During the Victorian period, and in The Yellow Book, representations of women associated with nature were abundant. The Yellow Book allowed contributor’s from different backgrounds to present varying ideals of beauty and nature under a quarterly literary periodical. Therefore, the illustrated magazine can be seen as a reflection of the ideals of beauty and nature in the Victorian period.

Frederick Greenwood’s non-fiction text “Women- Wives or Mothers,” which was published in the third volume of The Yellow Book in 1894, is one example of a representation of women associated with biological nature. An image of the front cover of the third volume of The Yellow Book can be seen to the left of this text. On the other hand, D.Y. Cameron’s visual art, “The Butterflies,” which was published in the tenth volume of The Yellow Book in 1896, is an example of a representation of women associated with physical nature. An image of the front cover of the tenth volume of The Yellow Book can be seen to the right of this text.

Using primary sources such as reviews and secondary sources which discuss ideals of beauty and nature, I will show how my chosen image and text relate to the representations of women and nature in the 1890s patriarchal culture and relate these to the production and reception of The Yellow Book volumes that I am working with.

Hoffman-Reyes states that, “Victorians inherited many of their fundamental ideas about beauty from eighteenth-century aesthetic philosophy” (23). She references Burke, who says the most beautiful part of a woman was thought to be around the area of her “neck and breasts.” The “smoothness and softness” of a woman’s body were more important than inner values such as wisdom because these inner values would fail to attract men (22). If women were trained to remain quiet and submissive, and they believed their purpose was to remain this way, men would benefit as their views would not be questioned. Patriarchal systems limit the options women have to a set of criteria which benefit those who are in power (Ledbetter 16).

Women were being shown as more than simply models of ideal domesticity and physical beauty by the end of the century (Ledbetter 156). The New Woman ideals were trying to transform these traditional ideas of femininity (56). To the right is an image titled “The Middlesex Music Hall” by Walter Sickert, which is located in volume five of The Yellow Book. This image is a representation of a woman who could be seen as the New Woman because she is breaking away from the spheres women were traditionally restricted to. She is standing on a stage with half opened curtains behind her. She appears to be holding an instrument. Though some progress was being made to shift dominant ideas of beauty and nature from a feminist standpoint, many representations of women and nature in The Yellow Book and elsewhere, including Greenwood’s and Cameron’s, were still heavily rooted in the patriarchal culture of the Victorian Era .