COSMETIC TRAGEDIES: FAILED MASQUERADE IN WILKIE COLLINS'STHE LAW AND THE LADY

Abstract

Inasmuch as they offer advice on howto improve appearances, nineteenth-century beauty manuals also vividly describe the dangers of putting on a face. The consequences of using cosmetics – often comprised of toxic ingredients such as arsenic, mercury, and lead – might range from the discomfort of surface irritation to the fatality of poisoning. Several manuals recount the unfortunate story of Lady Mary Montagu, who suffered an allergic reaction to a popular cosmetic, the Genuine Balm of Mecca, which led her face to turn red and swell “to a very extraordinary size . . . . It remained in this tormentable state three days, during which you may be sure I passed my time very ill” (Toilette of Health64). Another woman succumbed to an equally unfortunate fate as the facial powder, or “pearl white,” she wore to a scientific demonstration suddenly turned black in an adverse reaction to the chemicals used in the experiment. In an even more tragic case, “Mrs. S, being much troubled with pimples, applied an alum poultice to her face, which was soon followed by a stroke of the palsy, and terminated in her death” (Clark iv, 46). These stories caution that beautification through artificial means may eradicate the very self that had sought improvement.

From a distance ‘You might mistake her for a man’: A closer reading of gender and character action in Jane Eyre, The Law and the Lady, and A Brilliant Woman1

“…7. Female pronouns and typically male verbs in The Law and the Lady as Briefel (2009) has noted, Dexter's employment of cosmetics and ornate clothing make him a kind of "mannish woman" (p. 473). Ariel, conversely, is a sort of beast: "A creature half alive; an imperfectly developed animal in shapeless form, clad in a man's pilot jacket, and treading in a man's heavy laced boots: with nothing but an old red flannel petticoat, and a broken comb in her frowsy flaxen hair, to tell us that she was a woman" (p. 196).…”

Women in Transit through Literary Liminal Spaces

“…These last lines refer to wives 'being in subjection unto their husbands; even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord' (Collins [1875(Collins [ ] 1998, and also to women adorning themselves for men. This is an uncanny allusion to Sara's 'cosmetic tragedy' (Briefel 2009), when she consumes the arsenic intended as a beauty remedy to take her own life after reading her husband's secret diary and discovering that he finds her sexually repulsive. Converging on marriage, the themes of obedience and beautification are connected with privacy and poison from the very beginning of the novel.…”

Is Medusa laughing again?

“…Aviva Briefel in her illuminating study suggests that numerous nineteenth‐century articles, manuals, and pamphlets dealt with the dangers of women's practice of applying cosmetics. In addition to the hazards of using arsenic and other poisonous substances for beautification, cosmetics may "undermine the social structures to which a woman belongs" (Briefel, 2009, 464), since women who take measures to conceal imperfections are viewed as unnatural, dishonest, and manipulative. Ironically, while many women believed that their power derived solely from their looks, men used their supremacy to prevent women from using artificial substances, allegedly to encourage “sincerity” and “honesty,” but in actuality, to exert patriarchal control.…”