Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature and Culture

Galia Ofek's wide-ranging study elucidates the historical artistic literary and theoretical meanings of the Victorians' preoccupation with hair. Victorian writers and artists Ofek argues had a well-developed awareness of fetishism as an overinvestment of value in a specific body part and were fully cognizant of hair's symbolic resonance and its value as an object of commerce. In particular they were increasingly alert to the symbolic significance of hairstyling. Among the writers and artists Ofek considers are Elizabeth Gaskell George Eliot Margaret Oliphant Charles Darwin Anthony Trollope Elizabeth Barrett Browning Eliza Lynn Linton Mary Elizabeth Braddon Herbert Spencer Dante Gabriel Rossetti Edward Burne-Jones Charles Dickens Thomas Hardy and Aubrey Beardsley. By examining fiction poetry anthropological and scientific works newspaper reviews and advertisements correspondence jewellery paintings and cartoons Ofek shows how changing patterns of power relations between women and patriarchy are rendered anew when viewed through the lens of Victorian hair codes and imagery during the second half of the nineteenth century.