Time & Perspective Quote by Joyce Grenfell

Grenfell’s line lands because it refuses the sugary, postcard version of happiness and swaps in a wickedly practical bodily truth: joy is relief. Not the grand climax of romance or success, but the private click of unfastening a socially mandated costume. The “sublime moment” is doing heavy lifting here. “Sublime” is a word of mountains and transcendence, the kind you’d expect from poets. Grenfell applies it to an act that’s almost comically domestic. That mismatch is the joke, and it’s also the point: women are asked to treat discomfort as normal, even elegant, so the return to comfort can feel like a spiritual event.

Corsets carry a whole cultural archive. They’re about fashion, yes, but also discipline: the literal reshaping of the body to match an ideal and, by extension, the reshaping of behavior. That Grenfell, an actress and comic performer, frames happiness as an after-hours escape hints at the theatricality of femininity itself. The day is performance; the night is the dressing room. Her humor is not just observational but lightly insurgent: if the best part of the day is getting out of the thing, maybe the thing is the problem.

There’s also a class-and-era edge. Grenfell’s Britain, postwar but still deeply mannered, prized “put-together” appearances. By spotlighting the moment the costume comes off, she dignifies a small rebellion and lets audiences laugh at a system that makes basic comfort feel like a luxury.