BEAUTY'S WORDS

READING Margaret Oliphant's Hester, I found one of the most beautiful descriptions of a blonde girl. Hester, the eponymous heroine, we read, wasn't "like [her distant cousin] Ellen Vernon, with her lovely fairness, her look of wax and confectionery"!

I am not so far into the book yet to know if Ellen will turn out to be good or bad, though I turned some pages and I think she will be good. At the moment, she has hurt Hester, who admired her, by never going to visit. Poor Hester!

Blonde women's hair had antithetical meanings for the Victorians. It could signify angelic femininity, female virtue, but also deceptive brightness and a snare.

The Victorians were obsessed with blonde hair, and I will come back to blonde Victorian heroines in later posts. 

What I do notice, however, is that writers exert themselves when they are going to describe beauty -- beauty's words can draw portraits that are better than any picture!