OF THE STANDARD OF BEAUTY IN WOMAN.
The ideas of the beautiful vary in different individuals, and in different
nations. Hence, many men of talent have thought them altogether relative
and arbitrary.
"Ask," says Voltaire, "a Negro of Guinea [what is beauty]: the beautiful
is for him a black oily skin, deep-seated eyes, and a broad flat nose."
"Perfect beauty," says Payne Knight, "taking perfect in its most strict,
and beauty in its most comprehensive signification, ought to be equally
pleasing to all; but of this, instances are scarcely to be found: for, as
to taking them, or, indeed, any examples for illustration, from the other
sex of our own species, it is extremely fallacious; as there can be little
doubt that all male animals think the females of their own species the
most beautiful productions of nature. At least we know this to be the case
among the different varieties of men, whose respective ideas of the beauty
of their females are as widely different as those of man, and any other
animal, can be. The sable Africans view with pity and contempt the marked
deformity of the Europeans; whose mouths are compressed, their noses
pinched, their cheeks shrunk, their hair rendered lank and flimsy, their
bodies lengthened and emaciated, and their skins unnaturally bleached by
shade and seclusion, and the baneful influence of a cold humid climate....
Who shall decide which party is right, or which is wrong; or whether the
black or white model be, according to the laws of nature, the most perfect
specimen of a perfect woman?... The sexual desires of brutes are probably
more strictly natural inclinations, and less changed or modified by the
influence of acquired ideas, or social habits, than those of any race of
mankind; but their desires seem, in general, to be excited by smell,
rather than by sight or contact. If, however, a boar can think a sow the
sweetest and most lovely of living creatures, we can have no difficulty in
believing that he also thinks her the most beautiful."
"Among the various reasons," says Reynolds, "why we prefer one part of
nature's works to another, the most general, I believe, is habit and
custom; custom makes, in a certain sense, white black, and black white; it
is custom alone determines our preference of the color of the Europeans to
the Ethiopians, and they, for the same reason, prefer their own color to
ours. I suppose nobody will doubt, if one of their painters were to paint
the goddess of beauty, but that he would represent her black, with thick
lips, flat nose, and woolly hair; and it seems to me, he would act very
unnaturally if he did not; for by what criterion will any one dispute the
propriety of his idea? We indeed say, that the form and color of the
European are preferable to those of the Ethiopian; but I know of no other
reason we have for it, but that we are more accustomed to it."
The coquetry of several tribes, it has been observed, leads them to
mutilate and disfigure themselves, to flatten their forehead, to enlarge
their mouth and ears, to blacken their skin, and cover it with the marks
of suffering.--We make ugliness in that way, says Montaigne.
But, to confine our observations to individual nations, and these
civilized ones; we every day see irregular or even common figures
preferred to those which the enlightened judge deems beautiful.
How, then, it is asked, amid these different tastes, these opposite
opinions, are we to admit ideas of absolute beauty?
These are the strongest objections against all ideas of absolute and
essential beauty in woman.
To establish, in opposition to these objections, a standard of womanly
beauty, equal talent has been employed; but the reasoning, though
sufficient for such objections, has been rather of a vague description.
As, however, the subject is of great importance, I shall endeavor to
abridge and concentrate the arguments of which it consists, before I point
out the surer method which is founded on the Elements of Beauty already
established.
To refute these objections, it has been thought sufficient to examine the
chief conditions which are necessary, in order to appreciate properly the
impression of those combinations, which woman presents, and to expose the
principal circumstances which are opposed to the accuracy of opinions, and
judgments respecting them.
The conditions necessary to enable us to pronounce respecting the real
attributes of beauty, are, first, a temperate climate, under which nature
brings to perfection all her productions, and gives to their forms and
functions, generally, and to those of man in particular, all the
development of which they are capable, without excess in the action of
some, and defect in that of others;--secondly, in man in particular, a
brain capable of vigorous thought, sound judgment, and exquisite
taste;--and thirdly, a very advanced civilization, without which these
faculties cannot be duly exercised or attain any perfection.
It is evident enough that none of these conditions are to be met with in
the whimsical judgments and tastes of many nations.
The consequence of the absence of these conditions, in relation to the
uncivilized and ignorant inhabitants of hot climates, is marked in their
deeming characteristics of beauty, the thick lips of Negresses, the long
and pendent mammæ of the women in several nations both of Africa and
America, or the gross forms of those of Egypt.
The consequence of the absence of these conditions, in relation to the
uncivilized and ignorant inhabitants of cold climates, is equally marked
in their deeming characteristics of beauty the short figures of the women
of icy regions, in which, deprived of the vivifying action of heat and
light, living beings appear only in a state of deformity and alteration;
and in their similarly deeming beautiful the obliquely-placed eyes of the
Chinese and Japanese, and the crushed nose of the Calmucs, &c., &c.
Those who take these views, which are true, though somewhat vague and
inconclusive, should, I think, have seen and added, that the deviations
from beauty in the forms of the women of hot climates are commonly in
_excess_, owing to the great development of organs of sense or of sex;
while the deviations from beauty, in the forms of the women of cold
climates, are commonly in _defect_, owing to the imperfect development of
organs of sense, and of the general figure.
This view renders it more clear that both these kinds of deviation are
deformities, incompatible with the consistent and harmonious development
of the whole. And without this view, the preceding arguments are indeed
too vague to be easily tenable.
In relation more especially to the second of the preceding conditions, the
possession of a brain capable of vigorous thought, sound judgment, and
exquisite taste, Hume observes that the same excellence of faculties which
contributes to the improvement of reason, the same clearness of
conception, the same exactness of distinction, the same vivacity of
apprehension, are essential to the operations of true taste.
Here, again, those who take these true, but vague and inconclusive views,
should, I think, have seen and added that this excellence of the thinking
faculties is incompatible with the obviously constricted brain, which is
a defect common both to the Negro and the Mongol--a _defect_ which is
incompatible with beauty either of form or function, and which I have
shown, in my work on physiognomy, to be intimately connected with climate.
This renders the argument sufficiently strong.
Those who employ these arguments as to a standard of beauty in woman,
proceed to show the modes in which defects of this kind unfit persons to
judge of beauty; and though their farther arguments are similarly vague,
they nevertheless tend to support the truth.
If, say they, among the forms and the features which we compare, some are
associated by us with certain qualities or sentiments which please us,
they equally lead us to a predilection or prejudice, in consequence of
which the most common or the least beautiful figure is preferred to the
most perfect. In this case, the imagination has perverted the judgment.
Winckelmann truly observes, that young people are most exposed to such
errors: placed under the influence of sentiment and of illusion, they
often regard, as very beautiful, women who have nothing capable of
charming, but an animated physiognomy, in which breathe desire,
voluptuousness, and languor. The results of this as to life may easily be
foreseen.
Of the excess to which such prejudice may go, a good instance is adduced
in Descartes, who preferred women who squinted to the most perfect
beauties, because squinting was one of the most remarkable features of
the woman who was the first object of his affections.
Winckelmann observes that even artists themselves have not always an
exquisite sentiment of beauty: their first impressions have often an
influence which they cannot overcome, nor even weaken, especially when, at
a distance from the admirable productions of the ancients, they cannot
rectify their first judgments.
Circumstances of profession, it is truly observed, may also lead to
associations of ideas capable of deceiving us in our opinions respecting
beauty. Men are apt to refer everything to their exclusive knowledge and
the mode of judging which it employs. The "what does that prove" of the
mathematician, when judging the finest products of imagination, has passed
into a proverb. And every one knows of that other cultivator of the same
science, who declared that he never could discover anything sublime in
Milton's Paradise Lost, but that he could never read the queries at the
end of one of the books in Newton's Optics, without his hair standing on
end and his blood running cold.
The necessity of the third condition, namely, advanced civilization, to a
right judgment respecting a standard of beauty in woman, is evident, when
we consider that it requires a taste formed by the habit of bringing
things together and of comparing them.
One accustomed to see, says Hume, "and examine, and weigh the several
performances, admired in different ages and nations, can alone rate the
merits of a work exhibited to his view, and assign its proper rank among
the productions of genius."
From all this, it is certainly evident--not merely that that which pleases
us is not always beautiful; that numerous causes may form so many sources
of diversity and of error on this subject; and that we cannot thence
conclude that the ideas of beauty are relative and arbitrary--but that
certain conditions are indispensable to form the judgment respecting
beauty; and that the principal of these conditions are, a temperate
climate and fertile soil, a well-developed brain, sound judgment, and
delicate taste, and a highly-advanced civilization.
This is perfectly conformable with the practical fact that it was under a
most delightful climate, among a people of unrivalled judgment, genius,
and taste, and amid a civilization which the world has never since
witnessed, that the laws of Nature as to beauty were discovered, and
applied to the production of those immortal forms which the unfavorable
accidents occurring to the existence of all beings, have never permitted
Nature herself to combine in any one individual.
Though I have endeavored to amend these arguments respecting a standard of
beauty in woman, I prefer those which may be founded on the doctrine I
have laid down respecting the Elements of Beauty. It will be found that
the greatest number of these elements are combined in the woman whom we
commonly deem the most beautiful.
To illustrate this, it will be sufficient to examine their most striking
and distinctive characteristic, namely, their fair complexion, which is
intimately connected with all their other characteristics, and which gives
increased splendor and effect to their form and features.
It is remarkable that even Alison, though the advocate of all beauty being
dependant on association, grants that the pure white of the countenance is
expressive to us, according to its different degrees, of purity, fineness,
gayety; that the dark complexion, on the other hand, is expressive to us
of melancholy, gloom, or sadness; and that so far is this from being a
fanciful relation, that it is generally admitted by those who have the
best opportunities of ascertaining it, the professors of medical science.
He also observes that black eyes are commonly united with the dark, and
blue eyes with the fair complexion; and that, in the color of the eyes,
blue, according to its different degrees, is expressive of softness,
gentleness, cheerfulness, or severity; and black, of thought, or gravity,
or of sadness.
Even this, however, is less conclusive than the pathological or
physiological facts stated by Cheselden, as to the boy restored by him to
sight, namely, that the first view of a black object gave him great pain,
and that that of a negro-woman struck him with horror.
Independently of this, white, as every one is aware, is the color which
reflects the greatest number of luminous rays; and, for that reason, it
bestows the brilliance and splendor upon beautiful forms with which all
are charmed.
Winckelmann, indeed, observes that the head of Scipio the elder, in the
Palazzo Rospigliosi, executed in basalt of a deep green, is very
beautiful. But, in that case, it is the form, not the color, of the head,
that is beautiful. While greenness of complexion would not be beautiful in
a man, it would certainly be hideously ugly in a woman.
Moreover, while, in a dead black or any dark color of face, it cannot be
pretended that, considering its color only, we should have more than
blackness or darkness for admiration, it is evident that, in a fair
complexion, we have, in addition to its general brilliance or splendor,
the infinite variety of its teints, their exquisite blendings, and the
beautiful expression of every transient emotion.
I have now only to expose the sophistry which Payne Knight has employed
upon this subject.
"I am aware," he says, "indeed, that it would be no easy task to persuade
a lover that the forms upon which he dotes with such rapture, are not
really beautiful, independent of the medium of affection, passion, and
appetite, through which he views them. But before he pronounces either the
infidel or the skeptic guilty of blasphemy against nature, let him take a
mould from the lovely features or lovely bosom of this masterpiece of
creation, and cast a plum-pudding in it (an object by no means disgusting
to most men's appetite), and I think he will no longer be in raptures with
the form, whatever he may be with the substance."
Now, it happens that a grosser incongruity can scarcely be supposed than
that which exists between lovely features or a lovely bosom and a
plum-pudding, or between the sentiment of love and the propensity to
gluttony; and therefore to place the substance of the pudding, in which
internal composition is alone of importance, and shape of none, under the
form of features or a bosom, in which internal structure is unknown or
unthought of, and shape or other external properties are alone considered,
is a gross and offensive substitution, intended, not to enlighten judgment
respecting form, but to pervert it, and to degrade the higher object by
comparison with the lower one. The shape, moreover, is a true sign in the
one case, and a false one in the other.--Of nearly similar character is
the following:--
"If a man, perfectly possessed both of feeling and sight--conversant with,
and sensible to the charms of women--were even to be in contact with what
he conceived to be the most beautiful and lovely of the sex, and at the
moment when he was going to embrace her, he was to discover that the parts
which he touched only were feminine or human; and that, in the rest of her
form, she was an animal of a different species, or a person of his own
sex, the total and instantaneous change of his sentiments from one extreme
to another, would abundantly convince him that his sexual desires depended
as little upon that abstract sense of touch, as upon that of sight."
That, in detecting an imposture of this kind, admiration would give place
to disgust, only proves that the external qualities which were admired
were the natural and appropriate signs of the internal qualities expected
to be found under them, and that they now cease to interest only because
they have become, not naturally less the signs of these qualities, but
because they have by a mere trick been rendered insignificant, because
truth and nature have been violated, and because the mind feels only
disgust at the imposture. I cannot help saying that if Knight was in
earnest when he framed such arguments, his mind was sometimes dull as well
as perverse.
"The redness of any morbid inflammation," he says, "may display a
gradation of teint, which, in a pink or a rose, we should think as
beautiful as 'the purple light of love and bloom of young desire;' and the
cadaverous paleness of death or disease, a degree of whiteness, which, in
a piece of marble or alabaster, we should deem to be as pure, as that of
the most delicate skin of the fairest damsel of the frigid zone:
consequently, the mere visible beauty is in both the same; and the
difference consists entirely in mental sympathies, excited by certain
internal stimuli, and guided by habit."
There is here the same confusion of heterogeneous and inconsistent
objects, as in the preceding cases. To judge of beauty in simple objects,
each quality may be separately considered; and in this view, if the
inflammation presented the same teint as the pink or the rose, then, as a
mere teint, abstracted from every other quality of the respective
objects, it would be precisely as beautiful in the one as in the other;
but as the color of a rose on the human body would indicate that flow of
blood to the skin which can result only from excessive action, it ceases
to be considered intrinsically, and is regarded only as a sign of disease.
The same observations are applicable to the other case here adduced.
"The African black," he says, "when he first beholds an European
complexion, thinks both its red and white morbid and unnatural, and of
course disgusting. His sunburnt beauties express their modesty and
sensibility by variations in the sable teints of their countenances, which
are equally attractive to him, as the most delicate blush of red to us."
In treating of the Elements of Beauty, I have endeavored to show, that the
more those simpler elements of beauty, which characterize inanimate
bodies, are retained in more compound ones, the more beautiful these
become; but that the latter retain these elements in very different
degrees, dependant upon internal or external circumstances, and that such
elementary beauty is often sacrificed to the higher ones of life or mind.
Now, in the case of the African, he is born whitish, like the European,
but he speedily loses such beauty for that of adaptation, by his color, to
the hot climate in which he exists. The latter beauty is the higher and
more important one, and forms for the African a profitable exchange; but
the European is still more fortunate, because, in the region he inhabits,
the simple and elementary beauty is compatible with that of adaptation to
climate. The climate of Africa, the cerebral structure of its inhabitants,
and the degree of their civilization, are as unfavorable to the existence
of beauty as to the power of judging respecting it. What he adds as to
variation in sable countenances is a mere exaggeration.
"Were it possible for a person to judge of the beauty of color in his own
species, upon the same principles and with the same impartiality as he
judges of it in other objects, both animal, vegetable, and mineral, there
can be no doubt that mixed teints would be preferred; and a pimpled face
have the same superiority over a smooth one, as a zebra has over an ass, a
variegated tulip over a plain one, or a column of jasper or porphyry over
one of a common red or white marble."
Here the same mistake is committed. Elementary beauty is preferred to that
of adaptation to climate, fitness for physiognomical expression, &c.
Knight's other arguments all involve similar errors, and admit of similar
answers.