A very early draft

LIT 6009

Dr. Logan

9 April 2006

Physiognomy: Successes and Failures of Physical Interpretation

In Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond

Charles Brockden Brown, like many of his 18^th century literary contemporaries, was influenced by the practice of physiognomy. Brown's novel, Ormond, features many characters utilizing physiognomy as a way of discernment and character recognition. Physiognomy came into prominence because it offered a way in which people could judge the character of another person based on their physical appearance — generally the face. Furthermore, it discussed a topic that proved to be poignant to Brown's audience. Namely, Americans soon formed the question as to what, exactly, could be used to distinguish people and their character. Since monetary gains began to be harder to distinguish because of a growing middle class, people then looked to physiognomy as being a reliable measure of discernment towards people’s status. However, as researchers will argue, Brown questions the role physiognomy could have in society by introducing a clever actor; Ormond. Ormond and his sister Martinette are both skilled users of disguise and deception, revealing the limits and fallacies of physiognomy as whole.

Christopher Lukasik’s, “The Vanity of Physiognomy: Dissimulation and Discernment in Charles Brockden Brown’s Ormond” argues that Brown demonstrates the limitations of physiognomy throughout the book. For instance, the character Constantia notes, “Faces, it turns out, can be ‘heterogeneous’ and thus, perplexing to interpret” (Lukasik 493). However, Lukasik's sole focus is on Constantia Dudley's inability to discern the intentions of people based on their facial features.

Lukasik uses textual evidence not only from Ormond and the other seduction novels that Brown was in discourse with, but also the essays of Johann Kaspar Lavater. Lavater wrote influential essays on physiognomy in the same period in which Brown was writing his novels. Lavater’s pieces, aptly named Essays on Physiognomy, were widely read and mostly accepted by contemporary society during this period. Lavater believed, “Man's essence could be known as long as his actions, gestures, and expressions could be observed, because the state of an individual's mind (and soul) could be derived from these observations” (Hartley 32). According to Lukasik, Lavater’s theories and writings received notice in post-War America due to “the threat of rapid social and political mobility in America, one that was facilitated by dissimulation and the fluid culture of genteel performance” (489). In this burgeoning young country, any man with a notable presence, acting skills, and enough charisma contained the potential to become socially or politically elite. Such a fluid culture was relatively unprecedented at this time in the world. My essay extends Lukasik's work by considering how other characters, particularly the males, in the novel judge Constantia and Sophia. Could physiognomy be more successful in reading the actions of the novel's female characters and/or determining female identity? My essay uses physiognomy to ask what produces the air of virtuousness or vulnerability that makes Constantia the target of Ormond in this seduction novel. Furthermore, I will examine whether physiognomy can prove successful in evaluating the personality traits of other characters that interact with Constantia using the ground work that was laid by Johann Kaspar Lavater.

However, in order to answer these questions, I would first like to establish a detailed working definition of physiognomy for the purposes of this paper. Physiognomy as a field of study has existed since Ancient Greece. Naturally, this longevity has produced a wide variety of differing theories and interpretations. Lavater's own words offer us the most clear and concise answer possible. He states:

The exterior or superficies, of man, in motion or at rest, whether viewed in the original or by portrait. Physiognomy is the science of knowledge of the correspondence between the external and internal man, the visible superficies and the invisible contents. (Lavater 19)

Hartley in his work, Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture, interprets Lavater's words by stating, “Through physiognomy, the method of reading the external appearance as a sign of the internal state, one could arrive at a definition of man which mapped an individual's inner soul or being onto their external appearance” (Hartley 33).

Cultural conventions: Gestures of the first kind are performed spontaneously, involuntarily and perhaps even without our being aware of the fact that we are performing them. Blushing or turning pale, jerking back before a danger suddenly revealed to us – these are the examples we know from everyday life…the other type of gesture may be termed conventional. As symptomatic gestures are derived from nature, the conventional gesture is considered a product of what we call culture…Most important in our context is that conventional gestures are in the first place conceived as a means of communication. The readability of the natural gesture is a side – or after – effect; it has little to do with the aim of the gesture. The conventional gesture is – at least in its origins – performed in order to convey a message.

Where I am going with this:

Contextual evidence

"Imperfect disclosures”: cross-dressing and containment in Charles Brockden Brown's Ormond / Heather Smyth Smith, Merril D. Sex and Sexuality in Early America. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

Examples about Constantia’s physique- simple but intelligent. Facial references that are made

Helena Cleves- beautiful but a lacking sufficient mental facilities

Stonewall, Constantia- Defense in defeating an "invader"