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“The Arts of Beauty’: Female Appearance in Nineteenth-Century British Library
Newspapers”
Michelle J. Smith is a lecturer at Monash University, Australia, and a researcher of the role of women in literature. She wrote a research paper in which she describes the life style and the physical characteristics of women in the Victorian Era. A good point that can be seen from this work is that it is related to the topic of the power of beauty in the Victorian era in the way it describes the importance given to beauty ideals. Besides, the author points out the issue that all of what was really important was the appearance of people, “A well-cultivated mind was that which gave not only eloquence to the tongue, but luster to the eye.” (2)
In other words, there is the need of being handsome or beautiful to be accepted, as it is the case in the book, all of the characters who took care of their appearance and so their prestige was considered as a high one. Also, she mentions how the mass media of that time was pressuring girls to be perfect with a lot of advertisements in newspapers and magazines with the phrase: “Beautiful For Ever!” (3) Implying that if you were not good-looking you were none important into society.