Only Love Creates Beauty

"A woman is beautiful when she is loved, and only then."

Claude Rains, Mr. Skeffington

I don’t agree with people who say nothing the world offers comes from God. Everything the world offers comes from God. The problem is we often pervert what God has given us in this world. Take beauty. A good example of this can be found in the 1944 movie, Mr. Skeffington, starring Bette Davis and Claude Rains.

Claude Rains plays Mr. Job Skeffington, and although the movie is named after his character, it really revolves around the future Mrs. Fanny Skeffington, played by Bette Davis.  Fanny Trellis is the greatest beauty 1914 New York has ever seen. She is chased by every man who encounters her. She is among the world's many “carnal allurements", or "enticements for the eye.” And her life is “an empty show” based solely on her physical beauty.

Fanny eventually marries Job, the only man who loves her beyond her beauty, but she doesn’t marry him for love. She marries him for wealth and security. She has no intention of giving up her “empty show” and she still thrills at the way men chase her, even after she has become Mrs. Skeffington. At this point in the film Mr. and Mrs. Skeffington are polar opposites. One conversation between them best points this out. Job says to Fanny, “A woman is beautiful when she's loved, and only then.” To which Fanny replies, “Nonsense. A woman is beautiful when she has eight hours' sleep and goes to the beauty parlor every day. And bone structure has a lot to do with it too.”

Job loves Fanny beyond her physical beauty, but Fanny does not love what’s under her lovely skin and elegant clothes. Job, like God, knows that love creates beauty, but Fanny, like society, believes that beauty is simply an enticement for the eyes. A rift begins to grow between Job and Fanny. They eventually divorce and Job moves to Germany, while Fanny is quite content being every man’s carnal allurement in New York.

Everyday is a new opportunity for Fanny to hear of how ravishing she is, until one fatal day when Fanny develops diphtheria. The disease destroys Fanny’s body, aging her 20 years. Her beautiful hair falls out and eventually grows back like a willowy bush of fuzz. Her face sags and is covered with wrinkles. All that Fanny believed gave her worth is now gone forever: Her physical beauty. And gone with her beauty are all of her many male suitors. No one will have her now because no one ever saw beyond her carnal allurements—no one but Job.

At this same time, the Nazi’s have taken power in Germany and Job, a Jew, is seized and tortured. He manages to escape and return to New York. He returns to Fanny, who doesn’t want to see him because she is no longer beautiful to the eye. She eventually relents to discover that Job is now physically blind. She’s relieved that he can no longer see her outer appearance, but she also remembers his words, rephrasing them in her mind, “A woman is only beautiful when she is loved,” and she now understands. She has always been loved by Job. His love for her made her beautiful to him, and it is his love that now makes her beautiful, even if no one else can see the same beauty in her that Job sees.

God sees us all in the same light that Job sees Fanny, because God loves us all. And it is God’s love for us that makes each and everyone one of us beautiful, even if the rest of the world fails to see that beauty. Let’s remember throughout our day that the beauty the world creates withers and fades, but the beauty Love creates is eternal. Love’s beauty is more than “enticements for the eye.” Love’s beauty is enticements for the soul.