“Years later when she was being eccentric, had shed her corset and let her arse spread unhindered by anything but her perpetual dressing gown.”

“Her head fell forward, her small nose hid itself in the collar of her dressing gown and at last she fell asleep.”

“His wife...always dressed in mourning for the children who died in infancy and squeezed breathless by the pressure of her corset, her religion, and the husband fate had dealt her”

“What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!”

“Her face shimmered with a dusting of powder and rouge. She was wearing so many undergarments that it felt as though someone had draped a fifty-pound weight over her body.How did girls move in these things?Let alone dance?As Anne-Marie drew the corset tighter around her torso, Luce gaped at her reflection. The wig made her look five years older.And she was sure she'd never had this much cleavage before. In any of her lives.”

“She wore tight corsets to give her a teeny waist - I helped her lace them up - but they had the effect of causing her to faint. Mom called it the vapors and said it was a sign of her high breeding and delicate nature. I thought it was a sign that the corset made it hard to breathe.”