Abstract

This paper attempts to familiarize the readers with the darker side of striving for beauty by discussing the effects of dangerous beauty practices depicted in Louisa Young’s historical novel My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You. In order to analyze this fiction, the paper employs knowledge from the fields of gender studies, sociology, and others. The article begins with an introduction dedicated to familiarizing the reader with the novel’s author and its plot, as well as its historical background.  Next the theoretical apparatus is discussed: the male gaze, objectification theory, women’s self-surveillance, and beauty-related purposeful pain. Finally, in the last part, I offer an in-depth analysis of Louisa Young’s novel. I argue that this work offers an interesting insight into the strife for beauty and its consequences during the First World War period. In my interpretation, the author conceptualizes the loss of beauty both as a threat to a woman’s social status, but also as a force that has a potential to free a woman from patriarchal norms, in addition to its being a testament of women’s trauma during the war, which has been previously proposed by other scholars.