The purpose of this research is to identify an artist's pseudo prototypical side. By conducting a cross-disciplinary analysis, I expose the interrelated ways in which cultures function and in which ideas around femininity and female sexuality are transmitted through artistic representations across time and space. Contextualising these ideas through a broader examination of the tradition of representation of the “femme fatale” through biblical and mythical figures, as well as the obsessive representation of hair in the Victorian era, I find many connections between Rossetti’s painting and Tykwer’s more contemporary film. Women’s hair has been attributed qualities of immense sexual power, which is often considered as both a threat and an allure – most often an alluring threat. I also highlight the divergences in representations of power instilled in these images. In so doing, I examine the ways in which these various representations of women’s hair are comparable, in terms of their associations with youthful and beautiful femininity, the idea of the beautiful woman as a part of nature, and, most notably, the sexual connotations ascribed to women’s hair. I examine Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting, La Ghirlandata (1873) as an example of the idealised and sexualised depiction of red-haired women during the Victorian era and then compare this to later depictions of women’s hair in stills and the poster from the film, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Tykwer, 2006).

In this essay, I address the historic, symbolic associations of women’s hair, with particular reference to the Victorian era and re-imaginings of similar notions in the contemporary. Subject to the rigorous policing of religions, schools and prisons across diverse countries, women’s hair has been imbued with great power. Its representation aligns it with symbolic notions of femininity, female sexuality and all the ambivalent associations that various societies have with these notions.

Women’s hair has been a prominent feature of many paintings, folktales, films and literary works over the centuries.

Das Parfüm by Patrick Süskind