Victorian Visual Culture

Eye Miniature, early 19th century. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

As a jewelry maker myself, I was fascinated when I heard about Victorian lover’s eye jewelry. I found a helpful article that discusses the origins of this trend written by Alexxa Gotthardt, which contains many photos of lover’s eye jewelry from various museums. This style of jewelry was popularized in Britain around the late 1700s and started with a marriage proposal from Prince George of Wales to a woman named Maria Anne Fitzherbert. George had proposed before, but the courtship was forbidden because of laws around a Catholic widow from becoming a monarch. Fitzherbert opened a letter written by the prince in November of 1785 to reveal a marriage proposal in the form of a letter and a small painting of his eye. The two eventually married, and a locket was crafted for the prince with a small painting of Fitzherbert’s eye within. 

Gotthardt analyzes Victorian eye jewelry as an expression of Victorian culture’s focus on visuality, as she points out that “even the subtlest glance could convey lust, love, surveillance, or a heady mix of all three.” Lover’s eye jewelry relied upon a complex depiction of a small part of the body, one that could convey an immense amount of emotion in a single glance. The experience of both looking and being looked on makes these jewelry pieces even more compelling, as they embody a kind of meta-narrative of visuality. 

There is also the potential for these accessories to be indicative of surveillance around marital fidelity. One might find themselves less inclined to cheat on their spouse if they knew they had a constant reminder of their lover’s gaze hung around their neck. Wearing a piece of lover’s eye jewelry would also indicate to other people that an individual is romantically involved, and could deter potential suitors. 

The gendered dynamics of these pieces are also interesting to consider. It might appear to be an egalitarian exchange of love between a heterosexual couple, as both the man and the woman are essentially giving the other a representation of an intimate part of their bodies. Additionally, in locket form, a person could control who looked upon the eye of their lover. This would prevent uncomfortable incidents of boundary-crossing, such as the scene in the novel Bleak House when Mr. Guppy looks at the portrait of Lady Dedlock, despite Sir Leicester’s wishes that the portrait remain private and Lady Dedlock’s loud silence about whether or not she wants her portrait to be viewed by others. However, it does reduce the body to a commodity, an act that has historically been used to violate the female body. Not only is the body reduced to a commodity, but there is a kind of violence in stripping away the context of the rest of a person’s body to focus on one disembodied part. Women also might not have any say on whether or not their eye is used in this way, as they likely did not have control over their finances to pay an artist to make one. 

According to Gotthardt, lover’s eye jewelry faded out from popularity around the early 1800s. Because of the novelty of photography, people seemed to lose interest in miniature portraits once they could have access to a photo of their exact likeness quickly and cheaply. However, Victorian era lover’s eye jewelry experienced a revival on TikTok, with amateur artists painting small portraits of their lover’s eye and attaching them to pieces of jewelry. Making video-form content of an intimate artistic exchange between two romantic partners presents a new kind of ideological struggle being played out visually. Visual indicators provide little context about the rest of the relationship, and the quality of a relationship is often judged by its visual appeal on social media platforms. This resurgence makes sense with our current era’s emphasis on visuality and spectacle which is similar to Victorian-era visual drama. 

Source: Gotthardt, Alexxa. “The Mysterious Lover’s Eye Jewelry of 18th-Century England | Artsy.” Artsy, 4 Jan. 2019, http://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-mysterious-history-lovers-eye-jewelry.