Galatea, Georgiana, and the Glass Coffin: On Violent Female Perfection in the Male Gaze

*Author Notes: This is probably my favorite scholarly essay to date. I was allowed free choice of topic for this assignment, and so it is the most representative of my work and sphere of focus. It was written on 2 June 2022.

*CW: Gender-Based Violence, Spousal Abuse, Murder

Mirror, mirror, will I ever see someone beautiful staring back at me? He answers: “You look and shan’t see perfection, ’tis true, for I decide what beauty is for you.” But who is looking? It is a common colloquialism that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and variations on this statement have appeared in literature as far back as the 3rd century BCE. Still, whose eyes are beholding one’s beauty and whose determinations take precedence in our self-view of beauty? What eyes of the magic mirror classify beauty and ugliness? “The Magic Mirror” is an element in the Grimms’ 1812 Snow White, “Little Snow-White” adapted from an earlier German folk tale. The voice of the magic mirror is never fully characterized in this story, but it is said to only speak the truth. Considering the time period of this maxim’s origin, and the object (in Snow White) being either a woman, or a woman and a girl, it would stand to reason that the subject is male. To clarify, then, beauty is in the eye of the beholding male presence; thus, perfect beauty is an ideal that men have issued as an aspirational model for all women. In order to determine what would stand as female perfection in the…