Fainting room
A fainting room was a private room, of which its main features/furniture were Fainting Couches, used during the Victorian era, to make women more comfortable during the home treatment of Female Hysteria. Fainting rooms were used for more privacy during home treatment pelvic massages. Such couches or sofas typically had an arm on one side only to permit easy access to a reclining position, although the sofa style most typically featured a back at one end so that the resulting position was not purely supine.
Theories for the Prevalence of Fainting Couches
- Corsets One theory for the predominance of fainting couches is that women actually were fainting, because their corsets were too tight, restricting blood flow. However, pictures from the 1860s show women horseback riding, playing tennis, and engaging in other vigorous activities in corsets without hindrance. Since the 2000s Goth culture and Steampunk fans regularly wear corsets to dance clubs where they vigorously dance for hours without the slightest swoon, making the corset theory unlikely. The idea of women wearing corsets falling onto fainting couches is more likely to have stemmed from the Hollywood with their depiction of a woman passing out onto a fainting couch.
- Female hysteria The second most common theory for the predominance of fainting couches is home treatment of female hysteria through manual pelvic massage by home visiting doctors and midwives. [1] As a "disease" that needed constant, recurring (usually weekly) in-home treatment with a procedure that through manual massage could sometimes take hours, creating specialized furniture for maximum comfort during the extended procedure seems likely, as does the later creation of fainting rooms for privacy during the intimate massage procedure.
See also
References
- ^ Rachel P. Maines (1999). The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria", the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6646-4.