Victorian Sarah Chrisman: 14 Reasons Her Husband Gabriel Should Be Launched into the Sun

I have so many things to say about Sarah Chrisman’s book, Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught Me about the Past, the Present, and Myself. I have serious, non-snarky things to say that concern Sarah and the corset. I worry about her body image and how she approaches the corset as a solution to a life-long struggle with what she perceives as a serious weight problem.

However, I cannot go further without addressing her husband Gabriel. Much like this writer, I have developed strong feelings about Gabriel and they are not positive. I must share them and get them out of my system.

1. He dresses as an itinerant Irish preacher most of the time. That, alone, is grounds for a beating.
2. When people bring up corsets and their confining nature, he chimes with details on how men suffered for fashion during the Victorian age.
3. Sarah, his wife, clearly suffers from a poor body image and has low self-confidence. Does he tell her she’s beautiful? Does he encourage her to seek counseling to help her feel better about herself? No, he buys her damned corset. I am not qualified to diagnose disorders or anything else, but Sarah seems to be suffering from body dysmorphic disorder and is on the brink of an eating disorder which thrives due to the corset.
4. He owns a DeLorean which… I can’t even.
5. When Sarah has shrunk too much for her original corset, he encourages her to buy a custom corset that is even smaller. Even though they can barely afford it, he tells her it is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
6. Gabriel brings home lots and lots of books from the tiny, dusty corners of the library about corsets that debunked modern myths about corsets, suffragettes and modern medicine. In fact, he can find a book that debunks anything modern, even if he has to go to the back corner of the seventh floor to find it.
7. He encourages her to sleep in her corset so her waist will get smaller.
8. She breaks her foot. They have a long wait at the hospital. He mentions that if he’d known it would take so long, he would have brought her corset.
9. After she breaks her foot, the first thing he wants to do when they get home from the hospital is put on her corset.
10. He has three high-wheel bicycles because one is not enough. Once, they rode their high-wheel bikes 75 miles along some random historical road in their Victorian clothing. It is a miracle of miracles that someone didn’t clip these fools off the road out of the purest kind of road rage.
11. If you come across Gabriel, high-wheel bicyclist extraordinaire, he will explain the history of cycling to you. I came across a picture of him at a fair waiting expectantly for crowds to gather for his lecture on cycling. There is also a video of him yapping about it on their website (embedded below).
12. Even though he drives a DeLorean, which I’m pretty sure isn’t an authentic Victorian artifact, he dresses in Victorian era clothing all the time. This includes clothing for swimming, working out, meandering around town, etc. I can just imagine the comments at the gym. In fact, I would pay good money to hear them.
13. He hauled Sarah’s butt all over Port Townsend while she had a broken toe and was wearing some uncomfortable Victorian shoes (and corset).
14. The smug look on his face. Just look at their website.