Victorian Secrets

by Sarah A. Chrisman

  I thought of the long, long night at the emergency room: the waiting, the sensation of being a human being in pain but treated like a piece of annoying garbage, alternately pushed around and ignored. Not again. Then of course, there was the cost involved. No . . . But . . . what choice did I have? I couldn’t go all weekend with my broken foot unsupported.

  Gabriel looked in angry frustration at the phone, and then at my badly contused foot. He sighed, and shook his head.

  “It’s too bad—” I began, and stopped myself.

  The thought had repeated itself many times in the days since I’d broken my foot, and it kept coming back to me. It’s too bad the guys in the club who are firefighters and EMTs weren’t there that night. The club’s coach was a Seattle firefighter, so the group contained a higher-than-average number of members with emergency training. When I’d missed the crash pad in practice half a year before and sprained my ankle by thwacking it against a concrete wall, they’d immediately palpated, tested range of movement, assessed my ­condition, and wrapped up the injury, all while I was still catching my breath. Then they’d looked after me through the rest of practice (telling me repeatedly that they’d drive me home whenever I told them I was ready), brought me water and ibuprofen, let me choose which one of them I wanted to drive me home, and sent me off with well-wishes. The guy who drove me home actually carried me into my apartment building, like a scene out of a movie.

  Remembering all this, I looked at Gabriel. “Why don’t I email the guys in the club? See if they can help me?”

  Gabriel snapped his fingers. “Now, that’s a good idea!”

  I squished into the corner of the futon that was our wireless hot spot—our apartment did not have its own Internet connection, but we lived close enough to the university for one small corner to catch an infrequent signal from the school’s massive server—and composed an email outlining the situation.

  Within half an hour Gabriel and I had gotten to the dojo; my coach, Aaron, had me splinted up in a removable orthopedic boot; and I was more comfortable than I had been in a week of dealing with hospitals. Aaron explained that he could do a more traditional splint, but that it was supposed to be a warm weekend and the boot would be nicer because I could take it off if I got too hot.

  “Do me a favor,” he said, once he’d guided my foot into the boot and secured it for me. “Try to stand on that.”

  My mind was alarmed, but I trusted Aaron implicitly. He was a damned good coach: he pushed us all to the edge of our endurance, but never asked us to do anything we couldn’t do. I posted the majority of my weight on my left leg, carefully put down my right, and stood on the soft mats of the dojo floor.

  “How’s that?”

  I responded to my coach’s question by smiling and giving him a surprised nod.

  He nodded in turn, knowingly. “You’ll be back at practice in three weeks. The doctors will tell you six, but they say that for everything from a hangnail to open-heart surgery. You’ll be fine.”

  His confidence boosted my spirits immeasurably. Just that little display of standing on the mats was tremendously reassuring. I can do this. I’m getting better already.

  Gabriel, watching from beside the mats, gave me a thumbs-up gesture.

  “Thank you!” I felt like throwing my arms around Aaron in gratitude.

  “Hey, don’t mention it.”

  One of the other guys from the club, who was also a firefighter, dropped by in the fire department ambulance to see if he could lend a hand, but I was already fixed up, happy, and on my way out the door that Gabriel held open for me.

  Monday’s visit to the other hospital did nothing to improve my mood toward mainstream medicine. My next email to the judo club was titled, “Sarah’s Adventures in the Land of Scalpel-Happy Quacks,” and told of how, in less than three minutes of actually seeing me, and without having palpated my broken foot at all, the doctor I had seen informed me that I needed surgery on both legs. I concluded that I was better off dealing with my own recovery.

  The healers of ancient Greece had a saying: “First the word, then the plant, then the knife.” In other words, surgery is a last resort, to be tried only when all other options have been exhausted. Doctors of the past recognized that cutting the human body is a serious procedure, and they treated the matter with grave consideration. The advances in knowledge and technology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have reduced the risks inherent in surgery; they have been an enormous boon to humanity and our species owes tremendous gratitude to the great men and women who developed them. However, it is a deep shame when modern surgeons forget that the fact that something can be done does not necessitate that it should be done.

  I knew what was needed. Common sense and logic would have surmised it, even if my therapeutic-massage text had not outlined the physical therapy procedures and prior experience with foot injuries had not already taught me how to deal with recovery. Knowing how difficult it was going to be made me more determined, rather than discouraged, to take care of it myself.

  The bones had been set, the one productive thing a doctor had done for me throughout the whole fiasco. It was arguably the lowest-tech element of anything that had been suggested, and it was the one thing for which I was grateful. Beyond that, healing was largely a matter of time and appropriate weight-bearing.

  The human body has special cells that build up new bone tissue. Called osteoblasts, they are always present and working, because like all other living tissue, bones constantly replenish themselves. As I pored through my physiology texts, I felt more than a little vindicated at my rejection of pain-deadening drugs when I learned that pain actually triggers the brain to release a chemical (somatotropin) that stimulates these repair cells to go into overdrive. In other words, feeling pain makes the body create vastly more of the cells, which it uses to heal itself. I joked with Gabriel that this might be the reason the doctors were pushing drugs so hard: they’d make more money if the healing ­process were slowed down. My osteoblasts would shore up the basic damage; to make sure they’d have the raw materials they would need to do it, I shifted my diet and added extra supplements to significantly increase my intake of calcium, ­magnesium, and phosphorous.

  About two weeks after I had broken my foot, Gabriel’s mom asked if I was using comfrey on it. I lightly slapped my forehead. Comfrey! Of course! One of my previous jobs had been at a plant nursery, where amongst other duties I had taught classes on herbal folklore and history, and I felt like an idiot for not thinking of this myself. Symphytum officinale, or comfrey, is an herb that has been associated with healing fractures for so many centuries that one of its old common names is “knitbone.” I sent Gabriel out to acquire some for me and consulted my herbal reference books to learn how the plant would have been used by a Victorian woman—or her even earlier forebears.

  Gabriel returned with comfrey ointment from Whole Foods Market and dried comfrey root from a natural health care supply store. Following the instructions in my herbals, I soaked and boiled the root into a strong decoction, which I then used to soak my foot several times a day. Always, after soaking my foot, I would massage the swollen area, using the drainage techniques I had learned in massage class to force stagnant blood away from where it was pooling; then I would slather the sticky, jelly-like ointment thickly over my foot before carefully replacing it in its protective boot. Beyond these procedures, I knew it would be the job of my conscious body to restore strength to the framework that was being rebuilt. The best way to strengthen bone is to make it bear weight; the trick was not to stress it so much that I would refracture the delicate new tissue.

  I waited four weeks for my bones to lay down their framework again. During this time, one of my very few entertainments was “window shopping” online for antique clothes. I spent many minutes watching for the Wi-Fi signal as a bird might watch for a silkworm. When it emerged, I would flutter to websites that sold antique clothing and imagine myself on a Victorian shopping trip, dreami
ng of what my wardrobe would have been like had I lived in that bygone era, or of what I might buy even now if my bank account were vastly larger than it was. Admittedly, seeing the prices of these lovely garments sometimes made me as morose as my broken-foot situation. Only once did I find an item that fit within my budget, and purchasing it was the one bright, shining experience from the whole time of my convalescence.

  When I thought my foot must be ready for the challenge, little by little, I started putting weight on it. From judo practice, I had learned the difference between productive pain, the body’s whinging while it pushes itself to the limits to make itself strong, and the pain that is nature’s alarm system for injury. It was the difference between fighting through a submission and tapping out of one, the difference between overcoming my weakness and knowing my limits. Now, it was the distinction between encouraging the bone to heal and breaking it anew.

  I created an elaborate physical therapy regime for myself based around a combination of techniques I’d learned in massage class, exercises from past injuries, advice from friends with medical train-ing, and knowledge from textbooks (anatomy, physiology, and kinesiology books I owned from the classes I was studying, along with texts that Gabriel brought to me from the University of Washington’s medical library). I spent every available minute following this regime, and Gabriel helped to the best of his capacity.

  Throughout all this, I managed to keep up with my regular massage courses, getting rides to school from friends, or taking the bus since I obviously couldn’t ride my bike with a broken foot. The day that I’d spent hobbling to the hospital then being ignored in the waiting room was the only occasion when I was absent from class. Massage school did get a bit interesting at times since being in the practitioner’s position meant I would have to adapt moves so that I could do them from a seated position or standing on one leg, but I managed. The bright side of the circumstance was that it afforded all of us—my classmates as well as myself—opportunities to truly practice therapeutic techniques that mostly seem theoretical when practiced on healthy subjects. (Lymphatic drainage, for example, took on a whole new meaning for the class when “That feels nice” was replaced by “Check it out! Ten minutes ago Sarah’s foot was nearly the size of a cantaloupe and now it’s normal size again!”) I’m sure that the massage therapy from my classes helped a lot more than the surgery the doctors had wanted to perform.

  I knew I was on the road to recovery one morning when I asked Gabriel to help me with my corset and suddenly realized I wasn’t leaning against anything. I was standing evenly, both feet planted. Later that day, I was walking. I had a pronounced limp for a while, but I fought it with intense concentration, and ultimately walked it away. Within a week, I could hop lightly on the tiptoes of the foot I had broken, putting all my weight in a jump against the very same foot that the doctors had told me would never work properly again without surgery.

  I had broken my foot on the last night of May, and my debut sans crutches was at a Fourth of July party for the judo club. (Total time spent on crutches: four weeks. Admittedly I hadn’t quite lived up to my coach’s “back at practice in three weeks” prediction, but I wasn’t too far off—and a far cry from the doctors’ dire proclamations.) The judo coach was hosting a barbecue for Independence Day, and I was determined to show him and everyone else how well I was doing. It also seemed like a good opportunity to return the borrowed boot to its owner. I didn’t need it anymore.

  Most of the club members had seen me only ever during practice. Since that was the one activity for which I had continued to remove my corset, the majority of them had never seen me in anything other than an oversize gi (an Asian garment worn for martial arts) with sloppy pants and a bike jersey. I considered digging deep into my drawers and unearthing some of my few remaining loose clothes to hide my figure, but after a private debate, I decided not to bother. These were my friends, however I was, and if I was showing off the condition of one part of me, I might as well show off what shape the rest of me was in. I put on a light modern summer dress, concentrated very hard on minimizing my limp, and went proudly to the party.

  There were many questions about my foot and congratulations for how well I was recovering, but no one said a word about my figure. I was glad of it. These were my rough-and-tumble buddies who had always taken me exactly as I was; if I happened to look a little differently than they had usually seen me, it didn’t matter to them in the least. There was something immensely gratifying about that sort of camaraderie. I had already decided not to return to practice (breaking my foot had made me think long and hard about the wisdom of carrying out this activity for the sake of health and safety); but I was tremendously glad to see that my friends would remain my friends, in sports or out of them, and regardless of how I looked.

  Once I could walk again, I did so as much as possible. I had missed my favorite exercise, and beyond that, it was great physical therapy. One day when I was out for a stroll, I stopped by a heretofore unvisited coffee shop, thinking I would sample their chocolate croissants.

  The café was around the corner from a hospital, and as I waited I noticed that the man in front of me in line was a doctor. He was dressed in a doctor’s lab coat, wearing a doctor’s clip-on badge. He was also glaring at me.

  I smiled cheerfully when I noticed him looking my way. He scowled, looked down, scowled even more darkly, looked down again. At first I thought he was glaring at my foot. I wondered if this was one of the doctors who had told me I’d never walk normally again without surgery on both legs (remember, I’d broken only my right foot—the left was just fine, and I hadn’t hurt my legs at all—but they had been very eager to cut up the whole kit and caboodle of my lower regions) followed by a minimum six-month recovery. I could see how, having made such a statement, a man used to having patients submit to his authority would be angry to see me a few weeks later, uncut and prancing about easy as a lark.

  He didn’t look like my memory of those doctors, and we were near a different hospital altogether. Yet the way he was glaring downward made me wonder. It was a look of distinctly personal offense.

  I checked his badge. Cardiology. That’s not it, then. It took me a minute longer to realize that his dark looks downward were directed not at my foot, but at my waist. He’s glaring at my corset!

  The realization amused as much as annoyed me. I truly do wonder how people develop their prejudices sometimes. Why are some body modifications considered normal and others freakish? Perfectly straight teeth are just as unnatural as a small waist, yet no one (except me) objected when I was nine years old and braces were put on my teeth. That had been an alteration involving bones and was meant to be permanent. (A few years after the braces were removed, my teeth went back to being crooked anyway. It actually took them less time to revert than it had to get them straight in the first place.) Yet it was praised as good parenting on my mother’s part, as it always is in modern America. Nearly everyone I know has worn orthodontics at some point, usually inflicted on them by their parents at a young age in an attempt to artificially straighten naturally crooked teeth. In the twenty-first century, this is considered the right and proper thing to do.

  In the nineteenth century, no one had straight teeth, but most women had small waists. What right does a straight-toothed person have to criticize a straitlaced one? Both are artificial. Wearing any clothing at all is unnatural, but I do like to think it is progress from the days when our species was running around naked and barefoot, under blazing sun and over jagged rocks, alternately hiding from predators and stealing their scraps.

  Gentleman’s slipper.

  12

  Customized Curves

  Fashion plate for an 1890 walking dress.

  Well healed, the next step was being well heeled again: a few weeks later, I was back in my kitten-heel boots. I’ve heard other corset enthusiasts say that wearing high heels takes pressure off the lower back, but back pain hasn’t been an issue for me. Besides my one early and very
brief experience when the knot from my laces had gotten poorly situated and pressed against my spine, I’ve never had any back trouble at all from my corset. On the contrary, I find it quite supportive and enjoy being the only member of my family who doesn’t have a bad back. My back didn’t need any help from my heels. However, my walk benefited from them enormously.

  Edwardian actress Camille Clifford29 caused an international sensation by her walk alone. By all accounts, she had average acting talents and her singing was unexceptional, but the simple sight of her walking across the stage with her eighteen-inch waist set the stage aflame when she played in The Prince of Pilsen in London. A contemporary newspaper stated that the world would be much poorer if Miss Clifford’s mother had neglected to teach her to walk. Journalists weren’t the only ones smitten: she soon after eloped with a member of the British nobility.3031

  Since I’d started wearing stays, I had given a great deal of thought to the motion of a corseted figure, and the contemplation only deepened with my foot injury. There has been much derision made of the perceived stiffness of a tight-laced woman. Modern women’s studies texts include criticism of nineteenth-century fashion as “both physically constricting and voluminous . . . Such clothing made it difficult to move easily, reinforcing society’s idealization of women as sedentary, ornamental creatures.”32 Ironically, comments like these appear alongside quotes from early suffragettes defending their clothes33 and pictures of women now hailed as feminist heroes who seem quite clearly to be tight-laced.34

  Camille Clifford.

  Mostly, the modern complaints against corsets tend to come from individuals who have never worn corsets, certainly never worn them properly, and have likely never even seen a corset rightly worn. At most, they may have put them on for an afternoon’s experiment or seen them on actors or weekend reenactors. To judge corsetry by these standards is as “fair” as to judge ballet by the exertions of a bored retiree taking a single afternoon lesson, rather than by the art of a Bolshoi dancer. This is why actresses so very seldom resemble the women they portray in period pieces: they are, at best, stumbling imitations.