The word mauve functions as a dynamic literary device that evokes both physical texture and atmospheric mood. It appears in descriptions of sumptuous fabrics and elegant garments—such as silken garters and gowns that mark transitions in a character’s life ([1], [2], [3])—as well as in the subtle details of urban and natural landscapes, where the hue enhances the visual texture of envelopes, paper, and even distant hills ([4], [5], [6]). Mauve is employed to convey a sense of refined melancholy or delicate sentimentality, capturing moments of both inner emotion and external beauty, whether on a book cover or in the fleeting shadows of a city street ([7], [8]). Its versatility as a descriptor allows authors to merge physical detail with symbolic depth, lending their narrative an air of quiet, almost nostalgic elegance ([9], [10]).
- There were blue silk, pink silk, red silk, violet silk, mauve silk garters, and the buckles were made of two gilt metal cupids embracing each other.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant
- For Maman was in grande tenue with her mauve satin low-necked evening dress on, and a camellia in her hair.
— from Rough-Hewn by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- Never trust a woman who wears mauve, whatever her age may be, or a woman over thirty-five who is fond of pink ribbons.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
- But on the Monday morning there came two mauve envelopes.
— from Mrs. Maxon Protests by Anthony Hope
- The colour of the distant hills tones off from indigo to mauve; but for all the general effect of darkness, every stone and crag shows up distinctly.
— from Foxhunting on the Lakeland Fells by Richard Clapham
- The blue of the distant hills changed to mauve with deeper masses of purple in the shadows where the canyons are.
— from When A Man's A Man by Harold Bell Wright
- One night, impatient with himself, he picked up the book of love lyrics in its mauve cover, from his bedside table.
— from Dangerous Days by Mary Roberts Rinehart
- They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not.
— from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
- Behold this mauve and purple mocking of time and space!
— from Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. Du Bois
- So that you may live If only as names, Sinuous, mauve-colored names, In the Juvenalia Of my collected editions.”
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald