I feel no more like a man now than I did in long skirts, unless it be that enjoying more freedom and cutting off the fetters is to... be like a man. I suppose in that respect we are more mannish, for we know that in dress, as in all things else, we have been and are slaves, while man in dress and all things else is free.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Through all opposition the personal benefits of the reform [dress] [bracketed word in original] have compensated; but had it been ...mainly sacrifice, the thought of working for the amelioration of women and the elevation of humanity would still have been the beacon-star guiding me on amid all discouragements.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fit...ness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... women can never do efficient and general service in hospitals until their dress is prescribed by laws inexorable as those of t...he Medes and Persians. Then, that dress should be entirely destitute of steel, starch, whale-bone, flounces, and ornaments of all descriptions; should rest on the shoulders, have a skirt from the waist to the ankle, and a waist which leaves room for breathing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When my lover came to bed, the knot came untied... all by itself. My dress, held up by the strings of a loosened belt, barely stayed on my hips. Friend, that's as much as I know now. When he touched my body, I couldn't at all remember who he was, who I was, or how It was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When her husband clutches at her dress, she lowers her face,... her modesty aroused. When he wants a wild embrace, she shyly secrets away her limbs. She can't say a word and bestows her gaze on her beaming friends. A new wife suffers with shame the first time she makes love.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nothing in medieval dress distinguished the child from the adult. In the seventeenth century, however, the child, or at least the ...child of quality, whether noble or middle-class, ceased to be dressed like the grown-up. This is the essential point: henceforth he had an outfit reserved for his age group, which set him apart from the adults. These can be seen from the first glance at any of the numerous child portraits painted at the beginning of the seventeenth century.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »