People of Refinement and an Old-School Blonde Joke.

People of refinement have a disinclination to colours.  This may be owing partly to a weakness of sight, partly to the uncertainty of taste, which readily takes refuge in absolute negation.  Women now appear almost universally in white and men in black.

The female sex in youth is attached to rose-colour and sea-green, in age to violet and dark-green.  The fair-haired prefer violet, as opposed to light yellow, the brunettes, blue, as opposed to yellow-red, and all on good grounds.

Theory of Colours - Goethe, #841 & 840

Satire's Bleak Outlook

At first blush, it may seem that Bleak House is a satire.  Let us see.  If a satire is of little aesthetic value, it does not attain its object, however worthy that object may be.  On the other hand, if a satire is permeated by artistic genius, then its object is of little importance and vanishes with its times while the dazzling satire remains, for all time, as a work of art.  So why speak of satire at all?

The study of the sociological or political impact of literature has to be devised mainly for those who are by temperament or education immune to the aesthetic vibrancy of authentic literature.

--Vladimir Nabokov on Bleak House