Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature and Culture

Galia Ofek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351904186
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Galia Ofek's wide-ranging study elucidates the historical, artistic, literary, and theoretical meanings of the Victorians' preoccupation with hair. Victorian writers and artists, Ofek argues, had a well-developed awareness of fetishism as an overinvestment of value in a specific body part and were fully cognizant of hair's symbolic resonance and its value as an object of commerce. In particular, they were increasingly alert to the symbolic significance of hairstyling. Among the writers and artists Ofek considers are Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Margaret Oliphant, Charles Darwin, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Eliza Lynn Linton, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Herbert Spencer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and Aubrey Beardsley. By examining fiction, poetry, anthropological and scientific works, newspaper reviews and advertisements, correspondence, jewellery, paintings, and cartoons, Ofek shows how changing patterns of power relations between women and patriarchy are rendered anew when viewed through the lens of Victorian hair codes and imagery during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Chapter 1
Hair Theorized

This chapter lays the theoretical foundations of my study, which is informed by Freudian paradigms, fetish theories which were initiated by nineteenth-century researchers and developed by modern ones, Mary Douglas's anthropological model of the body politic and its vulnerable margins, and Roland Barthes's structuralist and semiotic analysis. These theoretical frameworks explore and consider a range of models which explain why woman's hair is a major site of self-definition on personal, gender and socio-political levels, and how its symbolic value and cultural resonance create, maintain or challenge specific forms of authority, particularly in societies where a certain erosion of traditional gender roles takes place. A brief historical survey of cultural and religious attitudes to women's hair in the Judeo-Christian tradition and in Western societies would shed light on Victorian hair rules and their representational values in the process.

Sociologists on the Importance of Hair in Western Civilization

The significance of hair in Western civilization in general, and in nineteenth-century England in particular, can be explained in several ways. Sociological models suggest that self-identity is constructed and determined, to a great extent, at a visual level, through a two-sided interaction between one's projected body image and the socio-cultural codes which interpret it. Anthony Synnott observes that hair is the 'most powerful symbol of individual and group identity – powerful first because it is physical and therefore extremely personal, and second because, although personal, it is also public rather than private'.¹ According to Synnott, since hair is malleable, it is also 'singularly apt to symbolize' changes in 'individual and group identities'.² Of all bodily parts, hair is so prominent in the process of identity formation because it is high on the list of things people first notice about a person's appearance, the head being 'the most looked at of all the anatomy'.³ As the head is 'at least fifty per cent covered with hair', about 'half of what [people ] see in the ordinary process of looking' at others 'is hair'.⁴ Within Western culture, women's face and hair gained a particular prominence since there had been a more or less continuous trend to cover up most of the human body. Varying fashions in different seasons, years and cultures may have exposed one bodily part or another, but the part which is almost always exposed is the head. As one of the single uncovered parts, it became a focus of attention and imaginative engagement with the concealed, invisible parts.

In addition, hair became increasingly significant to the formation of self-image since the growth of the European city and the ascendance of the bourgeoisie in the early stages of mercantile capitalism. It was then that fashion – including expensive hairstyles and accessories, and a special maid in charge of the lady's hairdressing – became a dominant aspect of the conspicuous leisure, wealth and waste which Veblen held to be characteristic of an acquisitive society. Quentin Bell, basing himself on Veblen's 'theory of the Leisure Class', has argued that 'the hair or wig' have a major role in the 'exhibition of leisure' since they 'can be raised to precarious height, or given an appearance of crushing weight as in the chignon', often burdening and inconveniencing the wearer to an extent that she be exempted from different chores and activities.⁵ Throughout the nineteenth century, hairstyles 'were deliberately kept so complex and ornate that only the wealthy with much time on their hands could afford to display them'.⁶ Women's hair was the main focus of conspicuous leisure and consumption, and indeed, in this period it attracted an increasing public attention, as men's haircuts became shorter and less elaborate.⁷ As nineteenth-century capitalism turned the middle-to-upper-class female body into 'one of the building blocks of consumer culture',⁸ expensive and elaborate hair fashions became its cornerstone, because it was the only female body part – excepting the face – on constant display.

These observations are applicable only to my discussion of middle- and upper-class women's hairstyles, since many of the discourses and representations which the study examines pertain mainly to ladies whose concerns, preoccupations and sense of identity they both expressed and shaped. It is clear that the same hair rules and fashions could not be maintained among the poor, working and industrial classes, where the division of labour and gender roles could not sustain Quentin Bell's sartorial exhibition of leisure and the fields of signification which it addressed and generated. Many of the servants could not afford expensive hair products and were unable to wear elaborate hairdos or dress their hair several times a day. In addition, as the sociologist Leonore Davidoff points out, many domestic servants and working girls could not afford gloves and their menial work meant that their hands were not only red, rough and unrefined, but also exposed and publicly visible, as opposed to ladies' hands, which were always covered, gloved, delicate and white. Such differences between the exposed body parts of women of different classes meant that there were varying perceptions of erogenous zones and status symbols, which in turn gave rise to various conceptualizations of male desire: Arthur Munby, as Davidoff points out, was obsessed with observing, recording and describing working women's hands.⁹ The main object of his gaze. Hannah Cullwick, 'stubbornly displayed her hands in public to exhibit their economic value'.¹⁰

But among the middle classes in Victorian England, women's hair turned into a salient focal point as fashion dictates and social mores prohibited bare hands, legs, and other parts which were covered for modesty's sake, thereby turning hair, neck and shoulders into the 'focus of sexual interest' which substituted 'for all the rest'.¹¹ In the daytime, when neck and shoulders were not bare, hair was almost the only exposed, visible and distinctly feminine body part in a lady's appearance. Thus the association of hair and the female sex intensified as the rest of woman's body was covered, and as a result, hair was invested with an over-determination of sexual meaning, particularly at a time when men's haircuts became shorter. The sociologist Rose Weitz claims that 'the most widespread cultural rule about hair is that women's hair must differ from men's hair',¹² and indeed in the nineteenth century both haircuts and hair rules differentiated men from women. While male hairstyles grew short and less ornate, men emphasized their manliness by boasting impressive beards – an unmistakable badge of masculinity in Victorian England – as the examples of Charles Darwin Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti show. Although male hair fashions and their representations certainly contributed to the construction of gender difference, this work will be dedicated to women's hair and the role which it played in the formation and emergence of modern definitions of female identity.

Concomitant with Victorian sexual over-determination of women's hair were hair rules and conventions. Girls could display long hair until adolescence, but then they were expected to "put it up' in a roll on the top of [the] head ... After this transition, to allow the hair once more to float freely over the shoulders took place only in intimate personal circumstances'.¹³ A contemporary account of the married, 17-year-old stage actress Ellen Terry, confirms the central role which Victorian women's hair played in their transition from girlhood to womanhood and from single to married status. Terry was, at the time, clearly unable to reconcile herself to her new position and its duties, and to conform to conventional expectations and rules about how married women should behave and look. She showed it by refusing to look like a married lady in her husband's household:

Nell behaved as a nymph who might escape from rules if they did not please her ... she was married [to the sculptor and painter G. F. Watts] and yet no wife ... with an air of supreme boredom, ... [she shook] her head to and fro, loosened the pins from her hair which tumbled about her shoulders like a cloak of shining gold ... while the mass of shimmering hair shrouded her and swept the floor. But Mrs Prinsep was horrified. 'Ellen! Ellen!' she cried, 'put up your hair instantly!" And Ellen, flashing a wrathful glance at her tormentor, grasped the waving mass of gold, coiled it carelessly upon her head and stabbing it with pins sat there looking lovelier than ever, a petulant scolded child.¹⁴

Hair in the Judeo-Christian Tradition

The emphasis on hair rules in Victorian England was by no means unprecedented. It may be instructive to discuss previous examples in order to understand why such hair rules rise and how they define power relations between women and men, as well as between women and patriarchal orders. One major, though not directly applicable model with respect to Victorian society, is religious. Religious dictates and prohibitions on women's exposure of hair can be found across Judaism, Christianity and Islam.¹⁵ For instance, the Jewish bride in Orthodox society is allowed to show her hair only before marriage, but immediately afterwards has to cover it with a special mantle, or, better still, shave it. Indeed, Jewish hair rules, as Weitz points out, serve the Orthodox community to judge women's characters and classify them: 'many Orthodox Jews consider those who leave some of their own hair showing under hats, kerchiefs, or false 'falls' less pious and modest than those who cover their hair completely with tightly wrapped turbans'.¹⁶

Accordingly, to keep unbound hair after the transition into a marital and socially controlled state represents a subversive sexual behaviour which endangers society through its most basic unit, the family. Jewish law permitted a man to divorce a woman by uncovering her hair, and vice versa: if a woman ever uncovered her hair in public, the law took this as evidence of her infidelity and permitted her husband to divorce her.¹⁷ Thus, sexual transgression is at once indicated, condemned and punished by a symbolic exposure of the woman's hair as a locus of sinfulness, corruption and unbridled sexuality, which are then eradicated from the female and the social body.

Christianity, too, associated women's...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Hair Theorized
• 2 Hair Fetishized in Victorian Culture
• 3 Hair Domesticated by Male Novelists
• 4 Hair Fashioned by Women Authors
• 5 Sensational Hair
• 6 Funny Hair
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index