Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classificatin of Beauty in Woman

by Alexander Walker

Alison says: “The proportions of the form of the infant are very different from those of youth; these again from those of manhood; and these again perhaps still more from those of old age and decay.... Yet every one knows, not only that each of these periods is susceptible of beautiful form, but, what is much more, that the actual beauty in every period consists in the preservation of the proportions peculiar to that period, and that these differ in every article almost from those that are beautiful in other periods of the life of the same individual.”

But the beauty of the infant is not perfect beauty: it is that, on the contrary, of mere promise, not that of fulfilment. So also the beauty of old age is not perfect beauty: it is that, on the contrary, which affects and interests us chiefly by the regret we feel that its perfection has passed, or is gradually vanishing.

“The same observation,” says Alison, “is yet still more obvious with regard to the difference of sex. In every part of the form, the proportions which are beautiful in the two sexes are different; and the application of the proportions of the one to the form of the other, is everywhere felt as painful and disgusting.” So also says Burke: “Let us rest a moment on this point; and consider how much difference there is between the measures that prevail in many similar parts of the body, in the two sexes of this single species only. If you assign any determinate proportions to the limbs of man, and if you limit human beauty to these proportions, when you find a woman who differs in the make and measure of almost every part, you must conclude her not to be beautiful in spite of the suggestions of your imagination; or in obedience to your imagination you must renounce your rules; you must lay by the scale and compass, and look out for some other cause of beauty. For, if beauty be attached to certain measures which operate from a principle in nature, why should similar parts with different measures of proportion be found to have beauty, and this, too, in the very same species?”

To this I might say the beauty of woman is not the highest beauty: it is beauty of the nutritive more than of the higher thinking system. But there is another and a better answer: the difference of sex which affects all the higher animals is a greater difference than that which subsists between some of their varieties or even of their species; and the same laws of ideal beauty are as inapplicable to different sexes as to different species.

“We see, every day, around us,” says Alison, “some forms of our species which affect us with sentiments of beauty. In our own sex, we see the forms of the legislator, the man of rank, the general, the man of science, the private soldier, the sailor, the laborer, the beggar, &c. In the other sex, we see the forms of the matron, the widow, the young woman, the nurse, the domestic servant, &c.... We expect different proportions of form from the painter, in his representation of a warrior and a shepherd, of a senator and of a peasant, of a wrestler and a boatman, of a savage and of a man of cultivated manners.... We expect, in the same manner, from the statuary, very different proportions in the forms of Jove and of Apollo [this should have been excepted], of Hercules and of Antinous, of a Grace and of Andromache, of a Bacchanal and of Minerva,” &c.

That, in all these cases, the beauty is partial, is evident from the circumstance that what is found in one is wanting in another; and partial beauty is not perfect beauty. But this last point has been well stated by Reynolds and Barry.

“To the principle I have laid down,” says Reynolds, “that the idea of beauty in each species of being is an invariable one, it may be objected, that in every particular species there are various central forms which are separate and distinct from each other, and yet are undeniably beautiful; that in the human figure, for instance, the beauty of Hercules is one, of the Gladiator another, of the Apollo another [again the same error]; which makes so many different ideas of beauty.... It is true, indeed, that these figures are each perfect in their kind, though of different character and proportions; but still none of them is the representation of an individual, but of a class. And as there is one general form, which, as I have said, belongs to the human kind at large, so in each of these classes there is one common idea and central form, which is the abstract of the various individual forms belonging to that class. Thus, though the forms of childhood and age differ exceedingly, there is a common form in childhood, and a common form in age, which is the more perfect, as it is more remote from all peculiarities. But I must add farther, that though the most perfect forms of each of the general divisions of the human figure are ideal, and superior to any individual form of that class, yet the highest perfection of the human figure is not to be found in any one of them. It is not in the Hercules, nor in the Gladiator, nor in the Apollo, but in that form which is taken from all, and which partakes equally of the activity of the Gladiator, of the delicacy of the Apollo, and of the muscular strength of the Hercules. For perfect beauty in any species must combine all the characters which are beautiful in that species. It cannot consist in any one to the exclusion of the rest: no one, therefore, must be predominant, that no one may be deficient.”

“A high degree of particular character,” says Barry, “cannot be superinduced upon pure or simple beauty without altering its constituent parts; this is peculiar to grace only; for particular characters consist, as has been observed before, in those deviations from the general standard for the better purpose of effecting utility and power, and become so many species of a higher order; where nature is elevated into grandeur, majesty, and sublimity.”

There is AN IDEAL IN ATTITUDE as well as in the form of the head and body.

This ideal is exactly opposed to the academical rule mentioned by Dufresnoy, Reynolds, and others, namely, that the right leg and left arm, or the left leg and right arm, should be advanced or withdrawn together. These are the mere attitudes of progression, not those of expression; and the academical rule is only an academical blunder. To anything but walking—to the free and unembarrassed expressions of the body, it is, indeed, quite inapplicable, and could produce only contortion.