Everybody Matters
The eye as window: crying and coloration
THE SCIENCE
The nature of crying was an area of scientific interest with ever-changing opinions and perceptions. The last ten years of the
eighteenth century was very much a decade of overlap between past notions and new. In
most literature of the era, crying is widely seen as pleasure. And crying, too, is infused with the time period's
stress on
scientific classification--as you will see in the novels of the 1780s and 1790s, rarely do you get a simple "tear"
mention, but rather a
very specific type of tear. Especially in romance novels, "the wetness, the "liquid expansion," the convulsing of muscles, the
transport, and what we might even call the ejaculatory nature of crying were all used to suggest its sexual nature" (39). With the coming of
Romanticism in the nineteenth-century, tears of pleasure only increase: William Wordworth's first published poem, "On
Seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams
Weep at a
Tale of Distress" (1786), contains the following quatrain:
She wept.--Life's purple tide began to flow
In languid streams through every thrilling vein;
Dim were my swimming eyes--my pulse beat slow,
And my full heart was swell'd to dear delicious pain.
Still, talk about the pleasures of weeping was far more common in the late eighteenth-century than it was in the
nineteenth. In the
latter, "the distinction in the 1755 pamphlet between purely physical crying and "moral weeping" again came to the fore, and the
pleasure of tears in literature, drama, and discussion became gradually less central and less blatantly sexual" (40).
Early in the century, tears were seen as "pools for angels to bathe in" (40). As the interpretation of tears became more
secular, tears were more simply considered "as the crier's advocates. In the eighteenth-century, this
understanding of tears--as
"mighty orators," as pearls, and as the playground of angels--was further secularized but otherwise retained the same characteristics.
Now the sincere man offered up his tears not to God but to other people, especially his beloved, who answered them with consolation (or
didn't) and caused a new bout of tears of joy (or didn't), making possible the most ideal form of communion (or the agony of
unrequitement)" (40).
In the rocky times of revolution, public figures were also concerned with tears of seduction, though more in the political
propaganda sense. Leading Anglo-American philosophy of law theorists Jeremy Bentham "noted in 1788 that most people
believe that 'the
emotions of the body' are 'probable indications of the temperature of the mind.' But, he went on to advise, this is not
something anyone
should count on.
A man may exhibit, for instance, the exterior appearances of grief, without really grieving at all, or at least in any thing near the
proportion in which he appears to grieve. Oliver Cromwell, whose conduct indicated a heart more than ordinarily callous, was as
remarkably profuse in tears. To have this kind of command over one's self, was the characteristic excellence of the orator of ancient
times.
And in America, tearful oratory was a living art, with politicians continuing to use tears on the stump at least until the 1890s, at
which point it gradually began to go out of style" (230).
Eyes, the direct tear producer, were not ignored by Lavater, who paid particular attention to their
coloration. According to his
Fragmente:
"Blue eyes indicate weakness and femininity, rather than brown and black eyes. It is true that there are countless
strong people
with blue eyes--but I know many more strong, virile, intelligent brown-eyed people than blue-eyed ones.
Light blue eyes I have practically never found in melancholy temperaments, rarely in choleric, and most commonly in phlegmatic
temperaments, which were nevertheless very energetic" (212).
THE CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
In Susanna Rowson's seduction novel Charlotte Temple, we read at least five narratives accounts of men crying and at least
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accounts of females crying. The syntax and diction in these passages generally follows a "tear of [feeling]" form, as we see in
the very introduction's "the tear of compassion still trembled in my eye for the fate of unhappy Charlotte" (Rowson 35).
Charlotte's weakness is further demonstrated through her eye color, a choice Rowson likely made in accordance to Lavater's dictates:
"'[Charlotte] is the sweetest girl in the world,' said [Montraville], as he entered the inn. Belcour stared. "Did
you not notice her?" continued Montraville: "she had on a blue bonnet, and with a pair of lovely eyes of the same colour, has contrived
to make me feel devilish odd about the heart.'" (38).
The characters themselves demonstrate the [pseudo]science of interpreting tears, though rarely naming their own tears: "Temple cast his eye on Mrs. Eldridge: a pellucid drop had stolen from her eyes, and fallen upon a rose she was painting. It
blotted and discoloured the flower. ''Tis emblematic,' said he mentally; "the rose of youth and health soon fades when watered by the
tear of affliction'" (42).
Indeed, La Rue's idea of putting her foot down and stopping Charlotte from thinking about Montraville is to stop her from imagining his
complexion and, above all, his eye color: "'Well, child, whether they are grey or black is of no consequence: you have
determined not to read his letter, so it is likely you will never either see or hear from him again'" (63).
Rowson's diction in the description "The pellucid drop of humanity stealing down her cheek" (112) further conveys the
idea
that
tears are clear windows into the human heart and mind.
Particularly present in this book are stories of weeping designed to give an "intense, voyeuristic pleasure," a tradition which began
mid-century: "in classic eighteenth-century novels like Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1741) or Clarissa
(1748), when the heroine's chastity is threatened, she often breaks down in tears as she pleads with the bad men not to ruin her, and
such scenes were the most widely enjoyed by their readers. Some of Richardson's more moralistic readers worried that such scenes of
virtue besieged verged on the pornographic, and the Marquis de Sade, in his foray into the genre, Justine (1791), made clear why.
When Justine asks her assailant, "Can you conceive of gleaning happiness in the depths of tears and disgust?" she quickly finds that the
answer is yes, and her tears inflame her rapist's passion" (270).
While no such scene exists in Rowson's novel exactly, La Rue does manipulate through tears, the narration stating she let "fall some
hypocritical tears" (61) before
appealing
to
Charlotte and asking if Charlotte would truly
"'see me deprived of bread, and for an action which by the most rigid could only be esteemed an inadvertency, lose
my
place and character, and be drove again into the world, where I have already suffered all the evils attendant on poverty.'
This was touching Charlotte in the most vulnerable part" (62).
The way in which Rowson mechanically conveys her characters' intentions and reactions adds a type of two-tier voyeurism to the novel.
Arguably we are expected to draw voyeuristic pleasure from another's voyeuristic pain. That is to say, once again the strength of a look
toward the weakness of a body can cause a strong reaction:
"When Mrs. Beauchamp entered the apartment of the poor sufferer, she started back with horror. On a wretched bed,
without hangings and but poorly supplied with covering, lay the emaciated figure of what still retained the semblance of a lovely woman,
though sickness had so altered her features that Mrs. Beauchamp had not the least recollection of her person. In one corner of the room
stood a woman washing, and, shivering over a small fire, two healthy but half naked children; the infant was asleep beside its mother,
and, n a chair by the bed side, stood a porringer and wooden spoon, containing a little gruel, and a tea-cup with about two spoonfuls of
wine in it. Mrs. Beauchamp had never before beheld such a scene of poverty; she shuddered involuntarily, and exclaiming."heaven preserve
us!".leaned on the back of a chair ready to sink to the earth.A faint sickness came over her. "Gracious heaven," said she, "is this
possible?" and bursting into tears, she reclined the burning head of Charlotte on her own bosom; and folding her arms about her, wept
over her in silence" (155-56)
Earlier in the scene Charlotte calls Mrs. Beauchamp her angel, and indeed Beauchamp emits this angelical nature through her waterworks,
her 'playground for angels'. But why is Charlotte's head "burning"? Is this heat supposed to contrast the direct mention to "heaven," to
establish a divine-damned binary? Regardless, certainly Mrs. Beauchamp's tears cannot cool the supposed fire of destroyed virtue.
Relevant Bibliography Entries
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