Depictions of Beauty in the Victorian era

Whilst collecting some research on Victorian Beauty Ideals I stumbled across this really informative website called '123Helpme.com', I found this website really interesting and helpful when exploring Victorian History as it had examples of poetry and writing from the Victorian Era. The poetry and writing below, perfectly describes the beauty ideals of men and women and even discusses the portrayal of men in Gothic Horror. I found this particularly important as I had only found blogs and historical sites, which discuss portraying women in Gothic Horror in a certain light. 


Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the cheek,    
 Passionless pale, cold face, star-sweet on a gloom profound; 
Womanlike, taking revenge to deep for a transient wrong 
Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as before 
Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound, 
Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike . . .

 As these lines show, Victorians would reduce a beautiful woman to a corpse, and as such is no longer dangerous because "[I]t has ceased to be a body in any sexual sense . . . a safely pallid corpse" (Birch 111). 

- Women were expected to look 'pale and interesting', make-up was unheard of  

-Women wanted Luminous, clear, extremely pale skin (some even painted on veins to appear paler)

- Men preferred women being pale, no make-up smart hair as they wanted their women to be smart and not obsessed with their looks, some men even wanted to be with women smarter than themselves 

- This obsession with Women looking pale, plain and interesting probably increased and developed even more due to the Victorians obsession with Death, and the Quote above by '(Birch 111)' discusses how Victorians' 'Reduced a woman to a corpse, and as such is no longer dangerous because it has been ceased to be a body in a sexual sense... a safely pallid corpse'. I found this quote interesting yet disturbing too because it began to make me think of how objectified women were even with or without make-up and provocative clothing, no matter how these women dressed with a brain or not they were sexually desirable because of their body shape and this explains why women were portrayed as 'weak' and a damsel in distress pushed into 'unavoidable situations' because they were women and their bodies were seen as 'distracting' and 'unavoidable' 
          

Victorian novels also produced interesting contradictions of male beauty. Abartis describes the typical (Gothic) hero in general terms as "strong and handsome" (257). Perhaps most popular was the "beautiful beast" the Byronic hero: dark, brooding, and full of "sexual energy" (Gilbert 338). Based, of course, on the adventurous and dangerously hedonistic (and therefore very exciting) Lord Byron, this convention characterized what Lefkovitz terms the "middle class ideal" (148). A typical Bryonic hero has a nontraditional moral code as well as rather a rather rugged, even savage appearance. In Jane Eyre, Rochester is in many ways Byronic (he looks like a "monster," he attempts bigamy) which in its unconventionality makes him an ideal match for the also unconventional (plain) Jane. Or as Lefkovitz says, "Bronte appeals to the literary tradition to sanction their beauty and to undermine the beauty of her conventionally attractive, but unappealing, characters" (148). Although the Byronic hero was very popular, other male conventions persisted, including that based on classical Greek beauty. 

- Women in Gothic Horror are made to appear 'Weak' 'scared' but still 'tempting' and 'appealing' 
-Men in Gothic Horror are portrayed to be 'Powerful' 'Beastly 'Dangerous but still handsome and sometimes an Ideal match for a woman
- A man portrayed in Gothic Horror is made to be  appealing and attractive in a unconventional way, still carrying that stereotype and sexist attitude towards the discrimination of Women

Citations 
MLA Citation:
"Depictions of Beauty in the Victorian Era." 123HelpMe.com. 05 Feb 2016 
    <http://www.123HelpMe.com/view.asp?id=23067>.