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The Power of Women's Hair in the Victorian Imagination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2021

Elisabeth G. Gitter
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Abstract

Women's hair, particularly when it is golden, has always been a preoccupation of Western artists and writers. But for the Victorians, who discovered complex totemic and symbolic significance in the image of women's hair, it became an obsession. The powerful woman mythologized in Victorian literature and art achieved her vitality partly through her hair, which both contributed to and expressed her magic power. She used her hair to weave her discourse and to spin her plots, to strangle her lovers and to shelter them, to build deadly snares and webs and to proclaim her own divinity and glory.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 99 , Issue 5 , October 1984 , pp. 936 - 954
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by The Modern Language Association of America

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