On Beauty

No, this is not about Zadie's Smith Booker prize-winning book, but a much older one. More than 150 years after it was written, alot of the insights in the book still hold true, well at least in my opinion. That's why classics are called classics.

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
Chapter XVII Confessions

“It is foolish to wish for beauty, Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.

So said the teachers of our childhood; and so say we to the children of the present day. All very judicious and proper no doubt; but are such assertions supported by actual experience?

We are naturally disposed to love what gives us pleasure, and what more pleasing than a beautiful face...when we know no harm of the possessor at least? A little girl loves her bird....Why?...Because it lives and feels, because it is helpless and harmless. A toad, likewise, lives and feels, and is equally helpless and harmless; but though she would not hurt a toad, she cannot love it like the bird, with its graceful form, soft feathers, and bright, speaking eyes. If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially the former, by the bulk of mankind: if, on the other hand, she is disagreeable in person and character, her plainness is commonly inveighed against as her greatest crime, because to common observers, it gives the greatest offence; while, if she is plain and good, provided she is a person of retired manners and secluded life, no one ever knows of her goodness, except her immediate connections; others, on the contrary, are disposed to form unfavourable opinions of her mind and disposition, if it be but to excuse themselves for their instinctive dislike of one so unfavoured by nature; and vice versa with her whose angel form conceals a vicious heart, or sheds a false, deceitful charm over defects and foibles that would not be tolerated in another.

They that have beauty, let them be thankful for it, and make a good use of it, like any other talent: they that have it not, let them console themselves, and do the best they can without it – certainly, though liable to be over-estimated, it is a gift of God, and not to be despised. Many will feel this, who have felt that they could love, and whose hearts tell them they are worthy to be loved again, while yet they are debarred, by the lack of this, or some such seeming trifle from giving and receiving that happiness they seem almost made to feel and to impart. As well as the humble glow-worm despise that power of giving light, without which the roving fly might pass her and repass her a thousand times, and never light beside her; she might hear her winged darling buzzing over and around her; he vainly seeking her, she longing to be found, but with no power to make her presence known, no voice to call him, no wings to follow his flight;...the fly must seek another mate, the worm must live and die alone.”


A pretty decent effort by Anne Brontë on the whole, with none of the great tragedies that so highlighted her sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights, and yet not such a feministic work as her other sister Charlotte’s Jane Eyre or Charlotte’s good friend Gaskell’s powerful works. If you want to read classics without the weird/cheem/funny English characteristic of non-contemporary English novels, Anne Brontë may just be your girl.

Still not convinced why classics are actually very good reads?

Go back to your mugging then.