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| Dr. Mary E Walker wearing her Medal of Honor |
Last month, I
shared with you about the interesting woman, Dr. Mary E. Walker, who is the
only woman to receive the U.S. Military’s highest award—the Medal of Honor.
Well, there were other interesting details about her that I didn’t share, and I
thought it would make another great post for this month.
Aside from being
a female doctor at a time when such professions tended to be ruled by men, Dr.
Mary Walker was also an abolitionist and a fighter for women’s rights. She
fought for women’s suffrage, equal rights for women in divorce situations, the ability
for women to keep their maiden names after marriage—and for women’s fashion
reforms.
Many of us today
tend to look at the Victorian era fashions with a bit of whimsy or romance. We
see the big skirts, the bustles, the fancy dresses and think they were lovely styles.
But for the women of that day, it was quite an ordeal to get dressed. To give
you an idea of the layers a woman in the Victorian age would wear, here’s a
rundown:
Stockings and
Drawers
The “drawers”
were a lightweight pair of pants, usually with a drawstring waist or sometimes
a button closure and split down the middle “for convenience.”
Chemise
A lightweight, shapeless
garment that hung from the shoulders. It had a drawstring neck and was usually
sleeveless.
Corset
Many of us are
familiar with the corset—the whale-boned garment that gave Victorian women (and
some fashion-conscious men) their wasp-waisted shapes. These garments featured
a busk closure at the front and were laced tightly at the back.
Corset Cover
A light
over-garment meant to protect the corset from dirt, sweat, body oils, etc.
Under Petticoats
This is a very
plain underskirt made of stiffened material. It had a drawstring at the waist
and was meant to provide the fullness they desired under their outer dress.
Women would wear up to six of these under petticoats unless they were wearing a…
Victorian
Crinoline/Hoop Skirt
If a woman was
wearing one of these—a stiff, cage-type contraption that created the very full
silhouette found in Antebellum or Victorian era fashions—then only one under
petticoat was needed.
Over Petticoat
The final
undergarment layer, this petticoat would fit over the hoop or crinoline. The
over petticoat was a more decorative skirt, often with elaborate embroidered
hem.
Dress
Finally, we
reach the lovely dress, which consisted of a jacket-style top, which buttoned
down the front and a very full skirt to fit over the mounds of petticoats on
the bottom half.
Bonnet and
Gloves
The final piece
to the ensemble was the mandatory bonnet and gloves, worn anytime a Victorian
woman was out in public.
So with this
snapshot of the typical nine layers of clothing a Victorian woman would wear,
now think about trying to work in such an ensemble. The weight alone would be
prohibitive, particularly when you consider most of the burden is tied around
the waist. Another factor keeping women from working freely on household chores
or other such things would be the constriction of the corset on the upper body.
Corsets were often laced so tightly, women broke ribs, their internal organs
shifted position, digestion was impeded, and they even made becoming “in the
family way” more difficult. A third prohibition to such attire was the fact
that the many layers of clothing dragged the ground, trapping dust and dirt,
and as was discovered by Louis Pasteur in the 1860s, germs. All these things—as
well as the fact that the skirt silhouette was so large that women often caught
their clothes on fire when tending fires or cooking.
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| The Bloomer Dress |
So there were
many reasons that Dr. Mary Walker and others began fighting to change the
fashions of their age through the National Dress Reform Association. A friend
and fellow activist—Amelia Jenks Bloomer—created an interesting, if
controversial, ensemble for women to wear. It paired a knee-length skirt with a
pair of Middle-Eastern-style trousers (or bloomers) underneath. Some women
chose to wear the rather startling style, but they were often decried in
newspapers, bullied in the streets, and thought to have lost the allure by most
in the court of public opinion.
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| Dr. Mary E Walker wearing male-styled attire. |
Mary’s efforts had little effect on the overall fashion of the day, though some women did give up wearing corsets or opted for pants with a shorter skirt over them for better freedom of movement while working. But you can certainly see that Dr. Mary Edwards Walker was a woman born too early—and she was born with enough gumption to fight the mores and standards of a very prim and proper time.
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| Dr. Mary Walker in a bloomer dress |
It’s your turn: Were you aware of how cumbersome Victorian women’s fashions were, and if you’d lived in that day, would you have gone with the bulk of society to wear those fashions, or would you have come down on the side of the fashion rebels and reformers?
Jennifer Uhlarik discovered the western genre as a pre-teen, when she
swiped the only “horse” book she found on her older brother’s bookshelf. A new
love was born. Across the next ten years, she devoured Louis L’Amour westerns
and fell in love with the genre. In college at the University of Tampa, she
began penning her own story of the Old West. Armed with a B.A. in writing, she
has won and finaled in numerous writing competitions. In addition to writing,
she has held jobs as a private business owner, a schoolteacher, a marketing
director, and her favorite—a full-time homemaker. She currently writes
historical novellas of the American West for Barbour Publishing and works as a
Content Editor for Firefly Southern Fiction. Jennifer is active in American
Christian Fiction Writers and lifetime member of the Florida Writers
Association. She lives near Tampa, Florida, with her husband, college-aged son,
and four fur children.
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