Literary notes about Heliotrope (AI summary)
Heliotrope in literature is frequently invoked as a refined, fashionable hue—a light, purplish tint that blends elegance with a subtle melancholy. In some works, it appears alongside scarlet, forming striking visual contrasts that enhance the narrative’s atmosphere [1]. Its allure as a color is also highlighted in descriptions of clothing, such as a fashionable morning gown [2], a purple accessory accentuating a character’s look [3], and various articles of attire like crêpe dresses, sleeves, and skirts that help define character and mood [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]. Beyond fashion, writers extend heliotrope to describe natural gradients—its delicate tints evoking moods from fleeting hope to poignant decay [10], [11].
- she rejoined coldly, and her eyes wandered out of the window again to that spot across the square where heliotrope and scarlet had met.
— from The Right of Way — Volume 01 by Gilbert Parker - Then a bedroom door opened, and a lady in a morning gown of the fashionable heliotrope came downstairs.
— from In the Year of Jubilee by George Gissing - He remembered now that Eileen Brokaw loved heliotrope, and that she always wore a purple heliotrope at her white throat or in the gold of her hair.
— from Flower of the North: A Modern Romance by James Oliver Curwood - For more intimate letters ladies sometimes use a pale blue, delicate pearl-gray, light lavender or heliotrope, or a Colonial buff.
— from The Etiquette of To-day by Edith B. (Edith Bertha) Ordway - On remarking that fact to him, he laughed and said, "Yes, I was looking at my best girl; there she is, near the centre, dressed in heliotrope crêpe."
— from A Flight in Spring In the car Lucania from New York to the Pacific coast and back, during April and May, 1898 by J. Harris (John Harris) Knowles - Five times Germaine asked her whether she should wear her heliotrope or her pink gown at a forthcoming dinner at Madame de Relzieres'.
— from Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc - She got up and stretched her well-shaped arms above her head until the heliotrope sleeves cracked and gaped at the seams.
— from Poppy: The Story of a South African Girl by Cynthia Stockley - She greeted Mildred also with a parade of mundane elegance, and sat down deliberately on the sofa, spreading out her heliotrope skirts.
— from The Invader: A Novel by Margaret L. (Margaret Louisa) Woods - He wiped his eyes with the back of his heliotrope sleeve and finished what he had to say.
— from Leerie by Ruth Sawyer - The shadows, ever changing, deepened from faintest pink-mauve through heliotrope tints, to the richest violet in the heart of the gorges.
— from The Mountain Girl by Payne Erskine - Who set their heart upon a hope That never comes to pass, Droop in the end like fading heliotrope, The sun's wan looking-glass.
— from Poems by Christina Georgina Rossetti
