The Illman brothers distributed many images of ideal femininity to the reading public, such as “Health and Beauty.” A glowing, conventionalized woman pauses as she descends a veranda staircase. She is surrounded by classicized architectural elements like the doric column and classical male busts receding into trees and a da
rk skyline. Nonetheless, both she and her dress reflect light, if not seem to be the source of light (there seems to be some suggestion of an antithetical back lighting as well). Her dress style is closer to an earlier Regency fashion, indicating idealization of past femininity. Though she is supposed to be moving, the only movement in this engraving is the suggested wind moving her ribbons – her dress folds are perfectly arranged behind her, and she is balanced on her left toe with a perpetually bent knee. The image gives the illusion of her choice to leave the structure, but she does not seem compelled to continue walking – trancelike, she remains safe in the illuminated territory. She is a time-transcendent stand in for the title’s allegory – contained, suspended and submissive. She communicates that there is only one way to embody such desirable traits: a surrender of identity.
Though she is the paragon of classicized femininity, there is also the joint suggestion there is also a temptation to keep looking when women exercise individuality. In Mona Caird’s “The Yellow Drawing Room” the unnamed narrator toggles between viewing Clara and Vanora:
“My ideal woman would consider it almost indelicate to play with words in this fantastic fashion. I glanced at my grey-blue goddess. How comfortably certain one felt with her of enjoying conversational repose! Dear Clara! With what admirable good taste she carried out one’s cherished ideas: she fitted them like a glove. I completely, ardently approved of Clara. To her I rather ostentatiously devoted myself for the rest of the afternoon, but I was furtively watching her sister” (Caird 105).
The narrator condemns Vanora’s linguistic “play” by using the word as a diminutive, then claps back with the precise alliterative phrase “fantastic fashion” to show his outward disdain for the action. But it is also important to note that he calls it, “almost indelicate” – there is a certain amount of personality that is negotiable here. “My ideal woman” is also “my blue-grey goddess,” a possessive phrase which allows him to express “one’s” (his) “cherished ideas.” But then, in the next sentence, the narrator uses an Austenian anticlimax to describe his feelings toward this ideal woman: “I completely, ardently approved of Clara.” She is the textbook woman, she makes one “comfortably certain” (in which we can see man and wife in the dual consonant but different “c” sounds), she fits the model perfectly “like a glove.” And yet, she is only worthy of a “glance,” and a patronizing, “Dear Clara!” – his “blue-grey goddess,” like the color, bores him. Even when “devoted” to her, the narrator can gather all this information in that same “glance,” while he is “furtively watching” the more interesting subject: Vanora.
In both the print and story, there is a dissonance between performed and fugitive identity: the external identity is policed, accepted and honored, and there is no attempt to understand the personality behind the performance, and when a genuine personality is presented, it is shown back into the idealized box. Like the Illman Brother’s woman’s ribbons, a woman is supposed to be moved, not move for herself.
Works Cited:
Caird, Mona. “The Yellow Drawing Room.” Dreams, Visions and Realities: An Anthology of Short Stories by Turn-of-the-Century Women Writers, London, International Publishing, 2003, pp. 104-110.
Illman Brothers. “Health and Beauty.” The Trout Gallery Archives, https://collections.troutgallery.org/objects-1/infoquery=mfs%20all%20%22illman%22&sort=0&page=13.