A ROSE-LIKE NAME (The Rose in Religion and Literature)

THERE is little that has not been said about the Rose. To me, beauty, rose and perfection are one and the same.

The rose plays a part in many religions. It is sacred to the Goddess Aphrodite and to the Virgin Mary. Mary is the rose of paradise. A poor, young shepherdess brought a rose to the baby Christ; Saint Cecilia wore a wreath of roses on her head.

The rose appears often in fairy tales and literature -- from Beauty and the Beast to The Thorn Birds and The Da Vinci Code.  Oscar Wilde used the dark red rose in a tragic short story, while John Keats compares the beautiful Madeline to a rose in the disturbing and lovely poem Saint Agnes Eve.

Personally, I have noted that, in Victorian literature, girls with an alluring or tragic beauty are often given a Rose-like name: Rosamond in George Eliot's Middlemarch, Rosalie in Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey and Rosamond in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.

Kate Winslet is called Rose in the Titanic, her most famous role.

Finally, Oscar Wilde compares Dorian Gray to a beautiful rose; he does this also with Sybill, Dorian's tragic fiancee.

The reference to Dorian Gray reminds me of this: men also have their own fair share of beauty, for which The Lipstick Papers has not said much; we must return to male beauty in a later post!