"There is always some beauty left..."

Beauty | in Literature – Part II

Continuing on our foray into the myriad responses to beauty in all of literature, in all its hues and shades, tints and tones, let’s enter ‘wonderland’ mode for a while, and bask in their ‘enlightening’ representments! (borrowing this phrase from Lamb!)

Well, fairy-tale retellings have always had their ‘fair’ share of admirers, well-wishers, readers and critics, who’ve loved these re-presentations or re-imaginings, for their variety, and their diverse points of view!

And the ‘Cupid and Psyche’ myth that has so impacted the story-line for its seventeenth century counterpart, Beauty and the Beast, should rather necessarily be studied and analysed from its own contextualized contours! Of course, the story would prove a grave anathema if adjudicated by today’s yardsticks on beauty in general, and gender stereotypes in particular!

In fact, many retellings of today’s time and clime have been so obsessed more with debunking the original version(s) than flaunting their retellings! (I personally feel so!)

Well, that again, forms part of a separate post altogether, that follows, sooner or later!

Amongst the 500 odd retellings thus far, (as far as i know!), I would like to single out Angela Carter’s “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon,” and Robin McKinley’s Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast for a little appraisal! 

The latter book, by Robin, is interestingly, her first book, and her most famous one at that, written when she was just 26 years of age! It’s for you reader, to fathom the ‘thisness’ contained within these lovely reads!

Stereotypes on beauty, engendered by cultural imperatives that are forced down the throats of gullible, unsuspecting people, have also been portrayed with gusto by a host of writers! 

One such ‘writing back’ could be seen in the short story, “Barbie-Q”, written by Sandra Cisneros! One is spontaneously reminded of Katherine Mansfield’s short story on a similar theme, titled, “The Doll’s House”!

“Barbie-Q”, from her delightful anthology titled, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Cisneros skillfully delineates the maniacal obsession of two little Latina girls for Barbie dolls, which, although innocuous on the contours, has a debilitating effect on the psyche of the coloured girls/women, as it subtly engenders or rather facilitates a tweaked, tutored and tailored normative for girls, on the sly, as portrayed by Barbie’s ‘beautiful’ blonde hair, ‘flawless’ tanned skin, and ‘ideal’ bodily proportions!

These gendered normatives, according to Cisneros, are idealized versions that play hand-in-glove to the Westocentric conceptions of feminine beauty and hence, they tend to have a very pejorative impact on the way ‘coloured’ girls get to view womanhood in general, and their own bodies, in particular! 

To Cisneros, this ‘angel in the house’ syndrome ain’t an ideal by all means, as Cisneros brings out her own point of view that, societal standards of beauty for women tend to be too idealistic and materialistic, whereas, in reality, women are otherwise, and this entails a celebration of Otherness, and difference, that goes off tangent from the Westocentric, hegemonic normative givens of life!

Cisneros thus expresses through her story about societal paradigms that portray women to be perfect and materialistic whereas in reality, women are not perfect and they do have their own flaws.

On a much-o-much similar vein, Naomi Wolf tends to call this obsession with the idealistic, flawless woman as a ‘Beauty Myth’!

In her 1990, non-fiction rave titled, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women she argues that, women were under assault by this so called, ‘exerting, punishing standards’ of the beauty myth spread over five broad areas of their lives, namely, work, religion, sex, violence, and hunger! 

These ‘perfectionistic,’ ‘idealistic’, and unattainable goals, she feels, are not only exploitative of women, but also serve to reinforce the habituated patriarchal hegemonic dictates over society.

Society’s reiteration time and again on a woman’s physical appearance makes them weaker than their male counterparts – be it in the economic, social or political spheres, she says. women weaker than men socially, politically, and economically.

Women as they grow older and older, they gradually become invisible in our culture, says Wolf.

Pointing out the double standards as in the case of the TV news anchors, she observes that, men grow older and wiser, but women are replaced when they reach 40!

Beauty for Anne Frank is real therapeutic, that makes her sustain her traumatic saga in the concentration camp! In sharp contrast to her mother Mrs. Edith Frank who has the ‘default’ tendency of focusing only on the negative shades to life and living, looking always at the ignominies and the atrocities surrounding them all, Anne is so perceptive to the love and beauty that radiates around her!

Who could ever forgot those immortal, awe-inspiring, impactful lines of Anne that have such a philosophical-ethereal import to their words: ‘I’ve found that there is always some beauty left - in nature, in sunshine, in freedom, in yourself; these can all help you.’

 

Hence to Anne, although there is misery all around, and the mind is bogged down by overwhelming calamities, she says that, she would like to focus with single-minded devotion, on the loveliness and the beauty that abides within every single human spirit!

Compare this with Viktor Emil Frankl, a miraculous survivor to the concentration camp ignominies, whose profound read, Man’s Search for Meaning (thanks to Dr. Joseph Dorairaj for introducing me to this lovable read!) has a wonderful take on the beauty of cultivating a sense of humour! 

To Victorious ‘Viktor’ who emerged alive, triumphant and unscathed from the traumas of ‘four camps’ says with gusto and conviction, “It is well known that humour, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.”

So much for the beauty of humour in our lives!

I remember Dr. Ganesh, our Head of the Department, at MCC, who always sports an amiable smile on him, saying, “Laughter is the dominant rasa”! And he used to add, when ‘Laughter and humour’ are your dominant rasas in life, you can face any herculean challenge right on its face!

So much for the beauty of laughter in our lives!

To be contd…