Quotes/references on black skin in Victorian times. Anyone know of anything?

[suwoo]

I need a quote for my essay.The woman is repellent as her skin is 'swarthy'. I need some kind of quote/reference to show how this was a 'normal' view by a victorian upper class male. I have the Beauty Myth and have been looking through bell hooks publications but I am yet to find anything. I don't want anything major, but I need somerthing more than an anecdotal comment from me, that this perception was a norm IYSWIM. Ta

(SGM, I can't find the full text on JSTOR or MLA as yet of the ones your DH suggested)

[MissMontoya]

Have you tried Toni Morrison's 'Whiteness and the literary imagination'?

[TeiTetua]

Maybe not always.

^Her skin excell'd the raven plume,
Her breath the fragrant orange bloom,
Her eye the tropic beam:
Soft was her lip as silken down,
And mild her look as ev'ning sun
That gilds the Cobre stream.^

("The Sable Venus" by Bryan Edwards)

[TeiTetua]

Hey, where are the italics? Oh well.

[suwoo]

Thanks all, I think it has but I don't know why they didnt show. Dittany, I've done post colonialism but it doesn't need to be as 'strong' as that. Will search more under the terms suggested above. Cheers all. (the extract is on another thread)

[DilysPrice]

There's Miss Swartz in Vanity, she's apparently mixed race and suffering detriment to her marriage prospects accordingly AFAIR.

[DilysPrice]

That's Vanity Fair of course.

[suwoo]

Dittany, please dont think that I am suggesting your guidance was too strong or that I wish my essay to be in any way innacurate- neither would be correct.

I will c&p the passage below for you to read yourself. The extract is to be analysed from a feminist perspective and I only have 1500 words. I have used some psychoanalysis with regard to the mentions of dreams, but I don't wish to launch into any lengthy post colonial theory. You will see the mention of 'swarthy' is isolated, but I feel it needs a mention, I just wanted something short in order to avoid appearing anecdotal.

Please feel free to inbox me if you'd like to read it (so far), I am beyond thrilled with it and have had some very positive feedback from SGM.

[suwoo]

My first glance round me, as the man opened the door, disclosed a well-furnished breakfast-table, standing in the middle of a long room, with many windows in it. I looked from the table to the window farthest from me, and saw a lady standing at it, with her back turned towards me. The instant my eyes rested on her, I was struck by the rare beauty of her form, and by the unaffected grace of her attitude. Her figure was tall, yet not too tall; comely and well-developed, yet not fat; her head set on her shoulders with an easy, pliant firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes of a man, for it occupied its natural place, it filled out its natural circle, it was visibly and delightfully undeformed by stays. She had not heard my entrance into the room; and I allowed myself the luxury of admiring her for a few moments, before I moved one of the chairs near me, as the least embarrassing means of attracting her attention. She turned towards me immediately. The easy elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as soon as she began to advance from the far end of the room, set me in a flutter of expectation to see her face clearly. She left the window?and I said to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps?and I said to myself, The lady is young. She approached nearer?and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly!

Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted?never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that crowned it. The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, piercing, resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually low down on her forehead. Her expression?bright, frank, and intelligent?appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive is beauty incomplete. To see such a face as this set on shoulders that a sculptor would have longed to model?to be charmed by the modest graces of action through which the symmetrical limbs betrayed their beauty when they moved, and then to be almost repelled by the masculine form and masculine look of the features in which the perfectly shaped figure ended?was to feel a sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all in sleep, when we recognise yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and contradictions of a dream.

[Flaneuse]

Another book worth checking is 'Imperial Leather' by Anne McClintock - I recall from my university days (a few years ago now, so apologies if it's not helpful) that it was excellent on the subject of Victorian ideas about purity, cleanliness, femininity & masculinity, race and the colonial project.

[suwoo]

I'll get meself in the library tomorrow, thanks. SGM, I've just emailed you draft two

[ThisIsANiceCage]

Oh, Wilkie Collins.

Interesting that the lady is described in explicitly masculine terms as well. And it's a while since I read it but isn't her behaviour resolute and intelligent as well? All a strong counterpoint to her victim-relative, the Woman in White.

I wonder how much this is about swarthiness in an ethnic sense, and how much about establishing Marian's masculine virtues - men are usually portrayed as darker skinned than women. In fact, isn't darkness often used as an indication of strength in men, as opposed to lily-white, soft, indoor complexions?

[ThisIsANiceCage]

to her pale victim-relative

[suzikettles]

I always read this passage as it being the hairyness that he objected to - ie he is describing her in masculine terms which = ugly.

There's something about the word swarthy which says more than dark or black skin to me. "Dusky" I think would have been the feminine, and more aesthetically acceptable word.

Navvies are "swarthy", exotic Victorian ladies are "dusky maidens"

[suwoo]

NiceCage, it is a close reading so I cant draw on anything from the rest of the text- just the extract.

I have focussed on the masculine/negativity of it as the main issues really. No that is really helpful both. I hadn't thought of swarthy in that context. I have mentioned class, in that dark skinned woman = poor and unable to protect themselves from the sun (thanks SGM)

Sorry for garbled post.

[suwoo]

Ooh, all brill! Dittany, I have suggested that he is still attracted to her, using Freuds theories about latent content and manifest content of dreams and other theorists work on contradictions. Loving your 2nd paragraph, which I have touched on but could explore much deeper.

Not sure if I have enough words to cover her opinion, do you think that it is imperative? Thanks or the link to the website, I have used it before, it's ok to reference isn't it?