Physiognomy In Jane Eyre 1i664y

Howell 1 Pearl Howell Dr. King English 4930 3 May 2013 The Science of Appearance in Jane Eyre Written in 1847, Jane Eyre exists as a time capsule for women‟s worldviews in the Victorian and pre-Victorian culture. The novel portrays the education, socialization, and treatment of women in British society, and critics have examined the feminist implications of the novel at great length. However, Jane Eyre also reveals in great detail Victorian attitudes toward science and appearance and how those attitudes contributed to the culture of repression and sexual distance famously associated with the Victorian era. Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester use scientific analyses based on physical appearance, and through these analyses gain insight into one another‟s character that could not be gained through traditional means, given their roles within their society and the household. In order to understand Victorian science, historical context is necessary. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was the “golden age of appreciation” for science (Thurs 2), and Jane Eyre takes place at the beginning of this growing preoccupation among the populace of Britain. Present scientific standards were not developed, and the idea of science as a structured method with steps would not come to be widely accepted until the twentieth century with Karl Popper‟s categorization of the scientific method (Sharif). Before that, the term “science” and “scientist” held little concrete meaning. Science could mean any variety of things, including arts and what are today called pseudo-sciences, and it was not bound to a small group of elite practitioners, but was instead the practice of any educated, thoughtful person (Thurs 24).

Howell 2 Anyone could learn about science, and the use of science to prove superiority of white, European men was embraced by the Western world. Part of this appreciation can be attributed to colonial sentiment. With the “barbaric” and “civil” thrown about English society, the idea of the British as somehow superior, more evolved, and therefore worthy of their role as world leaders grew within the nation‟s rhetoric. With the impressive growth of British holdings throughout the world, a This sentiment appears in Jane Eyre during her stay with St. John Rivers and his sisters, and his ideas of spreading the religion of their superior society to the pagans of India. For St. John and the European, Protestant men like him, Britain was the pinnacle of civilization on Earth, and while St. John never voiced it, for many British gentlemen in the Victorian era, science served as a means to prove this superiority with impartiality once and for all. Scientific thought was the most credible form of discourse in the Victorian era (Lightman 5), and for many Victorian Britons, those questions directed toward the characteristics and morality of others. This was the era of human study, especially the human body, through palmistry, graphology, and, in Jane Eyre, physiognomy and phrenology. Phrenology followed this vein of prejudgment based solely on the body. Based on the idea that the personal characteristics of an individual are determined by the shape of the brain, phrenologists asserted that the brain‟s shape could be read through the skull, and that every bump or groove determined a major moral or personal attribute (See Fig. 1). While present-day science indicates that brain function occurs on an incredibly minute cellular level, phrenology became very popular in the early nineteenth century after Franz Josef Gall popularized the idea in Scotland in the 1790s. While Gall was Austrian, his idea caught the attention of Scotland

Howell 3 because it aided in the separation of church from state, a crucial step in allowing the Scottish to gain full recognition as governing of Great Britain (Thurs 25). From there, the idea

Fig.1: A diagram representing the human skull, with regions related to personality and character labeled from O. S. Fowler; Love and Parentage Applied to the Improvement of Offspring, Including Important Directions and Suggestions to Lovers and the Married Concerning the Strongest Ties and the Most Momentous Relations of Life; New York: Fowlers and Wells, 1850; Everyday Life and Women in America, C. 1800-1920; Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture, Duke University Library, and New York Library; Web; 3 May 2013.

Howell 4 spread widely throughout the British Empire and the United States, and while it fell under fire by skeptics as “quackery”, it was accepted as fact by just as many. It became a popular topic for traveling lecturers, and phrenologists would travel from door to door, offering to measure skulls for a fee (Thurs 23). Phrenology was a subset of a larger genre of pseudo-science called physiognomy, which claimed to comprehend a person‟s character and morals through the study of their body, especially the face (Lyons 51). Physiognomy implied that goodness could be sighted without having to know a person, and in Victorian culture, it provided a useful means to sight good and evil spirited individuals without even speaking to them. This was valuable to writers as well, allowing for their characters to reasonably speculate on the characters of others without introduction, which was a highly structured and formal process and prevented working class individuals like Jane from speaking with the leisure class, like Rochester, the Misses Ingram, and the other guests at Thornfield. Therefore, in their faces and forms, Jane and those like her could glean information without having to break social protocol. Beauty or ugliness did not come into Jane Eyre‟s physiognomy calculations, however, although such ideas were not new to the world of literature. The idea of beauty as goodness developed long before the Victorian era, but its height came with Romantic art, where beauty in all forms was idealized and represented repeatedly, but this calculation did not extend into the scientific observations of physiognomy. Because the romantic hero was an ideal rather than a reality (King), his appearance came to match as a symbol of his perfection. It is against this atmosphere that Charlotte Brontë reacted in creating her primary characters, and she built her plain Jane and the almost grotesque, swarthy Rochester. That is not to say that rejected Romanticism, but rather that she constructed her own version of

Howell 5 it, accepting some conventions, changing others, and rejecting the rest. Some of her beautiful characters were sympathetic, while others were not, and likewise, the plainness or repugnance of certain people did not indicate their moral leanings. paints a more complex picture of appearance as it relates to behavior. While Jane Eyre does not equate beauty with goodness, seems to accept the idea that character can be determined by appearance, but that simply judging according to overall beauty or ugliness does not work. In the beginning of the book, Jane is contrasted against her cousins, all of whom match beauty standards of the day with their curly hair and blooming, rosy faces. Later, the audience has an opportunity to compare the two again, and the Reeds meet with much less favorable , despite their beauty. While breaking the Reeds down into “bad” characters because of their beauty and placing Jane with the “good” might work, the issue of appearance is much more complex. The descriptions of Jane and the Reeds reveal that while overall beauty seems to put the characters on an inverse plane with the standard, “beauty as goodness” convention, their appearance still determines the content of their characters, albeit in a less direct way (Talairach-Vielmas 131). It is in the Reed home that Jane receives the harshest treatment because of her appearance. The servants and Mrs. Reed treat her poorly because she contrasts so sharply against the playful Reed children, and her morose behavior and appearance seemingly grate on the nerves of those around her in contrast to the lovely and lively Reed children. Because Georgiana is beautiful, she grew into a spoiled and thoughtless woman. As the only son and a handsome child, John Reed also grew up overindulged and without the restraint that would have prevented his demise. The less beautiful Eliza, always less appreciated than her sister, developed a love of material wealth and visible, tangible exhibits of what should be internal sentiments. All

Howell 6 three Reed children exhibit the effects of appearance on character; by escaping the Reed family, Jane escapes the fate of her own character as defined by her appearance, and her last statement to her aunt reveals the extent of the trauma she suffered due to her appearance. This sets a pattern for characters‟ appearance and personalities correlating throughout the novel. Since Jane is the narrator for the novel, it is her voice that details the descriptions of other characters throughout the book. She uses her insight into others‟ characters to color her perceptions of their appearances, and vice versa. Jane‟s identity as an artist is crucial in the development of her gaze and her identity. By making Jane an artist, ensured that Jane‟s observations could be described, but her identity as an artist also exposed other parts of Jane‟s personality, mind, and feelings toward other characters. It is through one of her own drawings of Rochester that Jane discovers her affection for him, and St. John discovers Jane‟s true identity through her art. Since her drawings reflect her gaze, it appears almost a Freudian slip that she wrote her real, full name in her sketchbook, and that St. John gains the key to her identity by looking closely at her art (Miller 249). Jane fully controls the gaze in Jane Eyre, even over her male counterparts, making her the most powerful observer in the novel. As an observer and outsider, Jane has the power to observe more truly, and this power gives her insight into the people surrounding her. This can be partially attributed to her plain appearance, a cloak of invisibility, which encourages her selfeffacing behavior while also ensuring others over her, as evidenced in her experience with Rochester‟s guests, who almost universally ignore the quiet governess in the corner. Her status as an outsider also comes from her background and her role within Thornfield as governess, a tentative position in any household, but especially in the home of an alleged bachelor with an assumed illegitimate daughter.

Howell 7 Jane‟s role as a governess is a unique position in nineteenth century Britain education system, and the place of women throughout that system. Women of the working and leisure classes often received two different forms of education. Working class girls went to schools aimed at practical skills easily transferred to a specific form of employment, while leisure class girls whose value lay in their marriageability, received education in various accomplishments, such as music, languages, dancing, and art from a governess (“Governess”). As a student at Lowood, Jane received the education of a woman of leisure, along with some practical lessons in arithmetic, sewing, and writing. This education made her suitable for the vocation of a governess, responsible for teaching young women of considerable status. In chapter 17 of Jane Eyre, Blanch Ingram and her mother describe governesses in harsh in front of Jane, throwing a variety of insults in the direction of the profession generally, and Jane specifically. Among the most telling is the word “incubi”, a term with overt sexual denotations. This provides some context for Jane‟s position as governess and how that role was perceived within Victorian England. Jane Eyre, in addition to its categorization as a Gothic romance, also fell within the genre of a governess novel, which grew in popularity around the nineteenth century and developed as a result of the importance of governesses in the lives of many British children at this time (“The Governess”). The role of governess created some tension within society at the time because it contradicted social and gender norms. A governess was a woman too educated to be a servant, but not of proper rank and status to be a member of the leisure class. For a family of leisure, a governess was a symbol of rank, but also a danger to have in their house. Stories of governesses‟ incompetence and immorality ed through the leisure classes, as evidenced by Blanche Ingram‟s diatribe on their ills. More than that, however, a governess marked the corruption of

Howell 8 the Victorian feminine ideal: the mother. Having a governess freed the mother from educating her children, but it also separated her from them and removed her from the role of primary caretaker. For many women, this was a source of distress, and caused struggle between the two women, often making the governess‟s work more difficult and feeding the mythos of her incompetence. Charlotte Brontë understood the dually damned position of the governess intimately from her own experience as an educator. Charlotte spent a great deal of time at school, both learning and teaching, and in her experiences at various schools and homes, she learned about forbidden love and longing as well as the awkward status of the governess (Brennan 3-4). Her experiences as a poor clergyman‟s daughter cemented her place as an outsider looking in, and it was through this position that she gained insight and made criticism of the leisure class whose children she taught and whose status as independent she envied. Jane reflected many aspects of Charlotte ‟s life and experiences as a poor, working class woman, and as a governess she mirrors those observations and struggles that Charlotte likely felt herself. Because of Jane‟s problematic, isolated status as a governess at Thornfield, and because of Jane‟s upright character that would later reveal itself further in her repeated refusals of Rochester‟s illicit offers, needed Rochester and Jane to maintain a semblance of distance and propriety. Their relationship grew closer throughout the book, but it was not familiar until Rochester proposed, and even then, Jane was uncomfortable with the outpouring of affection that he exhibited thereafter. The use of physiognomy was useful in maintaining the appropriate distance between the two characters while ensuring that their characteristics were fully known, especially Rochester‟s.

Howell 9 One of the most compelling instances of the use of physiognomy in Jane Eyre comes when Rochester dresses as a gypsy woman and attempts to glean something of Jane‟s feelings while in his disguise. Interestingly, several of his inquiries focus on Jane‟s observations of him and his guests, of his face while he listens to the other women speaking, of whether she watches him in particular, and of what she sees when she watches them all interact. Jane is not forthcoming, however, and so Rochester moves on to looking at her, taking note of her eyes, mouth, brow, forehead, taking note of her character and observing them all in minute detail (139). This is the first opportunity when Jane is the observed rather than the observer, and it is a strange and otherworldly experience. In his observations, Rochester notes Jane has an open and readable face, and that her thoughts are written clearly on it. He also says, tellingly, “[Jane] can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require [her] so to do” (139), unknowingly predicting her refusal to his offer of mistress. This scene lends credibility to the science of physiognomy, allows to describe her titular character, and foreshadows coming events, as well as revealing the growing interest Rochester has in Jane, a fact that would have otherwise been hidden in the first-person narrative‟s limited perspective. Jane‟s character is also analyzed through another source, allowing the audience a glimpse of what Rochester sees when he looks at her, in addition to her own commentaries on him. His costume allows him to voice his opinions of her more freely, once again providing an appropriate distance between the lord of the house and his problematic, plain governess. The word physiognomy appears throughout Jane Eyre, and is a key indicator for the particular form of “science” that Jane uses to characterize those around her. Jane describes and is described in of specific features that indicate characteristics or intelligence, temperament, and even charitableness. She uses her knowledge of physiognomy, likely gained

Howell 10 throughout her education and reading at Lowood, to gain insight into her fellow humans without encroaching on her own sensibilities or societal norms. Without physiognomy, Jane would have been confined to her gleanings from overheard dialogue, and her scientific approach lends her first-person tale some credibility and removes some of the perceived bias that comes from the singular perspective. Interestingly, while science often excluded, marginalized, and contributed to the subjugation of women throughout the Victorian era (Murphy 2), Jane embraces its use, defying gender limitations and revealing the somewhat unusual direction of her own education. The study of physiognomy seemed common in the authors of the nineteenth century. George Eliot wrote of her readings in the area, and countless other authors, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whitman, included physiognomy‟s principles in their writing (Lyons 51-52). This particular branch of study was valuable because it was culturally relevant and allowed writers to take shortcuts. Charlotte used it for those reasons, but also because it gave Jane insight into her fellows without having to cross boundaries imposed by her position in the house. This is especially the case in the relationship between Jane and Rochester, where careful limitations must be upheld throughout, but whose love must develop around some form of insight. Their relationship builds from brief conversations with one another, but in order to truly know Rochester, uses physiognomy as a way to abridge their introductory period and set Rochester up as a hero. Rather than show that Rochester is good, tells the audience through descriptions of his physiognomy. This allows the pair to maintain some distance while immediately introducing the audience to the strengths and deficiencies of his character, “his broad and jetty eyebrows; his square forehead…his decisive nose…his full nostrils, denoting, I

Howell 11 thought, choler” ( 82). The language used indicates Rochester‟s brusqueness, irascible temper, and his straightforward, confident manners. Because Jane narrates her own tale, most of her physiognomy observations about herself come through comparison against the paragons of beauty found throughout her story. She makes some of these comparisons herself, with Blanche Ingram, St. John Rivers, and Bertha Mason, always comparing their beauties and perfections in relation to her own faults. The Rivers describe her physiognomy at some length while Jane was in feverish state, and St. John sees “lines of force in her face” (239) that suggest willfulness, while his sisters think she appears agreeable. All of this takes place when Jane cannot speak or move, and the family develops an opinion of her before even hearing her name. Physiognomy allows them to make judgment without the need for personal interaction, and therefore makes for a valuable tool in the structure of Victorian society, allowing the leisure and working classes to spot one of their own from facial features and body structure alone. Any casual reader of Jane Eyre notes the proliferation of physical observations throughout the book. Descriptions of places, objects, and, most importantly, people proliferate in the text, and it is impossible to read the book without noticing that Jane is considered plain, that Rochester appears animalistic and fierce, and Blanche Ingram represent ideal female beauty. Those observations take on new meaning when contrasted with attempted scientific categorization using physiognomy, and its repeated appearance in Jane Eyre provides cultural insight and a device through which can draw her characters together without compromising their propriety and place within society. Physiognomy allowed to characterize her primary subjects and explore the relation of appearance and character.

Howell 12 Works Cited Brennan, Zoe. Brontë's Jane Eyre. London: Continuum, 2010. Print. "The Governess in Nineteenth-Century Literature." Enotes.com. Enotes.com, n.d. Web. 04 May 2013. . King, Rebecca. "Aspects of Romanticism." English 4930: Nineteenth Century Novel. Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN. 3 May 2013. MTSU. Web. 3 May 2013. . Lightman, Bernard V. Victorian Popularizers of Science: Deg Nature for New Audiences. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2007. Print. Lyons, Sherrie Lynne. Species, Serpents, Spirits, and Skulls: Science at the Margins in the Victorian Age. Albany: SUNY, 2009. Print. Miller, Kathleen A. "„Well That Is Beautiful, Miss Jane!‟: Jane Eyre and the Creation of the Female Artist." Brontë Studies 35.3 (2010): 248-66. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 May 2013. Murphy, Patricia. "The Gendered Context of Victorian Science." Introduction. In Science's Shadow: Literary Constructions of Late Victorian Women. Columbia: University of Missouri, 2006. 1-41. Print. Sharif, Naubahar. "Let's Talk About Science: Science as the Scientific Method." Coursera's Science and Technology in China I. Hong Kong. 3 May 2013. Lecture.

Howell 13 Talairach-Vielmas, Laurence. "„Portrait of a Governess, Disconnected, Poor, and Plain‟: Staging the Spectral Self in Charlotte Brontë‟s Jane Eyre." Brontë Studies 34.2 (2009): 12737. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 May 2013. Thurs, Daniel Patrick. "Phrenology." Science Talk : Changing Notions of Science in American Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2007. 22-52. EBrary: a Proquest Site. Web. 3 May 2013.