Classic Girl Redux

THERE is another notion current, pretty closely allied to the former; that Perfection is the constituent cause of beauty. This opinion has been made to extend much further than to sensible objects. But in these, so far is perfection, considered as such, from being the cause of beauty, that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection. Women are very sensible of this; for which reason; they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness. In all they are guided by nature. Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. Blushing has little less power; and modesty in general, which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, is itself considered as an amiable quality, and certainly heightens every other that is so. I know it is in everybody’s mouth, that we ought to love perfection. This is to me a sufficient proof, that it is not the proper object of love. Who ever said we ought to love a fine woman, or even any of these beautiful animals which please us? Here to be affected, there is no need of the concurrence of our will – Edmund Burke “On the Sublime and Beautiful.”

Perfection is not beauty. Modesty is admirable. But Mincing? Lisping? Beauty in distress? I’m going to have to disagree with Burke on those points. Some men do get their jollies by attending to damsels in distress, but most of us quickly tire of riding to the rescue. Defeat your own curse, learn to make a ladder, brew an antidote, something, just leave me alone. I’ve got some other shit going on right now that’s way more interesting than your latest catastrophe.

Burke continued:

NOR is this remark in general less applicable to the qualities of the mind. Those virtues which cause admiration, and are of the sublimer kind, produce terror rather than love; such as fortitude, justice, wisdom, and the like. Never was any man amiable by force of these qualities. Those which engage our hearts, which impress us with a sense of loveliness, are the softer virtues; easiness of temper, compassion, kindness, and liberality; though certainly those latter are of less immediate and momentous concern to society, and of less dignity. But it is for that reason that they are so amiable. The great virtues turn principally on dangers, punishments, and troubles, and are exercised rather in preventing the worst mischiefs, than in dispensing favours; and are therefore not lovely, though highly venerable.

Virtues, even sublime virtues, which cause admiration do not inspire terror. I am not afraid of a woman who displays fortitude, speaks truth, or displays wisdom. It is true that such displays are not the most amiable, but amiability is not the ultimate goal of life for anyone but the aimless and amiable barfly.

Nor are the softer virtues diametrically opposed to the aforementioned virtues. Virtue is virtue, variance lies in the expression of virtue. Such variance produces differing responses, but terror is not one of them. Similarly, the differing expressions of virtue do not impugn the virtue itself.

Burke then moved from delineating qualities which do not constitute beauty to describing the true root of beauty.

Beauty is a thing much too affecting not to depend upon some positive qualities. And, since it is no creature of our reason, since it strikes us without any reference to use, and even where no use at all can be discerned, since the order and method of nature is generally very different from our measures and proportions, we must conclude that beauty is, for the greater part, some quality in bodies acting mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of the senses. We ought therefore to consider attentively in what manner those sensible qualities are disposed, in such things as by experience we find beautiful, or which excite in us the passion of love, or some correspondent affection. . .

ON the whole, the qualities of beauty, as they are merely sensible qualities, are the following: First, to be comparatively small. Secondly, to be smooth. Thirdly, to have a variety in the direction of the parts; but, fourthly, to have those parts not angular, but melted as it were into each other. Fifthly, to be of a delicate frame, without any remarkable appearance of strength. Sixthly, to have its colours clear and bright, but not very strong and glaring. Seventhly, or if it should have any glaring colour, to have it diversified with others. These are, I believe, the properties on which beauty depends; properties that operate by nature, and are less liable to be altered by caprice, or confounded by a diversity of tastes, than any other.

I cannot help but laugh at the first line. Yes, beauty does require some positive qualities. I must also quibble with the notion that it is of no use. Beauty is not useful in the way that a wheelbarrow is useful, but uselessness does not follow a lack of concrete utility.

Reasonable men can reasonably debate the proper definition of those seven qualities, but the list itself is not particularly groundbreaking or controversial, at least by modern standards.

Burke detailed characteristics of each quality. Within the characteristic of delicacy, he wrote:

AN AIR of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty. An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to it. Whoever examines the vegetable or animal creation will find this observation to be founded in nature. It is not the oak, the ash, or the elm, or any of the robust trees of the forest, which we consider as beautiful; they are awful and majestic; they inspire a sort of reverence. It is the delicate myrtle, it is the orange, it is the almond, it is the jasmine, it is the vine, which we look on as vegetable beauties. It is the flowery species, so remarkable for its weakness and momentary duration, that gives us the liveliest idea of beauty and elegance. . .The beauty of women is considerably owing to their weakness or delicacy, and is even enhanced by their timidity, a quality of mind analogous to it.

Perhaps definitions have changed too much since this was written, but robustness and strength are not detrimental to beauty. From a biological standpoint, men are attracted to a certain robust strength, as shown in the hips, as it suggests the ability to carry our offspring. Such robustness and strength must be tempered with delicacy, but fragility is undesirable. Flowers shooting through the frost or weathering an early spring snow display both strength and delicacy. Such a combination is highly desirable; timidity deters such a combination.

Mary Wollstonecraft, contemporary of Burke, was not swayed by Burke’s arguments. Rather, she was incensed.

Where is the dignity, the infallibility of sensibility, in the fair ladies, whom, if the voice of rumour is to be credited, the captive negroes curse in all the agony of bodily pain, for the unheard of tortures they invent? It is probable that some of them, after the sight of a flagellation, compose their ruffled spirits and exercise their tender feelings by the perusal of the last imported novel.–How true these tears are to nature, I leave you to determine. But these ladies may have read your Enquiry concerning the origin of our ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, and, convinced by your arguments, may have laboured to be pretty, by counterfeiting weakness.

You may have convinced them that littleness and weakness are the very essence of beauty; and that the Supreme Being, in giving women beauty in the most supereminent degree, seemed to command them, by the powerful voice of Nature, not to cultivate the moral virtues that might chance to excite respect, and interfere with the pleasing sensations they were created to inspire. Thus confining truth, fortitude, and humanity, within the rigid pale of manly morals, they might justly argue, that to be loved, women’s high end and great distinction! they should ‘learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, and nick-name God’s creatures.’ – from “A Vindication of the Rights of Men.”

Wollstonecraft came out swinging and she landed blows. “The rigid pale of manly morals” is over the top, but this is an 18th century flame war, so I’m going to allow it. Men and women do express fortitude differently, but truth and humanity are not the sole domain of one sex. Femininity is soft, but it is not weak. Purposefully ignoring moral virtues is the mark of a certain type of woman. It is not the mark of a worthwhile woman.

Wollstonecraft continued:

Never, they might repeat after you, was any man, much less a woman, rendered amiable by the force of those exalted qualities, fortitude, justice, wisdom, and truth; and thus forewarned of the sacrifice they must make to those austere, unnatural virtues, they would be authorized to turn all their attention to their persons, systematically neglecting morals to secure beauty.–Some rational old woman indeed might chance to stumble at this doctrine, and hint, that in avoiding atheism you had not steered clear of the mussulman’s creed; but you could readily exculpate yourself by turning the charge on Nature, who made our idea of beauty independent of reason. Nor would it be necessary for you to recollect, that if virtue has any other foundation than worldly utility, you have clearly proved that one half of the human species, at least, have not souls; and that Nature, by making women little, smooth, delicate, fair creatures, never designed that they should exercise their reason to acquire the virtues that produce opposite, if not contradictory, feelings. The affection they excite, to be uniform and perfect, should not be tinctured with the respect which moral virtues inspire, lest pain should be blended with pleasure, and admiration disturb the soft intimacy of love. This laxity of morals in the female world is certainly more captivating to a libertine imagination than the cold arguments of reason, that give no sex to virtue.

Wollstonecraft’s anger was leaping off the page, but her points were important. Reducing women to automatons and discouraging expression of virtues and wisdom doesn’t do anyone any good, not least of which the men Burke was addressing in his formulation. Demureness is expressed differently. Delicacy is not uniform. Fairness is subject to the eye of the beholder. To expect otherwise is a fool’s game. Moreover, to expand the inherent differences between the sexes to the point at which women become incapable of justice, morals, fortitude, and truth, is to set  very low expectations for your female companions. “Honey, just mince and lisp and I’ll ignore your amoral dalliances and utter disregard for the truth. Now go away, you bore me. Here’s half my stuff.”

It follows then immediately, from your own reasoning, that respect and love are antagonist principles; and that, if we really wish to render men more virtuous, we must endeavour to banish all enervating modifications of beauty from civil society. We must, to carry your argument a little further, return to the Spartan regulations, and settle the virtues of men on the stern foundation of mortification and self-denial; for any attempt to civilize the heart, to make it humane by implanting reasonable principles, is a mere philosophic dream. If refinement inevitably lessens respect for virtue, by rendering beauty, the grand tempter, more seductive; if these relaxing feelings are incompatible with the nervous exertions of morality, the sun of Europe is not set; it begins to dawn, when cold metaphysicians try to make the head give laws to the heart.

The references to Spartan regulations and enervated modifications of beauty, while entertaining, were overly hyperbolic. 18th century science had yet to determine the universality of pleasing waste/hip ratios, facial shapes, and the overall effects of biology on perceptions of beauty. Nonetheless, the assumption that modifications to beauty meant to please men are lacking in mental or moral vigor was a stretch.

Wollstonecraft was correct, though, that respect and love are not antagonist forces. Respect is a prerequisite for love, not in the “will you respect me in the morning” sense, but in that you cannot actually love one whom you do not respect. Both respect and love are earned. They are not parcels to be demanded, they cannot be distributed like Skittles. To paint the two as antagonist forces is to argue against the concept of Nature as presented by both authors.

At this point, Wollstonecraft takes Burke out behind the woodshed and beats him mercilessly:

But should experience prove that there is a beauty in virtue, a charm in order, which necessarily implies exertion, a depraved sensual taste may give way to a more manly one–and melting feelings to rational satisfactions. Both may be equally natural to man; the test is their moral difference, and that point reason alone can decide.

There is beauty in virtue. There is a charm to order. Mincing, lisping damsels in affected distress are not worthwhile objects of long-term sensual desire. There are rational reasons to select one woman over the others. A woman’s ability to be rational is one such reason; virtuousness is another. Strength and delicacy are not mutually exclusive; they can complement one another. Virtue is sexy, not frightening. The amiable are not made amiable by positive qualities. They are made amiable from the good which flows within them and outward.

As such, in the battle of Wollstonecraft v. Burke on the nature of beauty, Wollstonecraft gets the win. I may be a Burkean and Wollstonecraft may be one of the intellectual forebears of feminism, but she outmaneuvered Burke in this debate. Classic girls, born of virtue and seasoned in truth, displaying the rare combination of delicacy and strength, inspire the mind and the loins. Mincing, lisping strumpets, fragile and devoid of virtue, crush inspiration. As such, I’ll take the flower bursting through snow.

With thanks to Poetry for the suggestion and links to the source material.