Long hair in classic novels

[barnet_fair]

As I've started to grow my hair, I have felt more and more of a connection with women throughout history. I've always loved to read classic novels (especially those written in the Edwardian era), but now I find myself noticing details I didn't notice before, where the author comments on long hair. Even small details can be very evocative, especially given how rare it would be for a lady's hair to be seen loose outside her home.

Let's share long hair moments in classic novels that bring us joy! Any and all cultures, your interpretation of "classic"!

I'll start in a post below. If there's a way to hide spoilers using BB code in this forum, please let me know as I can't find one! I imagine most of the quotations about hair will not be crucial plot points, but perhaps we can find creative ways to hide plot spoilers if necessary. Perhaps using white text...

P.S. This thread is inspired by:
A very long hair collection of models, photographers, film, articles, art (https://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=148936)
Long hair in paintings and things of old... (https://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=145749)
Long hair in literature (https://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=46316)

[barnet_fair]

I've just finished reading Sons and Lovers (1913) by D.H. Lawrence. Lawrence was clearly very affected by the beauty of long hair he saw, and I imagine he mainly drew on his experiences with two women he loved, his sister, and his mother.

As a working-class man, Lawrence also enjoyed some familiarity with the women at the factory where he worked, but as you'll see below, it was still quite an occasion when a woman would let her hair down:

Once there was mention of Connie’s red hair.

“Fanny’s is better, to my fancy,” said Emma.

“You needn’t try to make a fool of me,” said Fanny, flushing deeply.

“No, but she has, Paul; she’s got beautiful hair.”

“It’s a treat of a colour,” said he. “That coldish colour like earth, and yet shiny. It’s like bog-water.”

“Goodness me!” exclaimed one girl, laughing.

“How I do but get criticised,” said Fanny.

“But you should see it down, Paul,” cried Emma earnestly. “It’s simply beautiful. Put it down for him, Fanny, if he wants something to paint.”

Fanny would not, and yet she wanted to.

“Then I’ll take it down myself,” said the lad.

“Well, you can if you like,” said Fanny.

And he carefully took the pins out of the knot, and the rush of hair, of uniform dark brown, slid over the humped back.

“What a lovely lot!” he exclaimed.

The girls watched. There was silence. The youth shook the hair loose from the coil.

“It’s splendid!” he said, smelling its perfume. “I’ll bet it’s worth pounds.”

“I’ll leave it you when I die, Paul,” said Fanny, half joking.

“You look just like anybody else, sitting drying their hair,” said one of the girls to the long-legged hunchback.


This reminds me of some of the threads on this forum about auburn or "calico" hair:

The sun came through the chinks of the vine-leaves and made beautiful patterns, like a lace scarf, falling on her and on him. Some of the leaves were clean yellow, like yellow flat flowers.

“Now sit still,” he had cried. “Now your hair, I don’t know what it is like! It’s as bright as copper and gold, as red as burnt copper, and it has gold threads where the sun shines on it. Fancy their saying it’s brown. Your mother calls it mouse-colour.”


And this is why I don't wear necklaces!

Miriam stood painfully pulling over her head a rosary he had given her. It caught in the fine mesh of her hair.

Annie and her sleep plaits:

Annie, with a rope of hair hanging down her back, remained sitting on a low stool before the fire, her elbows on her knees, gloomily.
...
Annie, her blouse unfastened, her long ropes of hair twisted into a plait, went up to bed, bidding him a very curt good-night.

Has this happened to any of you?

He, leaping after her, seized the comb from her back hair. She turned, threw the cigarette at him. He picked it up, put it in his mouth, and sat down.

“Nuisance!” she cried. “Give me my comb!”

She was afraid that her hair, specially done for him, would come down. She stood with her hands to her head. He hid the comb between his knees.

I wonder what kind of bun Clara is wearing?

Clara wore a blouse of fine silk chiffon, with narrow black-and-white stripes; her hair was done simply, coiled on top of her head. She looked rather stately and reserved.

A tender moment, plaiting his mother's hair:

He sat down by the bed, miserably. She had a way of curling and lying on her side, like a child. The grey and brown hair was loose over her ear.

“Doesn’t it tickle you?” he said, gently putting it back.

“It does,” she replied.

His face was near hers. Her blue eyes smiled straight into his, like a girl’s—warm, laughing with tender love. It made him pant with terror, agony, and love.

“You want your hair doing in a plait,” he said. “Lie still.”

And going behind her, he carefully loosened her hair, brushed it out. It was like fine long silk of brown and grey. Her head was snuggled between her shoulders.
...
Paul put the long thin plait of grey hair over her shoulder and kissed her.
...
Only the hair as it arched so beautifully from her temples was mixed with silver, and the two simple plaits that lay on her shoulders were filigree of silver and brown.


ETA: I have the Penguin Popular Classics edition of this novel, but these quotes were copied from the Project Gutenberg text at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/217/217-h/217-h.htm.

[Ylva]

What a cool idea for a thread! Sadly, I don't read such literature much, but I might start describing my virgin hair like this:


“That coldish colour like earth, and yet shiny. It’s like bog-water.”

:)

[Entangled]

The phrase “tempestuous chignon” has stuck with me from a translation of Leroux’s Le Fantôme de L’opéra.

[menninkäinen]

What a lovely thread!


Anne had slid to the floor in despairing obedience.
"Look at my hair, Marilla," she whispered.
Accordingly, Marilla lifted her candle and looked scrutinizingly at Anne's hair, flowing in heavy masses down her back. It certainly had a very strange appearance.
"Anne Shirley, what have you done to your hair? Why, it's GREEN!"
Something in the words "flowing in heavy masses down in her back" is very thrilling hair-wise :D Makes me want to let my hair down. (Though I'd like to keep my natural color lol.)

[Five of Five]

I am currently reading "The Talisman Ring" by Georgette Heyer, and this paragraph struck me since this character is so glamorous and yet is reliant on servants to do her own hair:


Eustacie, not a whit the worse for her adventure, was trying to arrange her hair before the mirror. As she had never attempted anything of the kind before the result was not entirely successful. Miss Thane laughed at her, and took the brush and the pins out of her hand. "Let me do it for you," she said.

[Iyashikei]

The Tale of Genji is full of long hair moments. Basically everytime a woman is described Murasaki Shikibu just can't resist talking about the hair and how long and thick it is. This of course comes with the time since the only sign of beauty of women in that time was hair longer than the woman herself. If only I could find a good part in that incredibly long story.

[HaMalka]

The Tale of Genji is full of long hair moments. Basically everytime a woman is described Murasaki Shikibu just can't resist talking about the hair and how long and thick it is. This of course comes with the time since the only sign of beauty of women in that time was hair longer than the woman herself. If only I could find a good part in that incredibly long story.

Thank you for reminding me of the Tale of Genji. Looking in the Tale of Genji and the Tale of the Heike of which I have only read sections, I found these quotes about long hair. There are many more that are too numerous to put her but I have included links to translations if you want to search through them for more. Also they are somewhat interesting stories and you might want to read them for fun.

"The shape of the head and the now of the hair were very good, little inferior, he thought, to those of ladies whom he had held to be great beauties. The hair fanned out over the hem of her robes with perhaps a foot to spare." (1)


" "And are all our little ladies going too?" he asked. He smiled with
pleasure at Murasaki, lovely in her festive dress. "We will watch it
together." He stroked her hair, which seemed more lustrous than ever. "It
hasn't been trimmed in a very long time. I wonder if today would be a good
day for it." He summoned a soothsayer and while the man was investigat-
ing told the "little ladies" to go on ahead. They too were a delight, bright
and fresh, their hair all sprucely trimmed and flowing over embroidered
trousers.
He would trim Murasaki's hair himself, he said. "But see how thick
it is. The scissors get all tangled up in it. Think how it will be when you
grow up. Even ladies with very long hair usually cut it here at the forehead,
and you've not a single lock of short hair. A person might even call it
untidy."
The joy was more than a body deserved, said Sho~nagon, her nurse.
<P 164>
"May it grow to a thousand fathoms," said Genji.
th "Mine it shall be, rich as the grasses beneath
The fathomless sea, the thousand-fathomed sea."
Murasaki took out brush and paper and set down her answer:
"It may indeed be a thousand fathoms deep.
How can I know, when it restlessly comes and goes?"
She wrote well, but a pleasant girlishness remained." (1)

"Their dress was bright and their hair shone in the moonlight. The older ones were especially pretty, their jackets and trousers and ribbons trailing off in many colors, and the fresh sheen of their hair black against the snow." (1)

"The hair that flowed behind her in natural tresses was neither too long nor troublesomely thick, and beautifully combed." (1)

"Her hair fell as cleanly as sheaves of thread and fanned out towards the neatly trimmed edges some ten inches beyond her feet. In the rich billowing of her skirts the lady scarcely seemed present at all. The white profile framed by masses of black hair was pretty and elegant--though unfortunately the room was dark and he could not see her as well in the evening light as he would have wished." (1)

"Murasaki had had her hair washed and otherwise sought renewal. Since she was in bed with her hair spread about her, it was not quick to dry. It was smooth and without a suggestion of a tangle to the farthest ends. " (1)

"They stripped her of mourning and brought out fresh, bright robes and brushed the hair she had resolved to cut. It was a little thinner, but still a good six feet long and the envy of them all. Yet she went on telling herself that she looked dreadful, that she must not be seen, that no one had ever been more miserable than she." (1)

"Himegimi was fifteen or sixteen, small and plump, with hair that trailed to the hems of her skirts and was thick and luxuriant to the farthest edges. The governor was very proud of it." (1)

"... Musashi-no-Saburoemon Arikuni of the Heike bore down on his foes with three hundred
horse, and Nishina, Takanashi and Yamada-no-Jiro opposed him with five hundred, and for a
while both parties fought warily, but by-and by Arikuni, having penetrated very deeply into the
ranks of the foe, had his horse shot under him, and then, while he was fighting on

[p.35]

foot, his helmet was struck from his head, so that he looked like a youth fighting with his long
hair streaming in all directions." (2)

"She was a lady of peerless beauty; her complexion was like a peach blossom wet with dew, her large dark eyes were soft and blandishing, and her long black hair swayed about her like willow shoots in the wind." (2)

" Tomoe had long black hair and a fair complexion, and her face was very lovely; moreover she was a fearless rider whom neither the fiercest horse nor the roughest ground could dismay, and so dexterously did she handle sword and bow that she was a match for a thousand warriors, and fit to meet either god or devil." (2)

"Now when the Imperial Consort Kenrei-mon-in saw what had come to pass, she put her inkstone and warming stone into each side of the bosom of her robe and jumped into the sea. But Watanabe-no-Gengo Umanojo Mutsuru rowed up in a small

[p- 252]

boat, and cutching her long hair with a rake, dragged her back." (2)

"Then the lady returned rejoicing to the Capital, and secluding herself in an unfrequented spot, divided her long hair into five tresses, and made it into five horns. She put vermilion on her face, and reddened her body, on her head she placed a tripod, to the legs of which she fastened torches, holding also in her mouth another torch flaming at both ends. In this guise she rushed out through the Yamato highway to the south after dark when people had retired, and when they saw her thus with face and body red and eyebrows painted thick and black with dye, while five jets of flame flared out from her head, they never doubted that she was a demon, and fell down in the streets beside themselves with fear, some even dying in the excess of their terror. Then she went to the Ujikawa and bathed herself in its waters between the third and seventh day, whereupon, according to the promise of the Kibune Myojin, she was transformed living into a demon." (2)


(1) Genji Monogatari https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/2245
(2) Heike Monogatari https://archive.org/stream/TheHeikeMonogatari/HeikeMonogatari._djvu.txt

[Iyashikei]

Thank you for reminding me of the Tale of Genji. Looking in the Tale of Genji and the Tale of the Heike of which I have only read sections, I found these quotes about long hair. There are many more that are too numerous to put her but I have included links to translations if you want to search through them for more. Also they are somewhat interesting stories and you might want to read them for fun.

"The shape of the head and the now of the hair were very good, little inferior, he thought, to those of ladies whom he had held to be great beauties. The hair fanned out over the hem of her robes with perhaps a foot to spare." (1)


" "And are all our little ladies going too?" he asked. He smiled with
pleasure at Murasaki, lovely in her festive dress. "We will watch it
together." He stroked her hair, which seemed more lustrous than ever. "It
hasn't been trimmed in a very long time. I wonder if today would be a good
day for it." He summoned a soothsayer and while the man was investigat-
ing told the "little ladies" to go on ahead. They too were a delight, bright
and fresh, their hair all sprucely trimmed and flowing over embroidered
trousers.
He would trim Murasaki's hair himself, he said. "But see how thick
it is. The scissors get all tangled up in it. Think how it will be when you
grow up. Even ladies with very long hair usually cut it here at the forehead,
and you've not a single lock of short hair. A person might even call it
untidy."
The joy was more than a body deserved, said Sho~nagon, her nurse.
<P 164>
"May it grow to a thousand fathoms," said Genji.
th "Mine it shall be, rich as the grasses beneath
The fathomless sea, the thousand-fathomed sea."
Murasaki took out brush and paper and set down her answer:
"It may indeed be a thousand fathoms deep.
How can I know, when it restlessly comes and goes?"
She wrote well, but a pleasant girlishness remained." (1)

"Their dress was bright and their hair shone in the moonlight. The older ones were especially pretty, their jackets and trousers and ribbons trailing off in many colors, and the fresh sheen of their hair black against the snow." (1)

"The hair that flowed behind her in natural tresses was neither too long nor troublesomely thick, and beautifully combed." (1)

"Her hair fell as cleanly as sheaves of thread and fanned out towards the neatly trimmed edges some ten inches beyond her feet. In the rich billowing of her skirts the lady scarcely seemed present at all. The white profile framed by masses of black hair was pretty and elegant--though unfortunately the room was dark and he could not see her as well in the evening light as he would have wished." (1)

"Murasaki had had her hair washed and otherwise sought renewal. Since she was in bed with her hair spread about her, it was not quick to dry. It was smooth and without a suggestion of a tangle to the farthest ends. " (1)

"They stripped her of mourning and brought out fresh, bright robes and brushed the hair she had resolved to cut. It was a little thinner, but still a good six feet long and the envy of them all. Yet she went on telling herself that she looked dreadful, that she must not be seen, that no one had ever been more miserable than she." (1)

"Himegimi was fifteen or sixteen, small and plump, with hair that trailed to the hems of her skirts and was thick and luxuriant to the farthest edges. The governor was very proud of it." (1)

"... Musashi-no-Saburoemon Arikuni of the Heike bore down on his foes with three hundred
horse, and Nishina, Takanashi and Yamada-no-Jiro opposed him with five hundred, and for a
while both parties fought warily, but by-and by Arikuni, having penetrated very deeply into the
ranks of the foe, had his horse shot under him, and then, while he was fighting on

[p.35]

foot, his helmet was struck from his head, so that he looked like a youth fighting with his long
hair streaming in all directions." (2)

"She was a lady of peerless beauty; her complexion was like a peach blossom wet with dew, her large dark eyes were soft and blandishing, and her long black hair swayed about her like willow shoots in the wind." (2)

" Tomoe had long black hair and a fair complexion, and her face was very lovely; moreover she was a fearless rider whom neither the fiercest horse nor the roughest ground could dismay, and so dexterously did she handle sword and bow that she was a match for a thousand warriors, and fit to meet either god or devil." (2)

"Now when the Imperial Consort Kenrei-mon-in saw what had come to pass, she put her inkstone and warming stone into each side of the bosom of her robe and jumped into the sea. But Watanabe-no-Gengo Umanojo Mutsuru rowed up in a small

[p- 252]

boat, and cutching her long hair with a rake, dragged her back." (2)

"Then the lady returned rejoicing to the Capital, and secluding herself in an unfrequented spot, divided her long hair into five tresses, and made it into five horns. She put vermilion on her face, and reddened her body, on her head she placed a tripod, to the legs of which she fastened torches, holding also in her mouth another torch flaming at both ends. In this guise she rushed out through the Yamato highway to the south after dark when people had retired, and when they saw her thus with face and body red and eyebrows painted thick and black with dye, while five jets of flame flared out from her head, they never doubted that she was a demon, and fell down in the streets beside themselves with fear, some even dying in the excess of their terror. Then she went to the Ujikawa and bathed herself in its waters between the third and seventh day, whereupon, according to the promise of the Kibune Myojin, she was transformed living into a demon." (2)


(1) Genji Monogatari https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/handle/20.500.12024/2245
(2) Heike Monogatari https://archive.org/stream/TheHeikeMonogatari/HeikeMonogatari._djvu.txt

Thank you for the quotes. I knew the writer wouldn't shut up about the hair but try searching through a book with more than a thousand pages yourself. Luckily you found a good site for that.

[barnet_fair]

From Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, the 1922 translation. A trilogy of novels set in mediaeval Norway. Have any LHC members read it in the original Norwegian? I'm curious as to whether Norwegian has a greater variety of words for blonde hair than the English "yellow".


"I saw you had your daughter with you," she said, when she had greeted them, "and methought I must needs have a sight of her. But you must take the cap from her head; they say she hath such bonny hair."

Lavrans did as the woman asked him, and Kristin's hair fell over her shoulders and hung down right to the saddle. It was thick and yellow like ripe wheat. The woman, Isrid, took some of it in her hand, and said:

"Ay, now I see that the word that has gone about concerning this little maid of yours was nowise too great--a lily-rose she is, and looks as should the child of a knightly man."

I wonder how Kristin's hair would have been gathered and/or bound under the cap.

A description of a locket on the same page:


Lavrans always wore this chain, and on it there hung a golden cross set with great rock-crystals; it was made to open, and inside there were shreds of the hair and the shroud of the holy Lady Elin of Skövde [...]

Lavrans himself:


His skin was light and his face fresh of hue; he had grey eyes and thick, smooth, silky-yellow hair.

I'm currently on page 18 of a 924-page edition of the trilogy, and I expect there will be more to add to this thread before I've finished!

[Aerya]

From Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, the 1922 translation. A trilogy of novels set in mediaeval Norway. Have any LHC members read it in the original Norwegian? I'm curious as to whether Norwegian has a greater variety of words for blonde hair than the English "yellow".

I wonder how Kristin's hair would have been gathered and/or bound under the cap.


I have only read excerpts of the books, but now I just might have to read them to see! I can't really think of any particular words used to describe blond hair, except yellow, golden and light. The author herself is often portrayed with a coronet braid (?) so maybe that's how Kristin wore her hair, too :)

[barnet_fair]

From Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens, pp. 563-5 Penguin Classics edition.


A woman [...]; no bonnet on her head, nothing to defend her rich black hair from the rain, but a torn handkerchief; with the fluttering ends of which, and with her hair, the wind blinded her so that she often stopped to push them back, and look upon the way she was going.


[S]he sat down in front of [the fire], and unbinding the handkerchief about her head, and letting the thick wet hair fall down below her waist, sat drying it with the palms of her hands, and looking at the blaze.


She held up her hair roughly with both hands; seizing it as if she would have torn it out; then, threw it down again, and flung it back as though it were a heap of serpents.

I love the idea of "a heap of serpents".