My entry from Lee Jackson’s “Victorian Dictionary” relates to feminine attractiveness in the Victorian Era. Taken fromThe Lady’s Dressing Room, the excerpt provides a preface to the author’s advice on how to retain beauty. It was intended for a specific audience: married women committed to charming their husbands.
The text is from 19th Century French etiquette author Baroness Staffe’s work. The translator, Lady Colin Campbell (Gertrude Elizabeth Blood) was a journalist and writer. She was also involved with a few divorce scandals, which is interesting when paired with the text’s intended audience. I’m still not sure whether or not it should be read as satire, and couldn’t find much additional info online for it.
A woman’s dressing room was a place of utmost privacy, a sanctuary or shrine where she was to be alone in performing the hard task of being beautiful. It was part of her sphere of influence at home. Not even the husband could enter. According to the text, this privacy was not so much based on secrecy or shame, rather, “delicate sense of modesty” and “certain instinct of vanity.” This gets a bit muddled as you read the entry, but that may just be due to my more modern point of view. 
The article also stresses the need to avoid being seen in the act of getting ready, stating that the beautification process could make the woman seem ridiculous if caught in the act. It implies that a woman’s best kept secret and skill should be her ability to disguise unfavorable outward appearance.
A wife’s duty was to appear beautiful in front of her husband, “Let us wrap the prosy facts of life in some little mystery; if we display them all, we shall run the risk of lowering ourselves, even in the sight of those who hold us most dear.” (“The Lady’s Dressing Room”). It’s a call for the woman to hide imperfections…Lest her husband find a thinner, better dressed and maintained figure. Obtaining then keeping love are likened to remaining attractive, applying hair curlers with precision, and keeping the ugly inside the dressing room. And while the woman did have her own space, this space was still used to appease a husband’s physical wants.
To close, I couldn’t help but think of “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” Jonathan Swift’s satirical poem. Written more than a hundred years before, it still seems relevant to this piece on Victorian life, especially if Campbell was making a satiric point. Any thoughts on it?
Works Cited
“The Lady’s Dressing Room.” Victorian London Dictionary. Web. 11 February 2016. victorianlondon.org.http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications/ladys-preface.htm#remaining attractive