Talk:Fainting couch

Geography?[edit]

There's no indication of which country or countries these couches were used in. I've never heard of them in the UK, but I'm not a specialist in Victorian furniture. Dayvey (talk) 12:36, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The British English term is Chaise longue, and this article should probably be merged because there is no indication that the Fainting couch is a different piece of furniture or that this name was attached to it in the 19th century even in America. AJHingston (talk) 16:09, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Jane Austen[edit]

Jane Austen's juvenile epistolary novel Love and Freindship (sic) contains in its eighth letter the passage:

Never did I see such an affecting Scene as was the meeting of Edward and Augustus. "My Life! my Soul!" (exclaimed the former) "My Adorable Angel!" (replied the latter), as they flew into each other's arms. It was too pathetic for the feelings of Sophia and myself -- We fainted alternately on a sofa.

Now, "Love and Freindship" was first published in 1922, in the US. Though too late to have influenced any possible (if improbable) use of "fainting couch" as a real 19th century term, it appeared in print in plenty of time to influence a 20th century (and somewhat tongue in cheek) notion that sofas and couches were appropriate venues for fainting women overcome by emotion - and frequently saw such use. The difficulty is going to be finding a reliable secondary source that links the two but I can't believe that the world of Austen scholarship hasn't thrown up a paper on the proper way to faint and the correct furniture for the purpose. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.78.182.111 (talk) 17:52, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]