
of his shell.
Miss Larches. But there's a vase with just such an outline, that I have
heard you admire a hundred times.
Grey. True, Miss Larches; but a woman is not a vase;--more beautiful
even than this, certainly more precious, perhaps almost as fragile, but
still not a vase; and she shows as little taste in making herself look like
a vase as some potters do in making vases that look like women.
_Mr. Key_. But I thought it was decided that the female figure below
the shoulders should be left to the imagination. Does Mr. Grey propose
to substitute the charming reality of undisguised Nature?
Grey. True, we do not attempt to define the female figure below the
waist, at least; but although we may safely veil or even conceal Nature,
we cannot misrepresent or outrage her, except at the cost of utter loss of
beauty. The lines of drapery, or of any article of dress, must conform to

those of that part of the figure which it conceals, or the effect will be
deforming, monstrous.
_Mr. Key._ Does Mr. Grey mean, to say that ladies nowadays' look
monstrous and deformed?
_Grey._ To a certain extent they do. But such is the influence of habit
upon the eye, that we fully apprehend the effect of such incongruity as
that of which I spoke only in the costumes of past generations, or when
there is a very violent, instead of a gradual change in the fashion of our
own day. Look at these full-length portraits of Catherine de Médicis
and the Princess Marguerite, daughter of Francis the First.
_The Ladies._ What frights!
_Mrs. Grey._ No, not both; Marguerite's dress is pretty, in spite of
those horrid sleeves sticking up so above her shoulders.
_Grey._ You are right. Those sleeves, rising above the shoulders--as
high as the ear in Catherine's costume, you will observe--are unsightly
enough to nullify whatever beauty the costume might have in other
points; though in her case they only complete the expression of the
costume, which is a grim, unnatural stiffness. And the reason of the
unsightliness of these sleeves is, that the outline which they present is
directly opposed to that of Nature. No human shoulders bulge upward
into great hemispherical excrescences nine inches high; and the
peculiar sexual characteristic of this part of woman's figure is the gentle
downward curve by which the lines of the shoulder pass into those of
the arm. Our memory that such is the natural configuration of these
parts enters, consciously or unconsciously, into our judgment of this
costume, in which we see that Nature is deliberately departed from; and
our condemnation of it in this particular respect is strengthened by the
perception, at a glance, that great pains have been taken to make its
outlines discordant with those of the part which they conceal. You
qualified your censure of Marguerite's dress partly because, in