PhD candidate Rosemary Knight, from the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland spent three days in the Research Library investigating resources on 19th century women in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne who made corsets both as fashion garments and medical appliances. These entrepreneurial corsetières promoted themselves as surgical instrument makers, and successfully exhibited in international competitions such as the Sydney International Exhibition of 1879
In utilising the Research Library’s corsetry books and department store catalogues, Rosemary’s focus was anthropological rather than historical, challenging the Victorian notion of middle class women as passive “home angels”.
As Rosemary says, this approach examines “…the way in which some middle class women appropriated an item of female material culture, the corset, as a means of entering the male dominated world of business”.
She chose to study corsetières as corsets are archetypically Victorian and central to the idea of the stereotypical nineteenth century woman; however unlike studies that focus on male dominance and female exclusion from the public realm, Rosemary’s thesis examines what women did, rather than what they could not do.
During the School of Social Science’s postgraduate research day in November 2009, Rosemary was awarded best paper for The Many Faces of the Corset.
