Everybody Matters
The face as moral map: Physiognomy
THE SCIENCE
There is long tradition of suffusing the female countenance with the
woman's moral record. But it was Swiss theologian and physician Johann
Caspar Lavater who sold physiognomy, the art of judging human
character from facial features, to the masses. And Lavater was
universally extolled: "it would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that
his name was once a household word and that he enjoyed the kind of
adulation nowadays bestowed on film stars and 'pop' idols" (9). His books were
enthusiastically taught, and "thought as necessary in every family as
even the Bible itself. A servant would, at one time, scarcely be hired
until the descriptions and engravings of Lavater had been consulted, in
careful comparison with the lines and features of the young man's or
woman's countenance" (2).
In the rancorous and reactionary 1790s, Lavater's gaze theories appealed
to the masses as a practice conducive to razing social artifice and
circumventing authority, a practice that could see beyond masks and
simulations. Radical groups like the Jacobins argued that looking could
be politicized and mobilized. This was a time when the "tension between
the personal and the public was compounded by a crisis of language in the
Age of Sensibility, a crisis that philosophers of the Enlightenment
suffered thanks to their battle cries 'Nature,' 'Naturalness,' and
'Truth.' They had felt obliged to raise these cries in their crusade
against the mentality and morals of the ancien regime" (44). And in America,
bodily clues and formulaic conclusions allowed for more comfort and
confidence in impersonal large cities, cities where differences in social
class were not always apparent in attire.
The face is indeed
the basis for physiognomical study. As Lavater writes, "'Im engen
Verstand ist Physiognomie die Gesichtsbildung und Physiognomik Kenntniss
der Gesichtszüge" [Strictly speaking, "physiognomy" means the facial
conformation, and "physiognomics" the study of the facial features] (66). In his
Fragmente, Lavater devotes substantial discussion to each feature:
forehead, eyes, eyebrows, nose, nostrils, mouth, chin, and profile. And
in just one brief description of a particular illustration plate, Lavater
writes: "We may certainly call noses arched and pointed like this, witty;
but the wit is restrained and moderated by the acute understanding of the
forehead, the sincere religion of the eye, and the phlegm of the chin."
In physiognomy, beauty expresses virtue and ugliness vice. The
individual's inner self is translated in its entirely to the individual's
outer self, and Lavater's omnipresent influence extended to the aesthetic
world, one whose development drastically quickened during the eighteenth
century. Lavater considered portraits "more useful than nature itself,
which physiognomists can observe only fleetingly. Art thus affords a
better occasion to observe facial features than nature, to which it must
nevertheless strictly conform. Artists and physiognomists alike,
moreover, study old masters as well as nature" (19). Lavater was very
inclined toward the recording and analyzing of silhouettes.
Lavater does not exclude pathognomy, the science of the passions, from
physiognomy, but rather considers the expression of emotions as intrinsic
to the study of physiognomy. He encouraged physiognomists to "visit
hospitals, prisons, and lunatic asylums, where there will be
opportunities to observe extremes in facial appearance" and to compile "a
large collection of the most striking faces, to begin his studies with
faces that are unusual in shape and character, to find out why some faces
are superior to others, to compare faces that do not stand easy
comparison, and to analyze the facial features in relation to one
another" (66).
THE CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
Literary figures were not excluded from the Lavaterian trend. One recent
scholar noted "'that it is difficult to imagine how a literate person of
the time could have failed to have some general knowledge of the man and
his theories'" (19). Indeed, Mathew
Gregory Lewis subscribed to an expensive English edition of Lavater's
essays (164).
Nearly every time a character is introduced in his novel The
Monk, the reader first learns the contours of that
character's face.
The Monk also illustrates a further trait of physiognomy and
one that makes it a powerful narrative device: not only is the individual
skilled in the tenets of physiognomy able to command more power in
interactions, but that individual must by necessity also feel more fear
toward those appraising his or her own body. Lewis demonstrates this
blurring of the observer-observed binary, though this narrative tool is
not unique to him:
"He was a man of noble port and
commanding presence. His stature was lofty, and his features uncommonly
handsome. His nose was aquiline, his eyes large, black and sparkling, and
his dark brows almost joined together. His complexion was of a deep but
clear brown; study and watching had entirely deprived his cheek of
colour. Tranquillity reigned upon his smooth unwrinkled forehead; and
content, expressed upon every feature, seemed to announce the man equally
unacquainted with cares and crimes. He bowed himself with humility to the
audience. Still there was a certain severity in his look and manner that
inspired universal awe, and few could sustain the glance of his eye, at
once fiery and penetrating" (Lewis 47).
As Graeme Tytler suggests, the titular hero of William Godwin's
Caleb Williams is a serious student of physiognomy.
Perhaps you could say his life depends upon it when, "after escaping from
prison, he feels compelled to study the science in order to survive in an
area of London inhabited mainly by criminals" (165):
"It was my first and immediate business to review all the
projects of disguise I had hitherto conceived, to derive every
improvement I could invent from the practice to which I had been
subjected, and to manufacture a veil of concealment more impenetrable
than ever" (Godwin
352).
"Here I accoutred myself in my new habiliments; and,
having employed the same precautions as before, retired from my lodging
at a time least exposed to observation. It is unnecessary to describe the
particulars of my new equipage; suffice it to say, that one of my cares
was to discolour my complexion, and give it the dun and sallow hue which
is in most instances characteristic of the tribe to which I assumed to
belong; and that when my metamorphosis was finished, I could not, upon
the strictest examination, conceive that any one could have traced out
the person of Caleb Williams in this new disguise" (352).
In every human countenance I feared to find the
countenance of an enemy. I shrunk from the vigilance of every human eye.
I dared not open my heart to the best affections of our nature. I was
shut up, a deserted, solitary wretch, in the midst of my species . My
life was all a lie. I had a counterfeit character to support. I had
counterfeit manners to assume. My gait, my gestures, my accents, were all
of them to be studied. I was not free to indulge, no not one, honest
sally of the soul" (353).
Other passages also narrate Caleb's displays of physiognomical talent:
"They were no sooner withdrawn than I cast my eye upon the old
man, and found something extremely venerable and interesting in his
appearance. His form was above the middle size. It indicated that his
strength had been once considerable; nor was it at this time by any means
annihilated. His hair was in considerable quantity, and was as white as
the drifted snow. His complexion was healthful and ruddy, at the same
time that his face was furrowed with wrinkles. In his eye there was
remarkable vivacity, and his whole countenance was strongly expressive of
good-nature. The boorishness of his rank in society was lost in the
cultivation his mind had derived from habits of sensibility and
benevolence . The view of his figure immediately introduced a train of
ideas into my mind, respecting the advantage to be drawn from the
presence of such a person" (343).
In this passage,
also note the literal movement from countenance to brain.
In this same novel, it also appears as though Godwin presents the
inability to learn the science of physiognomy as an intrinsic trait of
the unwholesome lower class. When Terrell works to manipulate a marriage
between Grimes--the "diametrical reverse of Mr. Falkland"--and
Emily--whose "long dark eyebrows adapted themselves with facility to the
various conceptions of her mind" (99), Godwin not only gives Grimes thick
lips, coarse "discordant and disjointed" features, and a "scarcely human
complexion" (109), he
intimates Grimes' downfall to be his inability to accurately perceive his
fellow beings (and presumably to discern Terrell's immorality): "This
fellow, without an atom of intentional malice, was fitted, by the mere
coarseness of his perceptions, for the perpetration of the greatest
injuries" (121).
Susanna Rowson's Charlotte Temple also uses
the language of physiognomy to draw distinctions between characters:
"Julia Franklin was the very reverse of Charlotte Temple:
she was tall, elegantly shaped, and possessed much of the air and manner
of a woman of fashion; her complexion was a clear brown, enlivened with
the glow of health, her eyes, full, black, and sparkling, darted their
intelligent glances through long silken lashes; her hair was shining
brown, and her feature regular and striking; there was an air of innocent
gaiety [that] played about her countenance, where good humour sat
triumphant" (107).
The desire to physiognomize propels Anne Radcliffe's entire novel
The Italian: Vivaldi is overwhelmed by the need to see
Elena's face, to assure it "express[es] all the sensibility of character
that the modulation of her tones indicated" (Radcliffe 23). And, of
course it does: "her features were of the Grecian outline, and, though
they expressed the tranquility of an elegant mind, her dark blue eyes
sparkled with intelligence" (24).
In Radcliffe's depiction of Schedoni, we again see the observer-observed
complication, as well as the term "physiognomy" itself:
"His [Schedoni's] cowl, too, as it threw a shade over the livid
paleness of his face, encreased its severe character, and gave an effect
to his large melancholy eye, which approached to horror. His was not the
melancholy of a sensible and wounded heart, but apparently that of a
gloomy and ferocious disposition. There was something in his physiognomy
extremely singular, and that can not easily be defined. It bore the
traces of many passions, which seemed to have fixed the features they no
longer animated. An habitual gloom and severity prevailed over the deep
lines of his countenance; and his eyes were so piercing that they seemed
to penetrate, at a single glance, into the hearts of men, and to read
their most secret thoughts; few persons could support their scrutiny, or
even endure the meet them twice" (56).
In addition,
Vivaldi is foiled when he lacks the raw materials of physiognomy:
"Yet this again might be only an artificial
effect, a character which the cowl alone gave to the head; and any face
seen imperfectly beneath its dark shade, might have appeared equally
severe. Vivaldi was still extremely perplexed in his opinion" (71).
Relevant Bibliography Entries
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