Artificial attractions of love and incitements to lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and so on

Natural beauty is itself a stronger lodestone, as you have heard: a great temptation, piercing to the very heart. “The sight of a modest maiden’s beauty has wounded me.” But it is much stronger still when joined by those artificial enticements and provocations—gestures, clothes, jewels, cosmetics and ornaments—and by favourable circumstances of time and place, any one of which could produce this effect by itself.

Some wise men have much debated the question, “Does beauty owe more to art or to nature?” Are natural or artificial attractions more powerful? It remains undecided. For my part, I think that although beauty itself is a strong inducement, shining splendidly “amid filth,” in beggary—like a jewel on a dungheap, which still shines and casts its rays, and cannot be concealed, as Heliodorus relates of Chariclea even in beggar’s clothes—yet, as things are managed, artifice has greater power and deserves much preference.

So Aegle thinks herself well toothed With purchased bone and Indian ivory; So Lycoris, darker than a falling mulberry, Admires herself coated in white lead.

So toothless Aegle thinks herself pretty, Decked with newly bought teeth of Indian ivory; So ugly Lycoris, blacker than a berry, Admires herself, now fairer than a cherry.

John Léry of Burgundy, in chapter 8 of his History of a Voyage to Brazil, is entirely on my side. “When we arrived in Brazil,” he says, “we found both men and women as naked as at birth, without any covering, even over their private parts; and our Frenchmen, who lived with them for a year, could not persuade them to wear any. Many will think that our prolonged association with naked women must have been a great incitement to lust.” But he concludes otherwise: their nakedness stirred lust far less than our women’s clothes.

“And I boldly affirm,” he says, “that those glittering outfits, artificial colours, headdresses, curled hair, pleated coats, cloaks, gowns, costly bodice panels, trimmed and loose garments, and all those other accessories by which our countrywomen fabricate beauty and so elaborately display themselves cause more mischief of this kind than that barbarian simplicity, although those women are in no way inferior to ours in beauty. I could prove this by many other arguments, but I appeal to my companions at the time, who were all of the same opinion.”

His countryman Montaigne, in his Essays, agrees, as do many others. From their assertions we may briefly conclude that beauty owes more to art than to nature, and that outward ornaments provoke more strongly than the attractions nature supplies.

It is true that those lovely, sparkling eyes, white neck, coral lips, swelling breasts, rose-coloured cheeks and so on are powerful enticements in themselves. But when an attractive, artful, carefully composed expression, a pleasing gesture and a studied bearing are added, the effect must be far stronger. Add elaborate needlework, varied colours, the finest dyes, jewels, spangles, pendants, lawn, lace, gauzes, fine white linen, embroidery, curled hair, ointments and so on, and they will turn even the dowdiest woman into a goddess, when art assists nature.

For it is not the eye itself that incites lust, but an “adulterous eye,” as Peter calls it in his second epistle, 2:14: a wanton, roving, lustful eye, the wandering eye Isaiah condemns in 3:16. Christ himself and the Virgin Mary had most beautiful eyes—as lovely, Barradius says, as those of anyone who ever lived—but also so modest and chaste that whoever looked at them was freed from burning lust, if we may believe Gerson and Bonaventure. There was no antidote like the Virgin Mary’s face. It is not the eye, but how it is used, that causes such effects.

When Pallas, Juno and Venus sought Paris’s favour and the golden apple, as elegantly described in Apuleius’s delightful interlude, Juno came majestically onto the stage and Minerva gravely. But Venus “stood charmingly, smiling sweetly, while the most gracious Graces attended upon the goddess,” and so on. She entered smiling, with her gracious Graces and exquisite music, as though dancing, “and sometimes dancing with her eyes alone.” That was the chief thing: she danced with her roving eyes, the brokers and heralds of her suit. So she boasts in a modern poet:

Soon I could make my brow rule tyrannically, And force the world to pay homage to my eyes.

The eye is a secret orator, the first go-between, “love’s gateway.” Secret looks, winks, glances and smiles serve as dialogues: often lovers arrange the match and understand each other before speaking a word. Euryalus and Lucretia were thus mutually captivated through the eyes and ready to welcome one another before they had ever spoken together. He asked for her favour with his eyes; she “assented,” giving consent with a pleasing look.

That Thracian Rhodope was so skilful in this silent rhetoric that, Calasiris says, if she so much as looked at almost anyone, she would bewitch him and he could not possibly escape. For, as Salvian observes, “the eyes are the windows of our souls, through which, as through so many channels, all unchaste desire enters our hearts.” They reveal our thoughts and, as the saying goes, “the face is the index of the mind”: but the eye is the index of the face.

Why do you look with such shameless eyes? And so on.

I may say the same of smiling, gait, exposed parts of the body, appealing gestures and so on. Laughter is an attribute peculiar to human beings, and smiling is ordinary; but those feigned, composed, affected, artful, exchanged smiles—those answering smiles—are silent displays and foretastes of greater things, mostly used to entice and deceive. Yet many foolish lovers are repeatedly mistaken and led into a fool’s paradise.

For if they merely see a pretty young woman laugh, look pleasant, or use gracious words or gestures, they take it all personally, as done in their favour: surely she loves them; she is willing, yielding, and so on.

When a fool sees a pretty young woman smile, The simpleton thinks that she wants to love him.

When a fool sees a pretty young woman smile, He thinks she loves him; it is only a lure.

They make an art of it, as the poet tells us,

Who would believe it? Girls even learn to laugh, And seek attractiveness in this too.