Running After the Cult of Beauty

THERE ARE FEW INTERPERSONAL DYNAMICS as potentially close, intense, and thorny as the one between two sisters. The dyad crops up frequently in art—sometimes in the service of horror (The Twa Sisters), sometimes of nihilism (Melancholia), sometimes of happy endings (Snow White and Rose Red). Sometimes the duo forms the two poles of a dream-parable, as in Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market.