“Whales died so I could look like this,” seventeen-year-old Charlotte (India Amarteifio) says matter-of factly to her brother, Adolphus (Tunji Kasim), on their way to London, where she is to marry the king of England. The whalebone corset she’s obliged to wear—“rather delicate and also very, very sharp”—has rendered her immobile for the siblings’ six-hour stagecoach journey, while her dress, made of two-hundred-year-old lace and encrusted with sapphires, imposes its own restrictions. “I am forced into a ludicrous gown so stylish that, if I move too much,” Charlotte continues, “I might be sliced and stabbed to death by my undergarments.” She deadpans, “Oh, how joyful it is to be a lady.”
This story is from the May 22, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the May 22, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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