Beauty as an achievement (2)

A case in point is cleanliness.

Cleanliness?

Yes. I know to be clean is not the same as beauty but it it is part of it.

But surely not you might say. A young woman has just walked miles across the fields to see her sister who is sick. Her cheeks are flushed from the exercise and she is beautiful even though her hems are covered in mud. Why she is even especially beautiful for it, so much so that Mr. Darcy sees something in her he hadn't noticed before and Caroline Bingley, noticing this, begins to try to tear Elizabeth down in Darcy's eyes.

But the point is the context. It is easy to imagine other cases where cleanliness would matter a whole lot. It mattered to the Dutch of the Golden Age: they used the same word for clean and beautiful. And, as Deirdre McCloskey notes, using words this way makes beauty not just an achievement but a moral obligation. There is a similar sentiment in Austen. Remember the improvements in Catherine Morland at fifteen:

Her love of dirt gave way to an inclination for finery, and she grew clean as she grew smart; she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her father and mother remark on her personal improvement.