Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Challenging the Beauty Myth

In my last post I took a look at how some romances reinforce the beauty myth. Today I've chosen some examples of romances and, in the case of Austen, pre-cursors of the modern romances (Sarah's already made a good case why Austen's novels can be read as romances) which challenge the beauty myth.

Jane Austen - Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice

For me these two novels have always seemed to suggest that beauty is not an absolute but is "in the eye of the beholder" because in both cases once the hero who's doing the beholding falls in love, he considers his beloved beautiful even though he previously had doubts about her attractiveness.

Felix Moses
summarises the changes in Anne Elliot's appearance
When Anne and Wentworth first meet in Ch. 4, Jane Austen describes them as follows: "He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, and Anne an extremely pretty girl." When the engagement breaks up, even Anne's beauty is affected: "an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect" (Ch. 4). On his return after more than seven years, Wentworth is contrasted with Anne, who is no longer beautiful: "no; the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Frederick Wentworth" (Ch. 7). However, as Anne gradually "learns" romance, Wentworth notices an improvement in her physical attractiveness: "she was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features, having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced. . . . [Wentworth] gave her a momentary glance . . . which seemed to say. . . ‘and even I at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again'" (Ch. 12). The fact that Anne has regained her former beauty is underscored by Jane Austen, when Lady Russell, a neutral observer, fancies in Ch. 13 that "Anne was improved in plumpness and looks" and hopes "that she was to be blessed with a second spring of youth and beauty."
Moses does not clarify whether the restoration of Anne's beauty is the cause or an effect of the restoration of Wentworth's love towards her. The following quotation, however, suggests that although happiness may have improved Anne's appearance, the real reason for the change of Wentworth's opinion of it is his change of heart:
"I was six weeks with Edward," said he, "and saw him happy. I could have no other pleasure. I deserved none. He enquired after you very particularly; asked even if you were personally altered, little suspecting that to my eye you could never alter."

Anne smiled, and let it pass. It was too pleasing a blunder for a reproach. It is something for a woman to be assured, in her eight-and-twentieth year, that she has not lost one charm of earlier youth: but the value of such homage was inexpressibly increased to Anne, by comparing it with former words, and feeling it to be the result, not the cause, of a revival of his warm attachment. (Chapter 23)
Rather than falling in love again because of her beauty, it is his love for Anne which causes him to consider her beautiful.1 I think this argument is strengthened by a comparison with Pride and Prejudice, in which Darcy at first describes Elizabeth as only "tolerable":
"You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room," said Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.

"Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you."

"Which do you mean?" and turning round, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, "She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me. (Chapter 3)
His opinion of her physical beauty is altered, however, by his growing appreciation for non-physical aspects of her personality (intelligence and playfulness):
Occupied in observing Mr. Bingley's attentions to her sister, Elizabeth was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Darcy had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware; -- to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable nowhere, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with. (Chapter 6)
He is soon after "meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow" (Chapter 6) and by the end of the novel, having fallen in love with her, he is convinced of her beauty, as he makes clear in this exchange with Miss Bingley:
"I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how amazed we all were to find that she was a reputed beauty; and I particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, 'She a beauty! I should as soon call her mother a wit.' But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time."

"Yes," replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, "but that was only when I first knew her; for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance." (Chapter 45)
I do wonder if there's any link between this process of coming to believe the beloved is beautiful and the recent finding that
Sexiness evolves according to what we see over and over. This mechanism, Winkielman noted in a statement, “accounts for cultural differences in beauty — and historical differences in beauty as well — because beauty basically depends on what you’ve been exposed to and what is therefore easy on your mind.” (Alexander)2
Perhaps once these heroes began to feel attraction towards their heroine's personality (her intelligence, wit, goodness etc) they look at her more often. Darcy certainly spends quite a bit of time staring at Elizabeth. The result is that he may be resetting his beauty ideal, so that whereas before he compared her (unfavourably) to society's standard of beauty, now her appearance is the standard by which he judges beauty.

Georgette Heyer - The Quiet Gentleman

Tania Modleski noted that
In Ways of Seeing, John Berger, Marxist art critic, screenwriter, and novelist, has discussed the way in which the display of women in the visual arts and publicity images results in
a woman's self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually.
(qtd. in Modleski 37)
The following passage from Heyer suggests that women's self-perception is also affected by the fiction they read. Drusilla Morville has fallen in love with the Earl of St Erth, but, having compared her own appearance to that of the heroines she's read about, she finds herself lacking:
a candid scrutiny of her own face in the mirror soon lowered her spirits [...]. She could perceive no merit either in the freshness of her complexion, or in her dark, well-opened eyes, and would willingly have sacrificed the natural curl in her brown hair for tresses of gold, or even of raven-black. As for her figure, though some men might admire little plump women, she could not bring herself to suppose that St Erth, himself so slim and graceful, could think her anything but a poor little dab of a girl. [...] 'Depend upon it, you are just the sort of girl a man would be glad to have for his sister! You don't even know how to swoon, and I daresay if you tried you would make wretched work of it, for all you have is common-sense, and of what use is that, pray?'
This embittered thought brought to her mind the several occasions upon which she might, had she been the kind of female his lordship no doubt admired, have kindled his ardour by a display of sensibility, or even of heroism. This excursion into romance was not entirely successful, for while she did her best to conjure up an agreeable vision of a heroic Miss Morville, the Miss Morville who was the possessor not only of a practical mind but also of two outspoken brothers could not but interpose objections to the heroine's actions. [...] 'You would do better to put him out of your mind, and return to your parents,' she said. 'No doubt he will presently become betrothed to a tall and beautiful woman, and forget your very existence. [...].' (229-30)
As with the self-surveying woman described by Berger, Drusilla is aware of the conventions surrounding female behaviour. In relating her reality to that of fiction, she perhaps reveals both the way in which so much of life may feel like a performance, and the way in which each of us may refrain from casting ourselves in a particular role if we feel we lack the correct appearance, temperament, or both. Drusilla believes she lacks the beauty she feels is required in a heroine, as well as lacking what we might now describe as the Too Stupid to Live tendencies that afflict so many heroines. Heyer, however, by making Drusilla the heroine of the novel, challenges us to accept a wider range of heroines and, as a result, to consider the possibility that we too may play the heroine in the drama of life.3

Heyer seems to be subtly suggesting that character and personality, rather than physical beauty, are the true indicators of a person's nature and that there is hope that this will be recognised and valued by those who have the intelligence to look deeper than surface beauty. Like the poster Whitney Calvert created for Love Your Body Day (it's the image at the top of this post), The Quiet Gentleman can be read as an argument for seeing a woman's true beauty as an amalgam of her intelligence, strength, love, generosity etc.

Jennifer Crusie - Anyone But You

I couldn't possibly omit Anyone But You from a list of romances which challenge the beauty myth. Crusie addresses the problem head on:
Max said [...] "[...] Women do not handle turning forty well."
Alex looked at him with contempt. "And you know this because of your vast experience in dating hundreds of women twice."
"No," Max said, sounding not at all perturbed. I know this because I'm a gynecologist. [...] Forty is when they start rethinking plastic surgery. [...] They look at magazines and see all those damn seventeen-year-old anorexics in push-up bras, or they go to the movies and see actresses with tummy tucks and enough silicone to start a new valley, and then they look at their perfectly good bodies and decide their sex lives are over." (158)
Crusie's heroine is forty, and despite all her concerns about her appearance her sex-life is just about to to be restarted most satisfactorily.

So, which romances would you add to the list?
-----

1 Anne learned of Frederick Wentworth's initial negative opinion of her appearance thus:
after the Miss Musgroves had returned and finished their visit at the Cottage, she had this spontaneous information from Mary --

"Captain Wentworth is not very gallant by you, Anne, though he was so attentive to me. Henrietta asked him what he thought of you, when they went away, and he said, "You were so altered he should not have known you again." (Chapter 7)
The juxtaposition of his assessment of her and a description of his emotions towards her perhaps suggests that, as with his later, positive opinion of Anne's beauty, his negative opinion is at least partly the result of his feelings of resentment:
Frederick Wentworth had used such words, or something like them, but without an idea that they would be carried round to her. He had thought her wretchedly altered, and in the first moment of appeal, had spoken as he felt. He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. (Chapter 7)
2 Winkielman, Halberstadt, Fazendeiro, and Catty state that
our findings suggest that part of the preference for prototypicality arises from a general mechanism linking fluency and positive affect. This mechanism has been shown to contribute to several preference phenomena in psychology (Winkielman et al., 2003) and aesthetics (R. Reber, Schwarz, & Winkielman, 2004). From our perspective, prototypicality is simply one fluency-enhancing variable; others include repeated exposure, perceptual and conceptual priming, contrast, clarity, increased duration, and symmetry. This explanation of prototypicality preference does not rely on considerations of value for mate selection (Halberstadt & Rhodes, 2000, 2003). (805)
3 Heyer also has Drusilla examine whether masculine beauty has played too great a role in creating her love for St Erth:
Drusilla's heart was not untouched [...] it had crumbled under the assault of the Earl's first smile. 'In fact,' Drusilla told her mirrored image severely, 'you have fallen in love with a beautiful face, and you should be ashamed of yourself!' She then reflected that she had several times been in company with Lord Byron without succumbing to the charms of a face generally held to be the most beautiful in England. (228-29)
The implication would seem to be that although beauty may play a part in creating an attraction, it should not be the sole, or even primary, foundation for love.

The poster for Love Your Body Day was created by Whitney Calvert and can be found at the NOW Foundation's website.

27 comments:

  1. If I recall correctly, St. Erth falls in love with Drusilla precisely BECAUSE of her common sense, as he is otherwise surrounded by stupid and/or hysterical females.

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  2. Off the top of my head I can think of several titles:

    Jo Beverley's An Unwilling Bride

    Anne Gracie's The Perfect Rake

    Jane Eyre obviously

    Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me which I'm rathr feeling at the moment since I have had a very depressing experience with a bridesmaid dress and the wedding is Saturday. My only hope is the eye of the beholder is the camera lens and I don't look as dumpy and hideous as I feel when the pictures are taken. -sighs- A very timely post in my world, I must say.

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  3. Yes, you're right, Tal.

    Angela, my experience is that, however bad you think you look at the time, when you look at the photos five or ten years later, what you really notice is how young you look.

    Anyway, in many cases aren't bridesmaids dresses specially chosen to make the wearers look worse than the bride, or at least to just provide a background colour scheme, so that she stands out even more radiantly? It doesn't seem particularly fair, but if it makes the bride happy for a day then I suppose you could think of your discomfort/worry as a kind of wedding present that you're giving to her. And from a pragmatic point of view, if everyone is looking at her, they won't be spending much time looking at you.

    Alternatively, maybe she thinks you look great in the dress, so she'll think you look lovely in the photos. And again, maybe it would help to think of your sacrifice as a kind of present to her? Or maybe you'll even come round to seeing yourself the way she sees you?

    Which bits about An Unwilling Bride and The Perfect Rake were particularly challenging to the beauty myth? Can you share some quotes with us?

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  4. Although it is not precisely a romance, I would certainly add to the list Bess Streeter Aldrich, A Lantern in Her Hand. Throughout her life, Abbie (Mackenzie) Deal is distressed by her
    "short, dumpy, peasant body" as contrasted with the "tall, slender, aristocratic" model of (IIRC) her mother-in-law.

    In this book, physical appearance is always significantly, in the minds of the characters, associated with social class (as in the example of the "peasant" body) and intellectual refinement.

    This book may not be familiar to English readers or to younger US readers. However, marketed as YA, it has been very widely read.

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  5. Upon poking my forty-year-old memories, I think that it was Abbie's paternal grandmother who was the aristocratic lady in the portrait.

    The definitions of beauty and desirable physical appearance remain unchanged.

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  6. In The Perfect Rake the hero, Gideon, Lord Carradice, has no idea that the heroine, Prudence Merridew is less than beautiful. He can't figure out what everyone else is talking about. He basically falls in love with her at first sight.

    In An Unwilling Bride Beth has a conversation with Lord Arden's friend, Hal Beaumont, in which she tells him she knows she's not beautiful and he tells her that's only because she's never seen her own face in animation. Then he jokingly asks her to run away with him. Then he seriously asks her. It is one of my favorite scenes in that book. I also like how Lucien falls in love with Beth for herself. There's no wooing him with sex, which is a nice change.

    Sadly, I chose the dress. Most of my worst fasion decisions have been my own. I have no one to blame but myself. :-)

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  7. In this book, physical appearance is always significantly, in the minds of the characters, associated with social class (as in the example of the "peasant" body) and intellectual refinement.

    I don't know any aristocrats personally, but from what I've seen of them in portraits and newspapers etc I don't think they're at all homogeneous and I very much doubt it's actually possible to tell just from looking at them that they are aristocrats. Heyer would disagree, I suspect, as she has a heroine who's a lost heir in These Old Shades and (discerning) people can tell she's an aristocrat. I remain highly dubious, and I think the princess on the pea must have some bizarre blood disorder if she gets bruises from lying on a pea, particularly since was covered by all those mattresses.

    Then he jokingly asks her to run away with him. Then he seriously asks her.

    Oh dear! I feel sorry for Hal, now, as I assume he's not the hero. Did he get his own book later?

    Sadly, I chose the dress. Most of my worst fasion decisions have been my own. I have no one to blame but myself. :-)

    You must have had a reason for liking it originally. Maybe it isn't as bad as you now think it is?

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  8. What about Heyer's Sylvester, in which Phoebe is completely unimpressive to Sylvester at first? (Before the book begins, she has had a season in London and he danced with her and then promptly forgot her.)IIRC, she is described as plain (thin, awkward, brown-haired, no complexion, etc) and Sylvester calls her "sparrow."

    Also I think of Jean R. Ewing's "Rogue's Reward" where the heroine (Eleanor?) is the plain daughter of a beautiful mother. Her nickname is "brown hen."

    I think Mary Balogh writes this kind of heroine beautifully, too. Same for Carla Kelly. (can't cite chapter and verse on them without some research, but it seems to me that these two authors seldom write of truly beautiful women)

    You know, Laura, I like these kind of stories (the "hidden beauty" or "revealed beauty" stories) so much more than the common Pygmalion theme in which the plain girl gets a makeover and THEN the hero falls in love with her. To my mind it's a pretty shallow hero who falls for a new hairdo or a new dress. . .

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  9. I think Edith Layton has a story in one of the Regency anthologies in which the heroine has had it dinned into her all her life that she isn't as beautiful as her mother, a famous beauty. Finally the hero (I think) points out to her that beauty is all her mother HAS--her selfishness has driven her husband away, and she has no friends. She can't bear the idea that her daughter, so much younger, might outshine her; so she's convinced her that because her looks are of a different type than her mother's, she must be plain.

    Layton also has a wonderful book called TO WED A STRANGER. Lady Annabelle Wylde is a famous beauty who has been a bit of a villain in several earlier books, setting her cap for various heroes and starting spiteful gossip about the heroines. Well, she's now an ancient twenty-seven and still unwed, so she agrees to her father's advice that she marry Miles Croft, the new Viscount Pelham, even though she barely knows him.

    On their wedding night, she comes down with a nearly fatal case of influenza, which leaves her bald (they cut her hair) and looking skeletal.

    Miles's main reason for marrying Annabelle was that he wanted a well-established society lady to launch his sister on her first Season. To his horror, he finds that Annabelle has not only lost her looks but has never had any close friends, due to her mother convincing her that everyone else is jealous of her beauty.

    Annabelle and Miles are pretty much stranded as he nurses her back to at least a semblance of health, aided by a local herbwife. Annabelle has to reconstruct her view of herself, which had been entirely based on her looks. (Much of the blame for this turns out to belong to her mother.) She comes to care for Miles, at the same time feeling more and more that she doesn't deserve to be loved, not only because she's ugly but because she's a rotten person. Of course, the more she realizes this, the more considerate she becomes.

    When they return to Miles's principal seat, his mother (even worse than hers, we find) flattens her with shock at her deterioration; but his younger brother, and especially his delightful if unconventional sister, like her for herself. At a local assembly, she runs into a group of the characters she'd done wrong to in the earlier books in the series, but they are kind and helpful and supportive. Annabelle still has a way to go, but by the end of the book she has become an admirable, indeed lovable character--unselfish, honest, honorable, and brave.

    This is an unusual book because the heroine starts out beautiful outside but not inside, and winds up just the opposite (though her looks are mostly restored and will be completely by rest and proper care).

    For a plain gal who made good, there's always Wallis, Duchess of Windsor...

    Angela, see if you can find a copy of MURDER WITH PEACOCKS by Donna Andrews. The heroine is maid of honor at THREE weddings, and responsible for organizing two of them. And each bridesmaid's dress is worse than the others.

    And talk about role reversal! The heroine is a blacksmith, and the hero runs a bridal shop.

    WV: comisive--a BDSM romance featuring two submissives?

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  10. I'm rather late to this conversation & the related one on the 15th, but I wanted to recommend a title that I've found helpful & thought provoking: Our Looks, Our Lives by Nancy Friday. I read it nearly ten years ago & had to hunt for it again last week when the first Beauty Myth column came up. I think I'm going to reread it now.

    Having just hit the forty milestone birthday this year, I occasionally find myself viewing my 40 year old self with 16 year old eyes, "OMG- what've you done to yourself?!" These two columns are timely for me & I plan to return to them when I've more time to sit and think about the issues you raise.

    I can't think of romances that fit this theme, although I know they're out there. If I can come up with titles later I'll post them here.

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  11. Melinda, now that you mention it, Sylvester's a very good example. I think you're right that he calls Phoebe a sparrow. Interestingly, in The Quiet Gentleman St Erth describes Drusilla as a robin, and she thinks she ought to be a sparrow:

    '[...] Your practical observations, my absurd robin, are the delight of my life!'
    Miss Morville looked at him. Then, with a deep sigh, she laid her hand in his. But what she said was: 'You must mean a sparrow!'
    'I will not allow you to dictate to me, now or ever, Miss Morville! I mean a robin!' said the Earl firmly
    (282)

    That's about the most overbearing St Erth gets, and he isn't like that in the rest of the novel. Drusilla has rather more interest in fashion than Phoebe, which might account for why she's a robin rather than a sparrow, but I think it's interesting that both of them are depicted by Heyer as less-than-conventionally-beautiful, and both of them are compared to small birds which aren't generally thought of as being particularly beautiful.

    To my mind it's a pretty shallow hero who falls for a new hairdo or a new dress. . .

    Yes, I agree. And it's a pretty shallow heroine who falls for the hero's muscled body. Unfortunately, in some romances, it can seem as though that's the hero's main attraction.

    Layton also has a wonderful book called TO WED A STRANGER.

    Tal, I've got this in my TBR pile. It does sound very interesting.

    Thanks for the recommendation, Bookwormom. And you're definitely not too late to join in the conversation! I'm very pleased you've found these posts interesting, and if you have any more thoughts on the topic, or come up with some romances which fit the theme, please do share them with the rest of us.

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  12. Laura, TO WED A STRANGER is part of the following series:

    The Cad
    The Choice
    The Chance
    The Challenge
    The Conquest
    To Wed a Stranger
    To Tempt a Bride

    It helps if you can read the earlier ones, though it's not absolutely necessary.

    TO TEMPT A BRIDE is the story of Miles's sister Camille, who is an even more delightful as a heroine than as a secondary character.

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  13. "I like these kind of stories (the "hidden beauty" or "revealed beauty" stories) so much more than the common Pygmalion theme in which the plain girl gets a makeover and THEN the hero falls in love with her. To my mind it's a pretty shallow hero who falls for a new hairdo or a new dress."

    I like the hidden beauty stories too, because while physical glamor is nice, it's largely nonspecific. Being attracted to THAT specific man/woman is much more interesting than being attracted to ANY man/woman who looks generally similar. I think that's why sometimes a hero (often, but heroines too) remarks that the heroine isn't his usual type. It represents THIS heroine standing out from the crowd or being worth the extra effort to get past that facile preference.

    The hate-at-first-sight device has an element of that, too. Obviously it sets up a change in the relationship, but it may also denote a need to get to know each other better in order to *discover* attraction.

    Similarly, I sometimes find the friends-to-lovers storyline appealing if it adds dimension to the relationship--but it risks losing that sincerity if too much is made of the BFF getting a makeover, or the tomboy growing into a beauty. It's tricky, of course: perhaps some catalyst is needed to change the relationship.

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  14. Laura Vivanco wrote:
    "I don't know any aristocrats personally, but from what I've seen of them in portraits and newspapers etc I don't think they're at all homogeneous and I very much doubt it's actually possible to tell just from looking at them that they are aristocrats. Heyer would disagree, I suspect, as she has a heroine who's a lost heir in These Old Shades and (discerning) people can tell she's an aristocrat. I remain highly dubious, and I think the princess on the pea must have some bizarre blood disorder if she gets bruises from lying on a pea, particularly since was covered by all those mattresses."

    It does seem difficult, on the basic of historical portraits (much less 19th century British and French caricatures) to assume that all aristocrats had a certain "look." In novel-land, however, especially in the 19th century, there are certain standard tells for female aristocrats. I'm picking these out of George Barr McCutcheon:

    long, slender, pointed fingers

    small feet (never wide ones)

    a long, swan-like, neck

    delicate features (never large or, heaven-help-us, with a double chin)

    tall enough to sweep down a staircase effectively

    Note that these tells did not include any specific hair color, as long as the color was something dramatic rather than mouse-brown.

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  15. I think a lot of the convention comes from the notion of "blue blood," which itself comes from the fact that aristocratic ladies, who did not have to labor all day in the hot sun like peasant women, had very pale skin through which the blue veins could be clearly seen.

    WV: pitshi--Inuit word for a sled dog that is half pit bull and half Shih-Tsu.

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  16. I sometimes find the friends-to-lovers storyline appealing if it adds dimension to the relationship--but it risks losing that sincerity if too much is made of the BFF getting a makeover, or the tomboy growing into a beauty. It's tricky, of course: perhaps some catalyst is needed to change the relationship.

    In Austen's Emma it's the realisation of how jealous they are at the thought of their friend getting married to someone else that's the catalyst. I thought that worked well.

    Virginia, what about well-turned ankles? I'm fairly sure that thick ankles are sometimes mentioned as a sign of non-aristocratic descent, though I'm not sure if that's a convention I've absorbed from Heyer or if it came from somewhere else. Anyone else come across that one?

    I think a lot of the convention comes from the notion of "blue blood," which itself comes from the fact that aristocratic ladies, who did not have to labor all day in the hot sun like peasant women, had very pale skin through which the blue veins could be clearly seen.

    The equivalent in Spain was "sangre de Godos" i.e. blood descended from the Visigoths, and there's a clear racial element to that. Then again, it's present only slightly less indirectly in the correlation between pallor and nobility.

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  17. Laura Vivanco asked:
    "Virginia, what about well-turned ankles? I'm fairly sure that thick ankles are sometimes mentioned as a sign of non-aristocratic descent, though I'm not sure if that's a convention I've absorbed from Heyer or if it came from somewhere else. Anyone else come across that one?"

    My paternal grandparents married in 1897 (they both died in 1963). Grandma was plump (not obese or flabby, but definitely rotund, and less than five feet tall). She told me once that after the wedding, right after they got into the buggy to drive away, the first think her new husband did was twitch up her skirt, take a look, heave a sigh of relief, and say, "Thank goodness! I never could abide a woman with thick ankles."

    Her ankles remained trim until the day she died.

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  18. May I recommend a book called Pamela's Daughters, by Robert Palfrey Utter and Gwendolyn Bridges Needham; 1936. (It's online at Questia Library, if you can't find a hard copy.) It's a history of the fashions in heroines of popular fiction, and the social forces that shaped them, from Richardson to the 1930s. Fascinating and entertaining: there's an entire chapter on tears and another one on fainting.

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  19. Virginia, was he making a joke? I'm just thinking that if he hadn't even seen his fiancee's ankles, how would he know that he couldn't abide a woman with thick ankles? And if she had had thick ankles, how on earth would he have explained the skirt twitching? Would he have hopped out and asked for an annulment? So many questions....

    Thanks for the recommendation, Tal. Questia have some excerpts available here. Apparently "Pamela's Daughters, a study in the fashions in heroines, [is] a work that reveals the author's gift for wholesome but gentle satire. This book was completed only a month before he died" (from an obituary).

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  20. Laura Vivanco said...

    Virginia, was he making a joke? I'm just thinking that if he hadn't even seen his fiancee's ankles, how would he know that he couldn't abide a woman with thick ankles? And if she had had thick ankles, how on earth would he have explained the skirt twitching? Would he have hopped out and asked for an annulment? So many questions....

    He wasn't making a joke. He was a 36-year-old widower and had been in many a dance hall as he cattle-traded his way through the west, I fear. She was a rather prim schoolteacher, daughter of the local doctor.

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  21. There were those who claimed that Grandma, both of whose brothers were Baptist ministers, married Grandpap in order to provide herself with her own private and personal missionary field.

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  22. Unfortunately, Professor Utter is remembered less for the quality of his scholarship than for the manner of his death, which has entered into UC Berkeley folklore.

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  23. Virginia, that begins to sound a bit like the storyline I've come across in some Western-set romances in which the prim school marm reforms the dashing (sometimes widowed, sometimes in charge of his younger siblings) rancher/cowboy. And from the dates you gave it seems as though they lived happily for a very long time after.

    Tal, the obituary mentioned a tree being involved. What's the full story?

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  24. Laura, I would say that they lived for a very long time after (they were married in 1897 and both died in 1963). I grew up in their house, but since my father didn't marry until he was almost 40, they were both elderly when I knew them. I am not sure that I would include the "happily." It's more that they achieved a certain modus vivendi. He became a model citizen in a secular sense, serving on the school board for decades and all that, but continued as a Robert Ingersoll-style freethinker; she continued her efforts at conversion.

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  25. I'm not sure I remember the details, Laura, but I know where the tree was. I think he was walking across the Glen (a parklike area) when either the tree fell or a huge branch fell on him. I believe it was during a storm.

    WV: buckat--item much cherished by LOLruses

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  26. I realize this is a bit late, but I just found this entry and wanted to comment. Professor Utter was my great-grandfather. As I understand it, he was walking through the woods on the Cal Berkeley campus during a thunderstorm. Lightning struck a tree, which fell on him and killed him. His son, my grandfather, found his father just before he died.

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  27. Thanks for commenting, tekalynn. It sounds like a very horrible, random, and tragic accident, and one which must have been traumatic for your grandfather, as well as fatal for your great-grandfather.

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