Is It Love or a Corset?

There is a book that I read about a year ago called, A Proper Pursuit. It's basically about a shallow but naive twenty-year-old girl whose mother ran away when she was a child and whose father is about to be remarried. She decides to go stay with her grandmother and three great aunts for a while to search for her mother-- the catch? They each have their own idea of what they want Violet to do with her life. Her grandmother just wants her to marry a pastor. One great aunt just wants her to marry well (read: someone rich). Another great aunt just doesn't want her to marry AT ALL. And the last great aunt-- well, she just encourages Violet to marry someone she loves. By the end of the story, Violet has completely changed and becomes a Christian.

Now, Violet is quite the humorous young lady. The only knowledge she has of the world at large comes from reading romance and mystery and adventure novels. *Ahem* dime novels. Below is a section of her thoughts during a lecture that one of her great aunts took her to. I hope you find it as amusing as I did. By the way, this story is set at the end of the 19th century and is written in the first person.

"'Ladies,' she began, 'I'm well aware that the majority of you are, at this very moment, trapped in the confines of a whalebone corset. But you might be shocked to learn that, according to my research, your tightly laced corsets are responsible for more than fifty female ailments.' She proceeded to enumerate them, one by one, but my mind began to wander after 'heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, and lightheadedness.' The symptoms sounded suspiciously like a romance novel's description of love. Could it be that thousands of women had married their husbands in the mistaken belief that they were in love, when all along their corsets had been too tight? How disappointing to watch their love mysteriously vanish once their corsets were unlaced. I made up my mind that if I ever felt love's symptoms, I would loosen my corset immediately before accepting a proposal of marriage."