Depictions of Beauty in the Victorian Era :: British History Essays

Depictions of Beauty in the priggish Era deficient Works Cited What is beauty anyway? in that respects no such thing. (Pablo Picasso) The Victorians obsession with personal appearance has been well documented by scholars. This was a society in which ones clothing was an immediate indication of what one did for a living (and by extension, ones station in life). It was a world, as John Reed puts it, where things were as they seemed (312). So it is not surprising to find that the Victorians also placed capital faith in bodily appearance. To the Victorians, a face and figure could light upon the inner thoughts and emotions of the individual as reliably as clothing indicated his occupation. There is abundant evidence of the pervasiveness of this belief in the literature of the period. According to Reed, Victorian literature abounds with expressions of faith in physiognomy (336). He quotes a passage from Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre to prove the point Jane Eyre, for example, trusts h er initial perception of Rochester, whose brow showed a potent enough mass of intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the legato sign of benevolence should have risen (146 ch. 14, Reed 336). In the Victorian novel, carnal appearance was a primary means of characterization (Lefkovitz 1). A molar or heroines beauty (or lack thereof) was probably the most important setting of his or character. As Lefkovitz points out, beauty is always culturally defined. How then, did the Victorians define it? For women, that exposition is a strange mixture of ideals. The Victorians admired both the strong, hearty, statuesque brothel keeper (modeled on Queen Victoria herself) and the weak, fainting beauty, who Lefkovitz uses the French word mourante to define dying, languishing, expiring, fainting, melt (36). The former type was most popular in the first half(a) of the ampere-second, according to Federico A womans body in the first decade of the century was . . . under considerabl e scrutiny, and the ideal against which she was measured was tall and statuesque, stately, elegant, refined . . . postal code is considered so outre excessive as a slender waist, while the en bon point is the ne plus ultra utmost point meaning a towering, powerful-looking woman of feminine proportions. (30)Many writers embraced this strong, sculpted, large-bodied female type, if only to use her as a comparison to the more delicate beauty that became popular later. According to Lefkovitz, the ii conventions meet (and clash) in George Eliots Adam Bede Bessy Cranage .