Alabaster brow
An alabaster brow is an often-used (or even clichéd) literary device, used particularly in romantic fiction. It describes the forehead of someone who is particularly pale, and usually young and handsome/beautiful.
Uses
Its first recorded use was in 1894, in The Protestation, an ode by a British clergyman, Selwyn Image, that appeared in a collection entitled Poems and Carols:
-
DEAR Eyes, set deep within the shade
- Of Love’s pale alabaster brow;
-
Of what strange substance are ye made,
- That such enchantments on me now,
- Resistless, by your grace are laid?
It is also famously used in Anne of Green Gables, a novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery published in 1908:
- Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster brow.