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The Romanticization of the Dead Female Body in Victorian 
and Contemporary Culture

by Brenna Mulhall

 In “The Philosophy of Composition,” Edgar 
Allan Poe writes the infamous line: “the death, then, 
of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most 
poetical topic in the world” (548). This problematic 
contention, which equates female death with poetic 
inspiration, is one of the hallmarks of the arts during 
the Victorian Age. Poe, along with many famous 
male artists of the time, engaged with this idea and 
ultimately exploited young women throughout 
their work by implying that there is something 
inherently beautiful about their demise. While many 
male writers and artists used the death of young 
women as their inspiration, some female artists of 
the Victorian Age, most notably Christina Rossetti 
and Elizabeth Siddall,1 used their art to highlight 
this exploitation and reclaim their subjectivity as 
creators, instead of passive muses. Poe’s contention 
continued throughout the twentieth century with 
the death of Evelyn McHale, whose demise was 
hailed “the most beautiful suicide,” and has persisted 
into the twenty-first century (Cosgrove). From the 
suicide of Ruslana Korshunova to the hundreds 
of advertisements and modeling campaigns that 
glamorize female death, it is clear that the Victorian 
fascination and romanticization of the dead female 
body is intact in contemporary culture. Ultimately, 
this romanticization has persisted in part due to 
the fact that representations of dead female bodies 
exemplify the feminine ideal: passive, visionless, and 
voiceless. 
      Edgar Allan Poe’s contention that the death of 
a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in art 
underlies a significant percentage of the literary 
works that he created throughout his short life. Poe’s 
obsession with portraying dead and dying women 

1 In this paper, I will refer to Elizabeth Siddall using the 
original spelling of her last name instead of the spelling 
that her husband, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, used in public 
discourse. Rossetti changed the spelling of Siddall’s name 
because he believed his spelling (Siddal) was more elegant 
(Orlando 612).  

in his literature is likely rooted in the immense 
grief and loss that he experienced after the deaths of 
several key women in his life, including his mother 
and his young wife (Hutchisson 16, 134). While Poe 
does not explicitly relate his literature to the loss 
of these beloved women, he explains his repeated 
portrayals of death in the essay “The Philosophy 
of Composition.” Drawing upon his experience of 
loss, he suggests that the most legitimate poetical 
tone is melancholy and that the most effective way 
to evoke such a tone is to depict death (Poe 548). In 
addition, the women in Poe’s works who appear to be 
dead or dying are, more often than not, portrayed as 
voiceless and passive objects. For instance, although 
the poem “Annabel Lee” is named after the character, 
the reader never actually hears Annabel Lee’s voice. 
In fact, the story of her life and death is told by her 
grieving lover who claims that her only purpose in 
life was to “love and be loved by [him]” (Poe 441). 
The speaker declares that nothing could “dissever 
[his] soul from the soul / Of the beautiful Annabel 
Lee” (Poe 441). Although he clearly feels figuratively 
close to her soul, the speaker also suggests that he 
is literally close to her when he remarks that every 
night he lies with the corpse of his deceased lover 
in her tomb. The speaker’s disturbing obsession 
with Annabel Lee may suggest that he is engaging in 
necrophilia with her “beautiful” dead body. As she 
cannot talk back or speak for herself, she represents 
the ideal Victorian woman. 
 Similarly, Charles Baudelaire, a French poet and 
Poe translator, uses dead and dying women as the 
principal inspiration for his literary works. In his 
poem “I Worship You,” the speaker declares his love 
for a woman even though she dismisses his advances. 
Instead of deterring him, her resistance strengthens 
his love for her, as he claims that his infatuation 
grows “the more [she] flees from [him]” (Baudelaire 
3). He compares her appearance to an “ornament,” as 
if she were a beautiful decoration whose sole purpose 
was to be aesthetically pleasing (Baudelaire 4). After 



The Romanticization of the Dead Female Body in Victorian and Contemporary Culture

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20172

the first stanza, the speaker becomes extremely 
aggressive: He describes himself advancing “to 
the attack” and climbing “to the assault” against 
the woman (Baudelaire 7). He then compares his 
actions to “a chorus of worms [that] climb over a 
corpse” and suggests that he cherishes her “coldness” 
as it makes her more beautiful (Baudelaire 7-9). 
The scene that the speaker describes in the second 
stanza resembles a rape scene in which the speaker 
aims to “attack” and “assault” the woman he claims 
to love (Baudelaire 7). This scene is made all the 
more disturbing when the speaker compares his 
actions to worms that eat away at a decaying corpse, 
suggesting that he could be engaging in necrophilia. 
Though he could be claiming that she is aloof when 
he describes her as cold, it is also likely that he is 
referring to the literal warmth of her body or lack 
thereof (Baudelaire 9). By comparing his lust to the 
way that worms eat the decaying flesh of corpses, 
he likens death to his romantic desire. In addition, 
Baudelaire romanticizes the woman’s immobility, 
passivity, and lack of control. Just as a corpse cannot 
resist the insects that contribute to its decay, the 
woman cannot fight back against the advances of the 
speaker. Her inability to resist makes her all the more 
attractive to the speaker because by not resisting, she 
becomes more like the ideal Victorian woman. 
      Likewise, the poem “He Wishes His Beloved Were 
Dead” by William Butler Yeats demonstrates the 
ways in which death is the ultimate form of passivity. 
The speaker begins the poem by describing what his 
interactions would be like with his lover if she were 
dead. He claims that if his beloved were “lying cold 
and dead,” he would lay his “head on [her] breast” 
and she “would murmur tender words” to him (Yeats 
1, 4, 5). He also suggests that if she were dead, she 
would forgive him and would not “hasten away” 
even though she has the “will of wild birds” (Yeats 
7-8). The speaker implies that his relationship with 
his beloved would be better if she were dead because 
he could tame, control, and dominate her “wild” 
spirit. This perverse Victorian fascination with dead 
women that defined much of the literary works of the 
time is reinforced in the image of the perfect woman 
as pliable, passive, and easily dominated. 

      The poem “The Lady of Shalott” by Lord Alfred 
Tennyson also demonstrates the ways in which 
female death was idealized and romanticized during 
the Victorian Age. In the poem, the Lady of Shalott 
is imprisoned within a tower on the island of Shalott. 
She is under a curse in which she cannot look towards 
the city of Camelot, but instead must spend her days 
weaving. The Lady of Shalott is only permitted to see 
the world through a mirror, and if she looks directly 
at Camelot, she will face unknown consequences. 
One day, the Lady of Shalott becomes “half sick of 
shadows” and stops weaving so that she can look at 
the Knight Lancelot, with whom she quickly falls in 
love (Tennyson 71). By turning around to look at 
Lancelot, she is immediately cursed and must die. 
The Lady of Shalott gets into a boat, in which she 
carves her name, and “lying, robed in snowy white” 
she floats down the river toward Camelot (Tennyson 
136). As she is dying and floating down the river, 
the Lady of Shalott sings a “carol, mournful, holy 
/ Chanted loudly, chanted lowly / Till her blood 
was frozen slowly / And her eyes were darken’d 
wholly” (Tennyson 145-148). When she arrives at 
the water’s edge in Camelot, the townspeople look 
upon her dead body in the boat, and when the crowd 
parts Lancelot remarks that the deceased Lady of 
Shalott “has a lovely face” (Tennyson 169). Lady of 
Shalott’s narrative parallels the ways in which many 
women were oppressed during the Victorian Age: 
She is imprisoned within her home, and her only 
purpose is to fulfill her domestic duties; however, 
when the Lady of Shalott neglects her household 
duties, she becomes a fallen woman. Consequently, 
the moment that the Lady of Shalott gains freedom 
from her imprisonment, she dies with only a passing 
comment on her appearance from Lancelot. Her 
death is depicted as peaceful and romantic—she 
wears a snowy white dress that “loosely flew to left 
and right” (Tennyson 137), and it’s implied that 
her love for Lancelot is what leads to her ultimate 
demise. In addition, various artistic interpretations 
of Tennyson’s poem eroticize the Lady of Shalott 
by depicting her as overtly sexual and desirable. 
For example, Sidney Meteyard’s interpretation of 
the Lady of Shalott depicts her leaning back and 



The Romanticization of the Dead Female Body in Victorian and Contemporary Culture

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20173

opening her body towards viewers, suggesting that 
she is sexually vulnerable (see fig. 1). In addition, 
because her face is turned away from viewers, she is 
vulnerable to their gaze and has no power to turn 
her gaze away, making her submissive and visionless.    
 Oscar Wilde romanticizes female death through 
the character of Sybil Vane in his novel, The Picture 
of Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray falls in love with the 
beautiful, young actress Sybil Vane after seeing her 
perform in one of Shakespeare’s plays. However, 
when Sybil performs terribly as Juliet, Dorian realizes 
that he only loved Sybil because of her beautiful 
performance. He tells her that he no longer loves 
her and “can’t see her again” (Wilde 86). Devastated 
by Dorian’s rejection, Sybil ultimately takes her 
own life. While Sybil’s death is problematic in itself, 
Dorian and Lord Henry’s conversation about her 
death is particularly jarring in its romanticization 
of her demise. Lord Henry, who essentially corrupts 
Dorian from the beginning of the novel, claims that 
Sybil’s death is like “a tragedy that possesses artistic 
elements” (Wilde 98). He glamorizes her suicide 
by telling Dorian that he is lucky and should feel 
honored that Sybil “killed herself for the love of 
[him,]” adding that he wishes a beautiful woman 
would have done that for him (Wilde 98). Lord 
Henry suggests that there is something “beautiful 
about her death” as her self-slaughter represents 
“romance, passion, and love” (Wilde 99). Finally, 
he recommends that Dorian think of Sybil’s “lonely 
death in the tawdry dressing-room” as “a strange 
lurid fragment of some Jacobean tragedy” (Wilde 
100). Lord Henry fetishizes and glamorizes Sybil’s 
death when he claims that her suicide is “artistic” and 

compares her death to a “Jacobean tragedy” (Wilde 
100). 
      Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who also depicted dead 
and dying young women in his artwork and poetry, 
romanticized female death in his poem, “The Blessed 
Damozel,” in which the male speaker imagines his 
love in heaven. He describes her as having eyes 
“deeper than the depth of waters stilled at even” and 
“hair that lay along her back…yellow like ripe corn” 
(“The Blessed Damozel” 3-4, 11-12). He imagines 
her looking down from heaven and speaking with 
a voice “like the voice [that] stars / had when they 
sang together” (“The Blessed Damozel” 59-60). 
Because his beloved is dead, he is able to speak for 
her and thus imagines her saying what he wants to 
hear. He pictures her longing for him and asking 
God to allow him to be with her in heaven. Unlike 
many of the other poems of the Victorian Era, the 
female character in this poem speaks; however, it’s 
important to note that the words that come out of her 
mouth are not her own, and his description of her 
beauty in heaven idealizes her death and objectifies 
her body. 
      Not only did Rossetti depict dead or dying women 
in his poetry, but he also portrayed their demise 
through his paintings. One of his most famous 
paintings, Beata Beatrix (see fig. 2), features his wife 
Elizabeth Siddall posing as Beatrice Portinari, the 
beloved of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (Orlando 
621). Rossetti began this painting two years after the 
death of his wife, and by using Siddall as his muse, 
he directly compares his loss to Alighieri’s (Orlando 

Fig. 1. Sidney Meteyard, “I am Half Sick of Shadows,” Said 
the Lady of Shalott, 1913. Oil on Canvas.

Fig. 2. Dante 
Gabriel Rosetti, 
Beata Beatrix, 
1864. Oil on 
canvas.



The Romanticization of the Dead Female Body in Victorian and Contemporary Culture

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20174

622). The painting captures a scene in which Beatrice 
is dying while a red bird, the messenger of death, 
brings her an opium poppy. Rossetti paints Beatrice 
with her eyes closed, her head slightly tilted back, and 
her lips parted, a look of ecstasy on her face. Further, 
the hazy, warmth that surrounds Beatrice creates 
an element of sensuality. By portraying Beatrice 
sensually, Rossetti implies that the most beautiful 
and romantic scene is one in which a woman dies. 
 Although many male artists and writers of the 
Victorian Age used and exploited dead and dying 
women through their work, Elizabeth Siddall and 
Christina Rossetti used their art forms as a way to 
challenge the exploitation of dead women as artistic 
inspiration. Christina Rossetti, Dante Rossetti’s 
sister, wrote the poem “In an Artist’s Studio” in which 
she criticizes her brother for depicting his muses as 
“one selfsame figure” (C. Rossetti 2). She argues that 
her brother’s art uses the same “nameless girl” as 
inspiration and depicts her “not as she is but as she 
fills his dreams” (C. Rossetti 6). She even compares 
his exploitation of the models on his canvases to 
cannibalism or vampirism when she writes that “he 
feeds upon her face by day and night” (C. Rossetti 9). 
In this poem, Rossetti argues that her brother 
exploits his models and strips them of their identity 
by making them all “one selfsame figure” (C. Rossetti 
2). Lizzie Siddall, Christina Rossetti’s sister-in-law, 
was a model for many Pre-Raphaelite paintings, most 
famously in John Everett Millais’ Ophelia in which 
she poses as the corpse of the Shakespearean heroine 
(see fig. 3). Siddall frequently posed as a dead woman 
in these paintings, but in her own artwork she fought 
against those representations. For example, in the 

poem “A Silent Wood,” the speaker asks nature for 
the time and space to sit in the “darkest shadow” and 
forget about being “frozen like a thing of stone” (“A 
Silent Wood” 5, 11). She craves a space in which she 
does not have to “‘faint or die or swoon’” (Orlando 
615). Similarly, in the poem “Lord May I Come?” 
the speaker asks to go to heaven because life seems 
“sad and still/like lilies in a frozen rill” (“Lord May 
I Come?” 16). The speakers in these poems feel 
trapped in a still and frozen life just as models appear 
to be on a canvas. 
     In addition to her poetry, Siddall was a visual 
artist. In her self-portrait (see fig. 4), she regains 
the subjectivity and agency that she loses in the 
paintings by male artists who portray her as fainting, 
dying, or swooning (Orlando 615). She portrays 
herself as strong and guarded with clothes that seem 
impenetrable to the male gaze. In addition, her stare 
suggests agency and strength, rather than passivity. 
This portrait stands in stark contrast to Rossetti’s 
painting Beata Beatrix, in which Siddall is portrayed 
with a rather sensual and erotic facial expression. 

 L’Inconnue de la Seine, or the “unknown woman 
of the Seine,” is yet another disturbing example of 
the ways in which popular culture romanticized and 
eroticized dead women during the Victorian Age. In 
the late 1880s, the body of a young woman was pulled 
from the River Seine in Paris (Casale). With no signs 
of physical harm, the woman’s death was ruled a 
suicide and, as was the custom of the time, her body 
was displayed at the mortuary in the hopes that she 
would be identified and claimed (Casale). Ultimately, 
her body was never identified. However, as her body 
was displayed in the windows of the mortuary, Fig. 3. Sir John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851. Oil on 

Canvas.

Fig. 4. 
Elizabeth 
Siddall, Self-
Portrait, 1853. 
Oil on canvas.



The Romanticization of the Dead Female Body in Victorian and Contemporary Culture

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20175

like a pretty doll for sale, one of the morticians 
became “entranced” by her beautiful half smile and 
calm expression (Casale). As if she were simply an 
object to be displayed as decor, the mortician had 
a plaster cast made of the woman’s face in an effort 
to immortalize her beauty before her body began to 
decay (see fig. 5). The “death mask” became a fixture 
in Parisian society as well as a model of beauty across 
various European countries (Casale). Artists and 
writers throughout Europe were also “entranced” 
by her beauty and used the mask as inspiration for 
their works. Several writers, including Richard le 
Gallienne, have rewritten her story, portraying her 
as a modern day Ophelia and romanticizing her 
death (Casale). Albert Camus compared her smile 
to the Mona Lisa, suggesting that her face “sparked 
conversation [and] inspired creativity” (Casale). In 
addition, others have remarked that she “looks like 
she’s just asleep and waiting for Prince Charming” 
(Casale). Al Alvarez notes in his book The Savage 
God that German actresses and models aspired to 
look like L’Inconnue, as her death mask “became 
the erotic ideal of the period” (Casale). In death, she 
seems to lose any sense of agency or right over her 
body as she is stripped of all privacy, becoming an 
aesthetic object to be owned, bought, and sold. She is 
voiceless and, as a result, unable to fight back against 
the exploitation of her dead body. In addition, she 
was unable to resist when her face was immortalized 
and turned into an erotic, morbid fixture for drawing 
rooms across Europe. Perhaps more disturbingly, 
L’Inconnue de la Seine was further immortalized 

by Asmund Laerdal in 1955, who was tasked 
with creating a training aid for cardiopulmonary 
resuscitation (CPR) (Grange). Because he wanted 
the mannequin to have a natural appearance and 
felt that a “female doll would seem less threatening 
to trainees,” he modeled its face after the mask of 
L’Inconnue de la Seine (Grange). Thus for over 50 
years, more than 300 million people have used the 
dead face of L’Inconnue as an aid in CPR training, 
making her the “most kissed girl in the world” 
(Grange). The identity of L’Inconnue has been 
questioned over the years, and the circumstances of 
her death remain up for debate. Ultimately, however, 
she was immortalized, not as she was or as she lived, 
but as the men, who were inspired by her death, 
wished her to be. 
     Similar to L’Inconnue de la Seine, Evelyn McHale’s 
body was eroticized and glamorized after she took 
her own life in the late 1940s. Evelyn McHale 
committed suicide by jumping from the Empire 
State Building Observation Deck on the 86th floor 
(Cosgrove). After jumping from the observatory, 
McHale landed on a car parked beneath the building 
and, minutes later, the photographer Robert Wiles 
took a photo of her corpse (see fig. 6). In McHale’s 
suicide note, she wrote that she did not “want anyone 
in or out of [her] family to see any part of [her]” 
(Cosgrove). However, against her wishes, her body 
was and continues to be seen by millions of people. 
The photo was first published as a full page in the 
May 1947 issue of Life magazine (Cosgrove). Shortly 
thereafter, McHale’s death was hailed the “most 

Fig. 5. L’Inconnue 
de la Seine.

Fig. 6. Robert 
Wiles, The 
Most Beautiful 
Suicide, 1947. 
Life magazine.



The Romanticization of the Dead Female Body in Victorian and Contemporary Culture

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  20176

beautiful suicide” (Cosgrove). Wiles’ photo gained 
an immense amount of popularity and remains 
one of the most well-known photographs of the 
twentieth century because of the way that McHale’s 
body is positioned on the crumpled car beneath her. 
Her ankles are crossed, her facial expression is calm, 
her feet are bare, and she clutches her necklace to her 
chest with a gloved hand. The photo seemed to many 
people like a piece of artwork. Andy Warhol even 
used the photo in his piece entitled Suicide: Fallen 
Body (1962). Today, nearly seven decades after the 
photo was taken, scholars and journalists alike are 
still discussing this photograph. For example, Ben 
Cosgrove of Time magazine wrote an article in 2014 
in which he shows how contemporary society has 
remained stagnant in our fetishization of the dead 
female body. Not only does Cosgrove write that 
the photo is “visually compelling” and “downright 
beautiful,” but he also calls her by her first name. 
He claims that “it doesn’t feel right to refer to her 
as ‘Ms. McHale,’” perhaps implying that he feels 
intimately acquainted with McHale after seeing her 
deceased body (Cosgrove). Like the L’Inconnue de 
la Seine was said to be waiting for Prince Charming, 
McHale is said to be “daydreaming of her beau,” as 
if it is impossible for a young woman to be thinking 
of anything but romance (Cosgrove). Cosgrove 
suggests that the photo allows the public “to look 
one last time at Evelyn McHale, and remember her” 
(Cosgrove). However, Cosgrove fails to note that 
the photo of McHale does not show us anything 
about her or her life. Instead, it is simply an aesthetic 
representation of her self-slaughter, a sight that she 
specifically did not want to be seen. Similar to the 
L’Inconnue de la Seine, Evelyn McHale lost the right 
to control her image once she passed away and has 
since been eroticized and glamorized as an attractive 
representation of death. 
 The death of Ruslana Korshunova is a more 
contemporary example of the ways in which the 
dead female body is romanticized. Korshunova, a 
twenty-year-old model often called “The Russian 
Rapunzel,” jumped to her death from her New York 
City apartment in 2008 (Orlando 611). When Fox 
News reported Korshunova’s death, they played a 
long video from the crime scene, in which the camera 
zooms in on her lifeless body while blood runs from 
her nose to the pavement (Orlando 611). During 

the broadcast, Geraldo Rivera comments that her 
dead body “stands in stark contrast to the fairy-tale 
images of the famous face and chestnut hair that 
made her modeling’s next big thing” (Orlando 611). 
Additionally, once the video was broadcast, an online 
comment on the video noted that “she still looks 
beautiful even with the blood on her mouth,” while 
another compared her dead body to a “wax doll” 
(“Fox News”). The fact that the video of Korshunova 
was aired on television demonstrates how the dead 
female body is exploited by popular culture in the 
twenty-first century. Similar to Evelyn McHale and 
L’Inconnue de la Seine, Korshunova is described as 
beautiful because of her passivity. She is unable to 
control the ways in which she is represented in the 
media and, in that way, she represents the feminine 
ideal.  
      Various advertisements and ad campaigns within 
the fashion industry feature dead or dying women, 
which demonstrates the persistence of the dead 
female body as a subject in art in the twenty-first 
century. In 2007, during an episode of the television 
series America’s Next Top Model, the models posed 
as dead women in the middle of gory, horrifying 
crime scenes (see fig. 7). The models were asked 
to assume the characters of dead women while 
simultaneously selling the clothes that they were 
dressed in. Essentially, they had to embody death 
while framing it as sexy and alluring. The judges’ 
comments about the photos shed light on the ways 
in which the fashion industry fetishizes dead young 
women. One of the models who was posed as if she 
had fallen from a building was told: “death becomes 
you, young lady” (Cochrane). Another model who 
posed at the bottom of a flight of stairs was praised 

Fig. 7. America’s Next Top Model, 2007.



The Romanticization of the Dead Female Body in Victorian and Contemporary Culture

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  2017

for her facial expression, which was described as 
“very beautiful and dead” (Cochrane). In another 
episode, which aired in 2005, the models were asked 
to pose in coffins while embodying the seven deadly 
sins (see fig. 8). The models were dressed in revealing 
outfits and posed erotically in coffins, suggesting that 
there is something sexy about being in a grave. 
      America’s Next Top Model is not the only example 
of glamorizing and fetishizing women in editorial 
campaigns. In one advertisement for Jimmy Choo, 
a model poses as a dead woman stuffed into the 
back of a trunk while a man digs her grave. Another 
advertisement in the fashion magazine Lula depicts 
a model with limp arms and legs at the edge of a 
canal. These campaigns, which serve the purpose 
of selling the clothes that the models are wearing, 
both depict dead, voiceless women, implying that 
death is “in fashion.” Another, even more disturbing 
advertisement, depicts male suit designer Duncan 
Quinn pulling on a tie that is wrapped around a 
partially nude model’s neck (see fig. 9). The photo 
portrays Quinn in the act of strangling the model 
with a smug, confident look on his face. Since the 
model is dressed in lingerie, she is portrayed as an 
erotic object that Quinn can dominate. In essence, 
these advertisements suggest that the Victorian 
obsession with dead and dying women has persisted 
and that this persistence may be connected to the 
ways in which death, and the passivity of dead 
women, is portrayed as sexual and erotic.

 Throughout the Victorian Age, an overwhelming 
majority of the art and literature that was created 
demonstrated an intense and morbid fascination 
with the death of beautiful, young women. Various 
literary and visual artists, including Edgar Allan 
Poe, Charles Baudelaire, Lord Alfred Tennyson, 
William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde, and Dante 
Gabriel Rossetti, used dead and dying women as 
the inspiration behind their works. While Elizabeth 
Siddall and Christina Rossetti fought to combat 
this exploitation with their own artistic voices, 
this obsession and fascination with female death 
remains a fixture within contemporary culture. In 
fact, this fascination has arguably become more 
pervasive and aggressive with the passing of each 
century. Ultimately, the documentation of Evelyn 
McHale and Ruslana Korshunova’s suicides as well 
as advertisements that glamorize death represent 
the amplification of the Victorian romanticization of 
female death that exists in the twenty-first century. 
Essentially, it seems as though the perfect woman is 
dead. 

Works Cited
America’s Next Top Model. 2005. Pinterest, www.

pinterest.com/pin/323344448217699830/. 
Accessed 04 Dec. 2016. 

America’s Next Top Model. 2007. Pinterest, www.
pinterest.com/pin/323344448217699830/. 
Accessed 04 Dec. 2016.

7

Fig. 8. America's 
Next Top Model, 
2005.

Fig. 9. Dun-
can Quinn 
[Advertise-
ment]. 2008.



The Romanticization of the Dead Female Body in Victorian and Contemporary Culture

Aisthesis      Volume 8,  2017

Baudelaire, Charles. “‘Je T’adore à L’égal”/ “I Worship 
You.’” Flowers of Evil and Other Works: A Dual 
Language Book. Edited by Wallace Fowlie, Dover 
Publications, 1992, 44. 

Casale, Steven. “Eternal Beauty: The Death Mask of 
L’Inconnue De La Seine.” The Lineup, n.p., 14 
July 2016. Accessed 03 Dec. 2016.

Cochrane, Kira. “How Female Corpses Became a 
Fashion Trend.” The Women’s Blog, Guardian 
News and Media, 09 Jan. 2014. Accessed 03 Dec. 
2016.

Cosgrove, Ben. “‘The Most Beautiful Suicide’: A 
Violent Death, an Immortal Photo.” Time, 19 
Mar. 2014, http://time.com/3456028/the-most-
beautiful-suicide-a-violent-death-an-immortal-
photo. Accessed 03 Dec. 2016. 

Duncan Quinn. 2008. Trend Hunter Marketing, 
www.trendhunter.com/trends/duncan-quinn-
suit-ad-depicting-strangled-woman. Accessed 
04 Dec. 2016.

“Fox News Shows Extended Footage of Dead Model 
Ruslana Korshunova’s Body,” Celebitchy, n.p., 30 
June 2008. Accessed 03 Dec. 2016.

Grange, Jeremy. “Resusci Anne and L’Inconnue: The 
Mona Lisa of the Seine.” BBC News, 16 October 
2013. Accessed 03 Dec. 2016.

Hutchisson, James M. Poe. Edited by James M. 
Hutchisson, University Press of Mississippi, 
2005.

L’Inconnue De La Seine. N.d. Pinterest, www.
pinterest.com/astruminhomine/linconnue-de-
la-seine/. Accessed 04 Dec. 2016.

Meteyard, Sidney. “I am Half Sick of Shadows,” Said 
the Lady of Shalott. 1913, oil on canvas.

Millais, John Everett. Ophelia. 1851, oil on canvas. 
Tate Britain, London.  Tate, http://www.tate.
org.uk/art/artworks/millais-ophelia-n01506. 
Accessed 01 Dec. 2016.

Orlando, Emily J. “‘That I May not Faint, or Die, or 
Swoon’: Reviving Pre-Raphaelite Women.” 
Women’s Studies, vol. 38, no. 6, 2009, pp. 611-646, 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00497870903021505 

Poe, Edgar Allan.  The Portable Edgar Allan 
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