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Lavater and Physiognomy in English Fiction 1790-1832Graeme Tytler The study of physiognomy in the novel has become an established domain of literary criticism, with scholars intent on showing ways in which novelists of different nationalities were influenced by the physiognomic theories of Iohann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801). ' The present essay, while consistent with earlier studies in aims and methods, surveys a transitional period in the development of physical character description in the English novel, and suggests some of the hazards as well as the benefits of comparative studies of this kind. Until recently, critics of the major works of English fiction seldom came across Lavater's name and were thus unaware that he was practically a household name in Britain from the moment in 1789 when the first English translations of his Essays on Physiognomy appeared.2 His fame should not, however, obscure the fact that by the time his theories became known in Britain, physiognomy had not only had a history 1 For a recent bibliography of such studies, see Graeme Tytler, "Lavater and the NineteenthCentury English Novel" in The Faces ofPhysiognomy: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Johann Caspar Lavater, ed. Ellis Shookman (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993), pp. 163-64n. 2 The growing awareness of Lavater is suggested by two recent editions: Ann Radcliffe, The Romance ofthe Forest, ed. Chloe Chard (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), in which the editor comments upon a reference to physiognomy: "the judgment of character by the face was a particular form of interest at the end of the eighteenth century: at least two different English translations of Johann Caspar Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente (177578 ) were published in the course of the seventeen-eighties" (p. 388n); and Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary, or the Wrongs ofWoman, ed. Gary Kelly (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), where Lavater is mentioned in connection with a physiognomic reference in the text (p. 21On).' EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 7, Number 3, April 1995 294 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION stretching back to classical antiquity but had also been a preoccupation of the literary world since the early eighteenth century.3 Addison and Steele discuss physiognomy now and again in the Spectator and, like many of their contemporaries, notably Fielding, who gives the science careful consideration in his "Essay on the Knowledge of the Characters of Men" (1743), they regard Aristotle as the leading authority on the subject. The topicality of physiognomy before 1790 can also be seen when fictional characters display "skill in physiognomy" or awareness of it, as, for example, in Susannah Minifie Gunning's The Histories of Lady Frances S*** and Lady Cawline S*** (1763) and Barford Abbey (1768), William Hutchinson's The Hermitage (1772), Thomas Cogan's John Bunde, Junior, Gentleman (1776) and Elizabeth Blower's Maria (1785).4 Physiognomic ideas may also be found well before 1790 in personal descriptions where narrators speak about appearances in general, or the interest of a face for an observer and, using phrases such as the "Index of the Mind," the "Index of the Soul," the "human face divine," the particular moral virtues revealed by a face, the display of someone 's soul in his or her countenance, the effects of the inner life on the appearance, and so on. Although most novelists would have agreed with Uncle Toby's claim that there are indeed "a thousand openings ... which let a penetrating eye at once into a man's soul," there is no doubt that physiognomy itself continued to arouse controversy in the literary and philosophic worlds, as it had done since Zopyrus's notoriously unfavourable reading of Socrates' face. Much eighteenth-century fiction before 1790 is strongly imbued with a spirit offronti nullafides, a dictum which was of crucial importance to Le Sage and Fielding in their portrayal of society as made up of deceivers and victims of deceit.3 That this scepticism towards physiognomy may have influenced character description is suggested by the occasional association of handsomeness with treachery (Lovelace is perhaps the best-known example) and, especially after mid-century, by the presentation ofheroes, heroines, and some sympathetic secondary characters with less than impeccable looks. A typical instance is the description 3 For a...

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