ARACHNE FOR SPIDER

Though weaving is life-threatening in Sleeping Beauty, it is also associated with female story-telling and the power of the woman to create!

Weaving, combing the hair and sewing are all famous female arts. The yarn, the strands of hair and the thread are all connected. They point toward female beauty, and the woman's talent to create the family and create a story.

There is also a mystery and an almost supernatural aura attached to weaving. Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, the three Fates, are all females and they are weavers. Clotho spins the thread of life, Lachesis measures it and Atropos cuts it.

The Goddess Athene was a master weaver. She was so angry with Arachne, the young, talented weaver who bragged that she was better than the Goddess, that she transformed the poor girl into a spider. Arachne means spider in Greek.

Weaving (the cause of the quarrel) is a female art, and an extension of female writing. Athene, the master weaver, is also the Goddess of wisdom.

The girl Arachne is now punished, condemned to weave endlessly into forever. I never destroy a spider's web from my window sill or the balcony. It is a work of art and lovely when you see it in sunlight!

BAKE ME TENDER BAKE ME TRUE

BAKING in Victorian literature is never a simple activity -- it is always part of larger themes or even problems within the book.

For example, in Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth, when Gemima refuses to eat from Miss Benson's and Ruth's special tea-cakes, it is a sign of a friendship that will go bad. 

When Lucy shares the breakfast pistolets and coffee pastries with Ginevra in Charlotte Bronte's Villette, we understand that the friendship between the girls is stronger than Lucy (an unreliable narrator anyway) would have us believe.

In A Little Princess, most of the scenes in the bakery always speak of hunger and deprivation rather than plenitude and plenty. 

Also, in Charles Dickens good cooks are often dangerous -- see Mrs Joe in Great Expectations! And how benevolent is excellent cook and baker Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights? Plenty of food is not always a good thing in the Heights.

Baking and cooking, however, could also have very positive meaning -- I mentioned Jane Eyre in an earlier post, and I should also mention the magnificent Christmas day meal at the end of A Christmas Carol!

A MANIFESTO FOR BEAUTY: THE JOY OF MAKE-UP
HERE I want to talk about make-up and answer anyone who considers it trivial or vain!

A common objection against make-up is that, as Shakespeare put it, though women have been given one face by God/ Nature, they use make-up to create another. The answer here is simple! It is not Shakespeare who said this, but Hamlet (in the eponymous play) while pretending to be mad. I repeat: while pretending to be mad. 

Shakespeare's thoughts on the matter we don't really know.

Another objection goes that the use of make-up shows women's vanity. The answer here is more than simple! Women live in a society which wants them to look good, so they try to do so. What's wrong with looking good? As famous Victorian beauty writer Mary Haweis has said, if so-called "vanity" is a desire to look your best, then it is another name for self-respect.

Finally, the beauty critics say that a woman who uses lots of make-up, nail varnish &c is no more than a silly doll. The answer again is more than simple! Using make-up and nail varnish is not at all silly -- it actually takes time and needs practice, taste and skill. The dichotomy between woman the pretty and woman the clever is nonsensical and false.

I side with the poet Charles Baudelaire, who commended make-up, saying that it improves on nature, and is thus an important part of civilization.

Make-up can be a joy, so long as we keep in mind that there is no perfect beauty and that age and beauty can fit together very well.

Love your mirror, love yourself!

FIND YOUR STYLE

SEWING in Victorian literature is, as I said in an earlier post, associated with beautiful young women, who need to work for their bread and are being exploited by unscrupulous fashion-house owners.

Though sewing was exhausting work, however, it enabled a young woman to make a living and survive in an unfriendly and uncaring world.

Ruth, left an unmarried mother in Elizabeth Gaskell's eponymous novel, first thinks to turn to sewing in order to raise her child. Sewing, seamstressing and embroidery were important female knowledge and a female art.

I still think that seamstressing can give a woman great freedom. I don't agree that fashion is not as creative as we think just because (as the argument goes) there are specific designs each year. 

We can create within the designs of the day, and use them to find our own style!

CAMEO APPEARANCE

ANOTHER important Victorian accessory was the cameo brooch. Cameos could be carved and produced in the UK, but they could also be brought as gifts from abroad. Italian cameos were a favorite gift.

In George Eliot's Middlemarch, Dorothea buys a set of cameos during her honeymoon. The marriage is to the old and indifferent Mr Casaubon. Already unhappy, Dorothea talks about the cameos with Will Ladislaw, the young man with whom she is already in love.

Will commends her taste, but Dorothea tells him that the cameos are for her sister Celia, and puts them away.

This scene has been read as a rejection, by Dorothea, of traditional roles for women -- she rejects the role of the married woman by showing her unhappiness during the marriage trip.

I disagree with this. I believe that the rejection of the cameo is part of Dorothea's rejection of beauty and love, something she will come later to regret.

Eventually, she will go all for beauty and love and choose to marry Will Ladislaw, who is renowned for his bright curly hair and pretty looks.

Cameos require great skill on the part of the jeweler; they can be made with shell, gemstones and other materials, such as onyx, jade and turquoise. Italy remains one of the famed places for cameos!

SHAWL ME WITH LOVE
An important accessory in the Victorian era was the shawl, made from Indian (Kashmir) wool. It was an item of elegance and luxury, and was of course also very useful for the winter.

Most of all, perhaps, the shawl carried significant emotional value for the Victorians.

This was because it was the usual gift a young man brought home after working or serving in India, for his fiancee, sister or even his mother.

This way, the shawl signified that the young man was back home, safe from the dangers of war or the vicissitudes of life in the exotic East.

A white shawl is part of the mystery in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White -- and this will be the subject of a new post!