Download - Physiognomy in Jane Eyre
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 1
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 terms
“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 2
because it aided in the separation of church from state, a crucial step in allowing the Scottish to
gain full recognition as governing members 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 3
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 4
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 terms, 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 5
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 self-
effacing behavior while also ensuring others pass 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 6
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
terms 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 passed 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 7
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 8
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 terms of specific features that indicate characteristics or intelligence,
temperament, and even charitableness. She uses her knowledge of physiognomy, likely gained
Howell 9
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 10
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 11
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. <http://www.enotes.com/governess-nineteenth-century-literature-essays/governess-
nineteenth-century-literature>.
King, Rebecca. "Aspects of Romanticism." English 4930: Nineteenth Century Novel. Middle
Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN. 3 May 2013. MTSU. Web. 3 May 2013.
<http://mtweb.mtsu.edu/rking/Courses/4390_19thCenturyNovel/Handouts/
Romanticism.html>.
Lightman, Bernard V. Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing 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 12
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): 127-
37. 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.
Howell 13