Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classification of Beauty in WomanWalker, Alexander
Philosophy
Beauty: Illustrated Chiefly by an Analysis and Classification of Beauty in Woman
Walker, Alexander
Beauty, Personal; Women
The cartilaginous extremities of the bones appear to enlarge; and the
mucous substance, which ultimately gives the soft reliefs which
distinguish woman, is not yet secreted. She is now perhaps more easily
distinguished by the nature of her inclinations and the general character
of her mind: while man now seeks to make use of his strength, woman
endeavors to acquire agreeable arts. The movements, the gait, of the
little girl begin to change.
These shades are so much the more sensible as the development is more
advanced. Still, woman, in advancing toward puberty, appears to remove
less than man from her primitive constitution; she always preserves
something of the character proper to children; and the texture of her
organs never loses all its original softness.
At the near approach to puberty, woman becomes daily more perfect.
We observe a predominance of the action of the lungs and the arteries; the
pelvis enlarges; the haunches are rounded; and the figure acquires
elegance.
There is in particular a remarkable increase of the capacity of the
pelvis, of which the circumference at last presents the circular form; it
being no longer, as in the little girl and in man, the anteroposterior
diameter which is the greatest, but the transverse one. It has been
observed that the same occurs in the females of the greater quadrupeds.
The pelvis, however, does not acquire, till the moment of perfect puberty,
its proper form and dimensions.
The changes which the same cause produces at the surface, are a general
development of the cellular tissue, the delicacy of all the outlines, the
fineness and the animation of the skin, and the new state of the bosom.
The fire of the eyes, and the altogether new expression of the
physiognomy, show that there now also exists the sensation of a new want,
which various circumstances may for a time enfeeble or silence, but can
never entirely stifle; and with it come those tastes, that direction of
the mind, and those habits, which are the effect of an internal power now
called into activity.
The gait and bearing of woman are now no longer the same; and the voice
changes as well as the physiognomy.
In all that has yet occurred, it will be observed that nutrition and
growth take place with great rapidity in woman. Her internal structure,
her external form, her faculties, are all developed promptly. It would
appear that the parts which compose her body, being less, less compact,
and less strong, than those of man, require less time to attain their
complete development.
Woman consequently arrives earlier at the age of puberty, and her body is
commonly, at twenty years of age, as completely formed as that of a man
at thirty. Thus beauty and grace, as has been observed, seem to demand of
nature less labor and time than the attributes of force and grandeur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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