Being A Victorian Natural History Re-enactor Carefully

My summer reading list of books which I read in Cambridge in the marvelous historical shade of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology -- my sacred natural history annual pilgrimage spot -- included How To Be A Victorian. Before reading it, I wanted to cosplay and corset it up like the 19th century lady naturalists I admire and be all:

 Can corsetry be feminist?

But darn if Ruth Goodman the brilliant author of How To Be A Victorian and historian, and herself an experienced historical re-enactor and sometime corset-wearing femme d'un certain age didn't pop my balloon or, in this case, my whalebone stays. And romanticism. 19th century science wasn't all Poldark shirtless, spurring his stallion over the moors in a blowsy shirt. Damnit why not. Whyyyyyyyy?

History, I give you the sultry blue velvet side eye.
Get it together. Be aesthetically pleasing.

But it wasn't. There were miasmas. There was the great hunger. It was thought that unless corseted women would fall to the floor like amoebas or jellyfish. There was a crap-ton of fascinating pseudoscience. The "FeeJee" Mermaid was displayed by showman extraordinaire P.T. Barnum as evidence of the realness of mermaids.

I'd been all la de dah what color should my parasol be? when I fetch Mary Anning some fossils on the beach in Lyme Regis.

I'd been petticoats and shawls (see my Pinterest Outdoor Fashions of 19th Century Lady Naturalists). I remain a committed to the clothes, with the caveat that I am happy that I can take them off and replace that costume with what is simply another costume with stretchier fabric, the modern citizen-science-minded suburban mom of the time we call Now.