Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Physiognomies and Realism 1
Realism 3
Physiognomies 6
Corpus and Outlook 17
1 "The Amorous Effects of 'Brass'": Jane Austen 25
Jane Austen and Realism 25
Physiognomies in Jane Austen's Emma 27
Facial Indeterminacy and Physiognomic Gaps 28
Amiable Young Men, Pretty Young Women, and Harriet Smith 30
Harriet's Portrait and the Realist Framework 33
Other Discourses and Characterization 35
Dress (and Class) 36
Manners, Dissimulation (and Class) 38
Money (and Class) 41
Conclusion 45
2 "By the Sweat of One's Brow": Charlotte Brontë's Physiognomic Realism 50
From Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte 50
Tame Gardens and Wild Nature 51
Vivid Vision 53
Physiognomies, Phrenology, and Literary Realism 54
The Central Role of Physiognomies for Brontë 54
Charlotte Brontë's Visit to a Phrenologist 56
Realism in Brontë's Fiction 58
The Professor 60
Readability and Book Metaphors 60
Visor Down 63
Physiognomic Power and Its Distribution 66
Self-Help and Physiognomies 68
Villette 70
Observation as Physiognomic Power 71
Physiognomies vs. Pathognomy-A Labassecourian "Physiognomic Controversy"? 76
First-Person Narration and Physiognomies 78
National Physiognomies 81
Conclusion 84
3 George Eliot: Epistemological Skepticism, Character Incoherence, and the Incipient Disintegration of Literary Physiognomies 88
Realism and Silly Novels 90
Three Kinds of Beauty: Physiognomies in Adam Bede 94
Kalokagathia: Perfect Beauty Inside and Out 94
"The Dear Deceit of Beauty," or Deficient Beauty 98
The Beauty That Is None, or "That Other Beauty" 101
"The Iridescence of Character:" Daniel Deronda 104
Three Women, a Swarm of Insects, and the Problem of Correct Physiognomic Interpretation 105
Gwendolen Harleth: Animals and Artworks 108
Mirah Lapidoth: Unity in Search of Union 115
Leonora von Halm-Eberstein: Myriad Lives in One 120
Gender and Physiognomy 123
Conclusion 125
4 Who Murdered Edwin Drood? Charles Dickens and Physiognomies 132
Is John Jasper a "Delinquente Nato"? 132
Dickens and Physiognomies 139
Dickens's Ambivalent Stance toward Physiognomies and Realism 142
Anti-Physiognomies, Anti-Realism 142
The Rokesmith Portrait: Destroying Physiognomic Evidence 145
Conclusion, or: Why We Failed to Solve Edwin Drood's Murder with Physiognomies 148
5 Ironizing Physiognomies: Joseph Conrad 152
Toward Modernism, Toward Physiognomic Opacity 152
Almayer's Folly: On the Perils of Not Seeing 157
Subversion of the Tradition of the Imperial Romance Novel 157
Hybrid Physiognomies, Hybrid Legibility 160
Where There Is No Physiognomist, There Is No Physiognomies 162
Gazing Scientifically: Saint Lombroso in The Secret Agent 168
Affirmation, Ambiguity, Dismissal 168
Ironizing Lombroso 171
From Lombrosian Physiognomies to Eugenics 176
Conclusion 180
6 Virginia Woolf on the Social, Epistemic, and Aesthetic Function of Physiognomies in the Modernist Novel 184
Modernist Vision: Art and Life 185
Changing Vision 189
Lily's Colorful Vision 191
Physiognomies and Increasing Ekphrastic Vagueness 194
Character: To the Lighthouse as "All Character" 196
Modernist Physiognomies, an Oxymoron? 199
Physiognomically Made-Up Stories 199
Conclusion: The Dinner 203
Conclusion 208
Works Cited 211
Abbreviations 223
Index 225
