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Understanding Female Beauty in the Eighteenth Century by Katherine CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Loughborough University Institutional Repository 'It is Virtue and Goodness only, that make the True Beauty': Understanding Female Beauty in the Eighteenth Century by Katherine Aske Doctoral Thesis Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University 21 May 2015 © by Katherine Aske 2015 ii Acknowledgements I would like to dedicate this thesis to the memory of my Supervisor, Professor Bill Overton. You always believed in me, guided me, and somehow interpreted my jumbled thoughts into coherent sentences. Your friendship and support was invaluable, and I will always treasure the time we had together. I owe my gratitude to Loughborough University for funding the first three years of my research and making this thesis possible. My thanks also go to my Supervisors Catie Gill and Carol Bolton for taking me on in the final years of my research. I could not have done it without you. To my family, my friends and the staff in the Department of English and Drama at Loughborough University, I am indebted to you for your love, kindness and support. Finally, to Toby, thank you for your endless love and encouragement. iii Abstract Key words: Beauty, Physiognomy, Aesthetics, Character, Art, Cosmetics, Physical Appearance, Body and Mind. This thesis addresses how female beauty was understood in the eighteenth century and aims to build on and expand the existing scholarship from Robert Jones, Tita Chico, Tassie Gwilliam, G. J. Barker-Benfield and Naomi Baker, amongst others. Each of these scholars has discussed various areas of beauty, including taste, cosmetics, sensibility, gender and, for Baker, the opposite to beauty, ugliness. Building on these areas of study, this thesis will address the concept of beauty in both its physical and moral sense. That is, the connection of the beautiful body with the ideas or associations it has come to signify. For example, the beautiful female body usually informs readings of virtue, morality, goodness, but, in some cases, beauty can be read as wantonness, immorality and foolishness. In order to navigate these contradictory associations, the thesis has been split into category chapters and divided into two parts. The first part will examine beauty's physiognomic origins, its role in aesthetic philosophy, and its artistic expression. In the second part, with a more literary focus, the concept of beauty will be discussed in connection to its moral associations, the effects of cosmetics and health, and how concerns for reading the body are considered in the mid- century's moral novels. The evidence for the thesis will include various types of literature, including scientific and artistic treatises, fairytales, letters, advertisements, recipe books, cosmetic manuals, poetry and prose fiction. Although the scope of this thesis is wide reaching, the relationship between the body and mind, that is, the legibility of the inner qualities on the external signs of the body, remains very much at its centre. These numerous and varying examples have been chosen to demonstrate how influential this connection really was in the period, and how it informs the understanding of female beauty in the eighteenth-century. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Introduction 2 Organisation 15 Chapter One Understanding Beauty 18 Reading Physiognomy 31 Human Physiognomy Explain'd 38 Chapter Two The Philosophy of Beauty 48 The Origins of Our Ideas 56 An Undisputed Advantage 78 Chapter Three Analysing Beauty 84 The Delicacy of the Outward Form 91 A Thousand Words 103 Chapter Four Moral Beauty 117 Pretty Wild Things 124 Beauties and Beasts 130 A Fairytale Education 139 Chapter Five False Beauty 157 Cosmetics and Beautifiers 167 Swift's Beautiful Nymphs 184 Chapter Six True Beauty 200 Beauty and her Ugly Sisters 206 (Mis)Reading Virtues 215 Clarissa's Beauty 220 Conclusion 232 Bibliography Primary Sources 238 Secondary Sources: Printed 244 Secondary Sources: Electronic 251 'It is Virtue and Goodness only, that make the True Beauty': Understanding Female Beauty in the Eighteenth Century 2 Introduction A Man needs no arguments to make him discern and approve what is Beautiful; it strikes at first sight and attracts without a reason. And as this Beauty is found in the shape and form of corporeal things; so also is there analogous to it a Beauty of another kind, an order, a symmetry, and comeliness in the moral world. And as the Eye perceives the one, so the Mind does by a certain interior sense perceive the other, which sense, talent, or faculty is ever quickest and purest in the noblest of Minds.1 * In his recognition of both an immediate, visual response to physical beauty, and the subsequent interpretation of that beauty through the mind, George Berkeley's Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1732) goes some way to introducing the focus of this thesis. With specific attention to female beauty, this research explores the numerous and often-contradictory interpretations of character that are associated with physical beauty. With examples ranging from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the 1770s, this research aims to prove that the understanding of female beauty, or the way it is recognised as both a physical and moral subject, is a significant and under-acknowledged facet of eighteenth-century critical analysis. Berkeley's thought, the idea that beauty informs a dual interpretation in the physical and moral reading of the body, is one that remains at the heart of eighteenth-century thinking. This duality became entrenched in the definition of femininity, where the physical perfection of the body indicated the moral superiority of the individual. It is for this reason that the following research concentrates on female beauty, rather than male beauty, as it was evidently more susceptible to thoughts on virtue and patriarchal notions of feminine conduct. In this research, I argue that understanding, or attempting to understand, the relationship between the beautiful body and the interpretation of the character within can be found in many aspects of eighteenth-century society, from morality and notions of sensibility, to health, disease, scientific reasoning, even gender 1 George Berkeley, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, vol. 1 of 2 (London: [no pub.], 1732), pp. 161–62. 3 distinction and social rank. In identifying this connection, we are better able to understand the way beauty was used to prescribe, reinforce and even challenge established feminine virtues. While there have been numerous studies into the surrounding topics in the period, the critical research into the understanding and significance of beauty is still very much in its infancy. An area undergoing recent critical development is physiognomy, the main topic of Chapter One and a significant facet of this research's examination of the connection between body and mind. Physiognomy is the reading of the character, and often health of the individual from the shape and colour of the facial and bodily features. Considering the role of physiognomy in the understanding of beauty, this thesis will look at the way the pseudoscience was adapted and applied throughout the period, and how it informed many of the social stereotypes associated with physical beauty. My argument that physiognomy acts as a foundation to the understanding and interpretation of female beauty in this period aims to build on the existing scholarship on the history of physiognomy and its development in literature from Martin Porter, Patricia Fara, Shearer West, Mary Fissell, Lucy Hartley and Graeme Tytler.2 The recent works of Juliet McMaster and Jennie Batchelor on reading the body, specifically the female body, also make a significant contribution in their discussion of physiognomy, expression, and sexual desire in this period.3 Under the subject of beauty, cosmetics have received the most critical attention, with many studies detailing their material uses, particularly in theatres and art, as well as the cultural responses to the art of beautifying. The subject is 2 See Martin Porter, Windows of the Soul: the Art of Physiognomy in European Culture, 1470- 1760 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Patricia Fara, 'Marginalized Practices', in The Cambridge History of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 485–507 (p. 495); Shearer West, 'Wilkes's Squint: Synedochic Physiognomy and Political Identity in Eighteenth-Century Print Culture', Eighteenth-Century Studies, 33, 1 (1999), 65–84; and 'Polemic and the Passions: Dr James Parsons's Human Physiognomy Explained and Hogarth's Aspirations for British History Painting', in British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, 13, 1 (1990), 73–89 (p. 76). Mary Fissell, Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Bristol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Lucy Hartley, Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Graeme Tytler, Physiognomy in the European Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). 3 Juliet McMaster, Reading the Body in the Eighteenth-Century Novel (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); and Jennie Batchelor, Dress, Distress and Desire (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005). 4 particularly fruitful in the early-modern period, in the scholarship of Edith Snook, Farah Karim-Cooper, Frances E. Dolan, Patricia Phillippy and Annette Drew- Bear, where they consider the use of cosmetics and the way they are used to construct the image of femininity.4 There are also several studies specifically in the eighteenth century from Tita Chico, Caroline Palmer, Morag Martin and Tassie Gwilliam, which focus on the role of commerce, gender difference and the fashionable trends in dress and cosmetics.5 Building on these studies, Chapter Five of this thesis discusses the use, availability and reputation of cosmetics, as well as the way they confound the interpretation of beauty, creating illegibility in the body – particularly in the identification of disease – and become entangled with satire and readings of sexual promiscuity.
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