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 universal 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. Looking, radical groups like the Jacobins argued, 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 readers 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).

"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).

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).

"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).

In Radcliffe's Schedoni depiction, we again see the observer-observed complication, as well as the definitive science term: "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 the physiognomy raw materials fail to be available to him: "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

• The Faces of Physiognomy; Interdisciplinary Approaches to Johanna Caspar Lavater
• Physiognomy in the European Novel: Faces and Fortune

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