Aliza Spicehandler

The history of cosmetics is an often overlooked and under-utilised part of history. It frequently gets melded into fashion and dress history, and only within the past few decades have books been published that are solely based on the history of cosmetics. This dissertation examined the several ways women had agency in their use of cosmetics in London in the nineteenth-century: through the sourcing and making of women's own cosmetics, the selling of cosmetics in a commercial setting, and the consumption of cosmetics. The first chapter contextualised cosmetic usage in the early-nineteenth-century and looked at the materials middle-class women would have relied on to make their own cosmetics. The second chapter closely examined one woman’s journey in making and selling her cosmetics to other women. It addressed her vilification by her contemporaries and shed new light on her story. The third chapter assessed the agency that women had through their cosmetic consumption in the last few decades of the century through an investigation of advertisements and depictions of women using cosmetics in art and literature. 

The dissertation asserted that by understanding the different relationships Victorian women had with cosmetics, we can glean a better understanding of the degree of control those women had over their own self-fashioning and self-presentation at a time when women's agency was severely restricted. It demonstrated that cosmetics were a realm in which women were able to thrive, carving out their own locus of power within the societal constraints imposed on them by men.