flesh by a clear and single line? I come to her bosom with its firm breasts, but short and high pointed, revealing the valley of love between them, to her round belly, her arched flanks. Her hips were flat, her legs round, her calf large; she had a slender ankle, a lean and arched foot. Such she was as I saw her, and that which her chemise hid was not of less worth." (Houdoy, _La Beauté des Femmes_, p. 125, who quotes the original of this passage, considers it the ideal model of the mediæval woman.)
In the twelfth century story of _Aucassin et Nicolette_, "Nicolette had fair hair, delicate and curling; her eyes were gray (_vairs_) and smiling; her face admirably modeled. Her nose was high and well placed; her lips small and more vermilion than the cherry or the rose in summer; her teeth were small and white; her firm little breasts raised her dress as would two walnuts. Her figure was so slender that you could inclose it with your two hands, and the flowers of the marguerite, which her toes broke as she walked with naked feet, seemed black in comparison with her feet and legs, so white was she."
"Her hair was divided into a double tress," says Alain of Lille in the twelfth century, "which was long enough to kiss the ground; the parting, white as the lily and obliquely traced, separated the hair, and this want of symmetry, far from hurting her face, was one of the elements of her beauty. A golden comb maintained that abundant hair whose brilliance rivaled it, so that the fascinated eye could scarce distinguish the gold of the hair from the gold of the comb. The expanded forehead had the whiteness of milk, and rivaled the lily; her bright eyebrows shone like gold, not standing up in a brush, and, without being too scanty, orderly arranged. The eyes, serene and brilliant in their friendly light, seemed twin stars, her nostrils embalsamed with the odor of honey, neither too depressed in shape nor too prominent, were of distinguished form; the nard of her mouth offered to the smell a treat of sweet odors, and her half-open lips invited a kiss. The teeth seemed cut in ivory; her cheeks, like the carnation of the rose, gently illuminated her face and were tempered by the transparent whiteness of her veil. Her chin, more polished than crystal, showed silver reflections, and her slender neck fitly separated her head from the shoulders. The firm rotundity of her breasts attested the full expansion of youth; her charming arms, advancing toward you, seemed to call for caresses; the regular curve of her flanks, justly proportioned, completed her beauty. All the visible traits of her face and form thus sufficiently told what those charms must be that the bed alone knew." (The Latin text is given by Houdoy, _La Beauté des Femmes du XIIe au XVIe Siècle_, p. 119. Robert de Flagy's portrait of Blanchefleur in _Sarin-le-Loherain_, written in same century, reveals very similar traits.)
"The young woman appeared with twenty brightly polished daggers and swords," we read in the Irish _Tain Bo Cuailgne_ of the Badhbh or Banshee who appeared to Meidhbh, "together with seven braids for the dead, of bright gold, in her right hand; a speckled garment of green ground, fastened by a bodkin at the breast under her fair, ruddy countenance, enveloped her form; her teeth were so new and bright that they appeared like pearls artistically set in her gums; like the ripe berry of the mountain ash were her lips; sweeter was her voice than the notes of the gentle harp-strings when touched by the most skillful fingers, and emitting the most enchanting melody; whiter than the snow of one night was her skin, and beautiful to behold were her garments, which reached to her well molded, bright-nailed feet; copious tresses of her tendriled, glossy, golden hair hung before, while others dangled behind and reached the calf of her leg." (_Ossianio Transactions_, vol. ii, p. 107.)
An ancient Irish hero is thus described: "They saw a great hero approaching them; fairest of the heroes of the world; larger and taller than any man; bluer than ice his eye; redder than the fresh rowan berries his lips; whiter than showers of pearl his teeth; fairer than the snow of one night his skin; a protecting shield with a golden border was upon him, two battle-lances in his hands; a sword with knobs of ivory [teeth of the sea-horse], and ornamented with gold, at his side; he had no other accoutrements of a hero besides these; he had golden hair on his head, and had a fair, ruddy countenance." (_The Banquet of Dun na n-gedh_, translated by O'Donovan, _Irish Archæological Society_, 1842.)
The feminine ideal of the Italian poets closely resembles that of those north of the Alps. Petrarch's Laura, as described in the _Canzoniere_, is white as snow; her eyes, indeed, are black, but the fairness of her hair is constantly emphasized; her lips are rosy; her teeth white; her cheeks rosy; her breast youthful; her hands white and slender. Other poets insist on the tall, white, delicate body; the golden or blonde hair; the bright or starry eyes (without mention of color), the brown or black arched eyebrows, the straight nose, the small mouth, the thin vermilion lips, the small and firm breasts. (Renier, _Il Tipo Estetico_, pp. 87 et seq.)
Marie de France, a French mediæval writer of the twelfth century, who spent a large part of her life in England, in the _Lai of Lanval_ thus described a beautiful woman: "Her body was beautiful, her hips low, the neck whiter than snow, the eyes gray (_vairs_), the face white, the mouth beautiful, the nose well placed, the eyebrows brown, the forehead beautiful, the head curly and blonde; the gleam of gold thread was less bright than her hair beneath the sun."
The traits of Boccaccio's ideal of feminine beauty, a voluptuous ideal as compared with the ascetic mediæval ideal which had previously prevailed, together with the characteristics of the very beautiful and almost classic garments in which he arrayed women, have been brought together by Hortis (_Studi sulle opere Latine del Boccaccio_, 1879, pp. 70 et seq.). Boccaccio admired fair and abundant wavy hair, dark and delicate eyebrows, and brown or even black eyes. It was not until some centuries later, as Hortis remarks, that Boccaccio's ideal woman was embodied by the painter in the canvases of Titian.
The first precise description of a famous beautiful woman was written by Niphus in the sixteenth century in his _De Pulchro et Amore_, which is regarded as the first modern treatise on æsthetics. The lady described is Joan of Aragon, the greatest beauty of her time, whose portrait by Raphael (or more probably Giulio Romano) is in the Louvre. Niphus, who was the philosopher of the pontifical court and the friend of Leo X, thus describes this princess, whom, as a physician, he had opportunities of observing accurately: "She is of medium stature, straight, and elegant, and possesses the grace which can only be imparted by an assemblage of characteristics which are individually faultless. She is neither fat nor bony, but succulent; her complexion is not pale, but white tinged with rose; her long hair is golden; her ears are small and in proportion with the size of her mouth. Her brown eyebrows are semicircular, not too bushy, and the individual hairs short. Her eyes are blue (_oæsius_), brighter than stars, radiant with grace and gaiety beneath the dark-brown eyelashes, which are well spaced and not too long. The nose, symmetrical and of medium size, descends perpendicularly from between the eyebrows. The little valley separating the nose from the upper lip is divinely proportioned. The mouth, inclined to be rather small, is always stirred by a sweet smile; the rather thick lips are made of honey and coral. The teeth are small, polished as ivory, and symmetrically ranged, and the breath has the odor of the sweetest perfumes. Her voice is that of a goddess. The chin is divided by a dimple; the whole face approximates to a virile rotundity. The straight long neck, white and full, rises gracefully from the shoulders. On the ample bosom, revealing no indication of the bones, arise the rounded breasts, of equal and fitting size, and exhaling the perfume of the peaches they resemble. The rather plump hands, on the back like snow, on the palm like ivory, are exactly the length of the face; the full and rounded fingers are long and terminating in round, curved nails of soft color. The chest as a whole has the form of a pear, reversed, but a little compressed, and the base attached to the neck in a delightfully well-proportioned manner. The belly, the flanks, and the secret parts are worthy of the chest; the hips are large and rounded; the thighs, the legs, and the arms are in just proportion. The breadth of the shoulders is also in the most perfect relation to the dimensions of the other parts of the body; the feet, of medium length, terminate in beautifully arranged toes." (Houdoy reproduces this passage in _La Beauté des Femmes_; cf. also Stratz, _Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers_, Chapter III.)
Gabriel de Minut, who published in 1587 a treatise of no very great importance, _De la Beauté_, also wrote under the title of _La Paulegraphie_ a very elaborate description, covering sixty pages, of Paule de Viguier, a Gascon lady of good family and virtuous life living at Toulouse. Minut was her devoted admirer and addressed an affectionate poem to her just before his death. She was seventy years of age when he wrote the elaborate account of her beauty. She had blue eyes and fair hair, though belonging to one of the darkest parts of France.
Ploss and Bartels (_Das Weib_, bd. 1, sec. 3) have independently brought together a number of passages from the writers of many countries describing their ideals of beauty. On this collection I have not drawn.
When we survey broadly the ideals of feminine beauty set down by the peoples of many lands, it is interesting to note that they all contain many features which appeal to the æsthetic taste of the modern European, and many of them, indeed, contain no features which obviously clash with his canons of taste. It may even be said that the ideals of some savages affect us more sympathetically than some of the ideals of our own mediæval ancestors. As a matter of fact, European travelers in all parts of the world have met with women who were gracious and pleasant to look on, and not seldom even in the strict sense beautiful, from the standpoint of European standards. Such individuals have been found even among those races with the greatest notoriety for ugliness.
Even among so primitive and remote a people as the Australians beauty in the European sense is sometimes found. "I have on two occasions," Lumholtz states, "seen what might be called beauties among the women of western Queensland. Their hands were small, their feet neat and well shaped, with so high an instep that one asked oneself involuntarily where in the world they had acquired this aristocratic mark of beauty. Their figure was above criticism, and their skin, as is usually the case among the young women, was as soft as velvet. When these black daughters of Eve smiled and showed their beautiful white teeth, and when their eyes peeped coquettishly from beneath the curly hair which hung in quite the modern fashion down their foreheads," Lumholtz realized that even here women could exert the influence ascribed by Goethe to women generally. (C. Lumholtz, _Among Cannibals_, p. 132.) Much has, again, been written about the beauty of the American Indians. See, e.g., an article by Dr. Shufeldt, "Beauty from an Indian's Point of View," _Cosmopolitan Magazine_, April, 1895. Among the Seminole Indians, especially, it is said that types of handsome and comely women are not uncommon. (_Clay_ MacCauley, "Seminole Indians of Florida," _Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_, 1883-1884, pp. 493 et seq.)
There is much even in the negress which appeals to the European as beautiful. "I have met many negresses," remarks Castellani (_Les Femmes au Congo_, p. 2), "who could say proudly in the words of the Song of Songs, 'I am black, but comely.' Many of our peasant women have neither the same grace nor the same delicate skin as some natives of Cassai or Songha. As to color, I have seen on the African continent creatures of pale gold or even red copper whose fine and satiny skin rivals the most delicate white skins; one may, indeed, find beauties among women of the darkest ebony." He adds that, on the whole, there is no comparison with white women, and that the negress soon becomes hideous.
The very numerous quotations from travelers concerning the women of all lands quoted by Ploss and Bartels (_Das Weib_, seventh edition, bd. i, pp. 88-106) amply suffice to show how frequently some degree of beauty is found even among the lowest human races. Cf., also, Mantegazza's survey of the women of different races from this point of view, _Fisiologia della Donna_, Cap. IV.
The fact that the modern European, whose culture may be supposed to have made him especially sensitive to æsthetic beauty, is yet able to find beauty among even the women of savage races serves to illustrate the statement already made that, whatever modifying influences may have to be admitted, beauty is to a large extent an objective matter. The existence of this objective element in beauty is confirmed by the fact that it is sometimes found that the men of the lower races admire European women more than women of their own race. There is reason to believe that it is among the more intelligent men of lower race--that is to say those whose æsthetic feelings are more developed--that the admiration for white women is most likely to be found.
"Mr. Winwood Reade," stated Darwin, "who has had ample opportunities for observation, not only with the negroes of the West Coast of Africa, but with those of the interior who have never associated with Europeans, is convinced that their ideas of beauty are, _on the whole_, the same as ours; and Dr. Rohlfs writes to me to the same effect with respect to Bornu and the countries inhabited by the Pullo tribes. Mr. Reade found that he agreed with the negroes in their estimation of the beauty of the native girls; and that their appreciation of the beauty of European women corresponded with ours...The Fuegians, as I have been informed by a missionary who long resided with them, considered European women as extremely beautiful...I should add that a most experienced observer, Captain [Sir R.] Burton, believes that a woman whom we consider beautiful is admired throughout the world." (Darwin, _Descent of Man_, Chapter XIX.)
Mantegazza quotes a conversation between a South American chief and an Argentine who had asked him which he preferred, the women of his own people or Christian women; the chief replied that he admired Christian women most, and when asked the reason said that they were whiter and taller, had finer hair and smoother skin. (Mantegazza, _Fisiologia della Donna_, Appendix to Cap. VIII.)
Nordenskjöld, as quoted by Ploss and Bartels, states that the Eskimo regard their own type as more ugly than that produced by crossing with white persons, and, according to Kropf, the Nosa Kaffers admire and seek the fairer half-castes in preference to their own women of pure race (Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, seventh edition, bd. 1, p. 78). There is a widespread admiration for fairness, it may be added, among dark peoples. Fair men are admired by the Papuans at Torres Straits (_Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition_, vol. v, p. 327). The common use of powder among the women of dark-skinned peoples bears witness to the existence of the same ideal.
Stratz, in his books _Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers_ and _Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes_, argues that the ideal of beauty is fundamentally the same throughout the world, and that the finest persons among the lower races admire and struggle to attain the type which is found commonly and in perfection among the white peoples of Europe. When in Japan he found that among the numerous photographs of Japanese beauties everywhere to be seen, his dragoman, a Japanese of low birth, selected as the most beautiful those which displayed markedly the Japanese type with narrow-slitted eyes and broad nose. When he sought the opinion of a Japanese photographer, who called himself an artist and had some claim to be so considered, the latter selected as most beautiful three Japanese girls who in Europe also would have been considered pretty. In Java, also, when selecting from a large number of Javanese girls a few suitable for photographing, Stratz was surprised to find that a Javanese doctor pointed out as most beautiful those which most closely corresponded to the European type. (Stratz, _Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes_, fourth edition, 1903, p. 3; id., _Die Körperformen der Japaner_, 1904, p. 78.)
Stratz reproduces (Rassenschönheit, pp. 36 et seq.) a representation of Kwan-yin, the Chinese goddess of divine love, and quotes some remarks of Borel's concerning the wide deviation of the representations of the goddess, a type of gracious beauty, from the Chinese racial type. Stratz further reproduces the figure of a Buddhistic goddess from Java (now in the Archæological Museum of Leyden) which represents a type of loveliness corresponding to the most refined and classic European ideal.
Not only is there a fundamentally objective element in beauty throughout the human species, but it is probably a significant fact that we may find a similar element throughout the whole animated world. The things that to man are most beautiful throughout Nature are those that are intimately associated with, or dependent upon, the sexual process and the sexual instinct. This is the case in the plant world. It is so throughout most of the animal world, and, as Professor Poulton, in referring to this often unexplained and indeed unnoticed fact, remarks, "the song or plume which excites the mating impulse in the hen is also in a high proportion of cases most pleasing to man himself. And not only this, but in their past history, so far as it has been traced (e.g., in the development of the characteristic markings of the male peacock and argus pheasant), such features have gradually become more and more pleasing to us as they have acted as stronger and stronger stimuli to the hen."[133] FOOTNOTES: [131] "It is likely that all visible parts of the organism, even those with a definite physiological meaning, appeal to the æsthetic sense of the opposite sex," Poulton remarks, speaking primarily of insects, in words that apply still more accurately to the human species. E. Poulton, _The Colors of Animals_, 1890, p. 304.
[132] "The Arabs in general," Lane remarks, "entertain a prejudice against blue eyes--a prejudice said to have arisen from the great number of blue-eyed persons among certain of their northern enemies."
II.
Beauty to Some Extent Consists Primitively in an Exaggeration of the Sexual Characters--The Sexual Organs--Mutilations, Adornments, and Garments--Sexual Allurement the Original Object of Such Devices--The Religious Element--Unæsthetic Character of the Sexual Organs--Importance of the Secondary Sexual Characters--The Pelvis and Hips--Steatopygia--Obesity--Gait--The Pregnant Woman as a Mediæval Type of Beauty--The Ideals of the Renaissance--The Breasts--The Corset--Its Object--Its History--Hair--The Beard--The Element of National or Racial Type in Beauty--The Relative Beauty of Blondes and Brunettes--The General European Admiration for Blondes--The Individual Factors in the Constitution of the Idea of Beauty--The Love of the Exotic.
In the constitution of our ideals of masculine and feminine beauty it was inevitable that the sexual characters should from a very early period in the history of man form an important element. From a primitive point of view a sexually desirable and attractive person is one whose sexual characters are either naturally prominent or artificially rendered so. The beautiful woman is one endowed, as Chaucer expresses it, "With buttokes brode and brestës rounde and hye"; that is to say, she is the woman obviously best fitted to bear children and to suckle them. These two physical characters, indeed, since they represent aptitude for the two essential acts of motherhood, must necessarily tend to be regarded as beautiful among all peoples and in all stages of culture, even in high stages of civilization when more refined and perverse ideals tend to find favor, and at Pompeii as a decoration on the east side of the Purgatorium of the Temple of Isis we find a representation of Perseus rescuing Andromeda, who is shown as a woman with a very small head, small hands and feet, but with a fully developed body, large breasts, and large projecting nates.[134] To a certain extent--and, as we shall see, to a certain extent only--the primary sexual characters are objects of admiration among primitive peoples. In the primitive dances of many peoples, often of sexual significance, the display of the sexual organs on the part of both men and women is frequently a prominent feature. Even down to mediæval times in Europe the garments of men sometimes permitted the sexual organs to be visible. In some parts of the world, also, the artificial enlargement of the female sexual organs is practised, and thus enlarged they are considered an important and attractive feature of beauty.
Sir Andrew Smith informed Darwin that the elongated nymphæ (or "Hottentot apron") found among the women of some South African tribes was formerly greatly admired by the men (_Descent of Man_, Chapter XIX). This formation is probably a natural peculiarity of the women of these races which is very much exaggerated by intentional manipulation due to the admiration it arouses. The missionary Merensky reported the prevalence of the practice of artificial elongation among the Basuto and other peoples, and the anatomical evidence is in favor of its partly artificial character. (The Hottentot apron is fully discussed by Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, bd. I, sec. vi.)
In the Jaboo country on the Bight of Benin in West Africa, Daniell stated, it was considered ornamental to elongate the labia and the clitoris artificially; small weights were appended to the clitoris and gradually increased. (W.F. Daniell, _Topography of Gulf of Guinea_, 1849, pp. 24, 53.)
Among the Bawenda of the northern Transvaal, the missionary Wessmann states, it is customary for young girls from the age of 8 to spend a certain amount of time every day in pulling the _labia majora_ in order to elongate them; in selecting a wife the young men attach much importance to this elongation, and the girl whose labia stand out most is most attractive. (_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1894, ht. 4, p. 363.)
It may be added that in various parts of the world mutilations of the sexual organs of men and women, or operations upon them, are practiced, for reasons which are imperfectly known, since it usually happens that the people who practice them are unable to give the reason for this practice, or they assign a reason which is manifestly not that which originally prompted the practice. Thus, the excision of the clitoris, practiced in many parts of East Africa and frequently supposed to be for the sake of dulling sexual feeling (J.S. King _Journal of the Anthropological Society_, Bombay, 1890, p. 2), seems very doubtfully accounted for thus, for the women have it done of their own accord; "all Sobo women [Niger coast] have their clitoris cut off; unless they have this done they are looked down upon, as slave women who do not get cut; as soon, therefore, as a Sobo woman has collected enough money, she goes to an operating woman and pays her to do the cutting." (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, August-November, 1898, p. 117.) The Comte de Cardi investigated this matter in the Niger Delta: "I have questioned both native men and women," he states, "to try and get the natives' reason for this rite, but the almost universal answer to my queries was, 'it is our country's fashion.'" One old man told him it was practiced because favorable to continence, and several old women said that once the women of the land used to suffer from a peculiar kind of madness which this rite reduced. (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, August-November, 1899, p. 59.) In the same way the subincision of the urethra (mika operation of Australia) is frequently supposed to be for the purpose of preventing conception (See, e.g., the description of the operation by J.G. Garson, _Medical Press_, February 21, 1894), but this is very doubtful, and E.C. Stirling found that subincised natives often had large families. (_Intercolonial Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery_, 1894.)
A passage in the _Mainz Chronicle_ for 1367 (as quoted by Schultz, _Das Höfische Leben_, p. 297) shows that at that time the tunics of the men were so made that it was always possible for the sexual organs to be seen in walking or sitting.
This insistence on the naked sexual organs as objects of attraction is, however, comparatively rare, and confined to peoples in a low state of culture. Very much more widespread is the attempt to beautify and call attention to the sexual organs by tattooing,[135] by adornment and by striking peculiarities of clothing. The tendency for beauty of clothing to be accepted as a substitute for beauty of body appears early in the history of mankind, and, as we know, tends to be absolutely accepted in civilization.[136] "We exclaim," as Goethe remarks, "'What a beautiful little foot!' when we have merely seen a pretty shoe; we admire the lovely waist when nothing has met out eyes but an elegant girdle." Our realities and our traditional ideals are hopelessly at variance; the Greeks represented their statues without pubic hair because in real life they had adopted the oriental custom of removing the hairs; we compel our sculptors and painters to make similar representations, though they no longer correspond either to realities or to our own ideas of what is beautiful and fitting in real life. Our artists are themselves equally ignorant and confused, and, as Stratz has repeatedly shown, they constantly reproduce in all innocence the deformations and pathological characters of defective models. If we were honest, we should say--like the little boy before a picture of the Judgment of Paris, in answer to his mother's question as to which of the three goddesses he thought most beautiful--"I can't tell, because they haven't their clothes on."
The concealment actually attained was not, however, it would appear, originally sought. Various authors have brought together evidence to show that the main primitive purpose of adornment and clothing among savages is not to conceal the body, but to draw attention to it and to render it more attractive. Westermarck, especially, brings forward numerous examples of savage adornments which serve to attract attention to the sexual regions of man and woman.[137] He further argues that the primitive object of various savage peoples in practicing circumcision, as other similar mutilations, is really to secure sexual attractiveness, whatever religious significance they may sometimes have developed subsequently. A more recent view represents the magical influence of both adornment and mutilation as primary, as a method of guarding and insulating dangerous bodily functions. Frazer, in _The Golden Bough_, is the most able and brilliant champion of this view, which undoubtedly embodies a large element of truth, although it must not be accepted to the absolute exclusion of the influence of sexual attractiveness. The two are largely woven in together.[138] There is, indeed, a general tendency for the sexual functions to take on a religious character and for the sexual organs to become sacred at a very early period in culture. Generation, the reproductive force in man, animals, and plants, was realized by primitive man to be a fact of the first magnitude, and he symbolized it in the sexual organs of man and woman, which thus attained to a solemnity which was entirely independent of purposes of sexual allurement. Phallus worship may almost be said to be a universal phenomenon; it is found even among races of high culture, among the Romans of the Empire and the Japanese to-day; it has, indeed, been thought by some that one of the origins of the cross is to be found in the phallus.