Abstract

This paper reads the significance of the countenance—that is, the eighteenth-century catchall term for the collective range of facial expressions—as a progenitor of the electronic interface. Beginning with Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and touching on a number of lesser-known sentimental novels, this paper focuses on Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline: The Orphan of the Castle as a particularly fruitful site for examining the proliferation of countenances in sentimental novels. Emmeline demonstrates that certain characters valorize the transparency of countenance while others take a critical stance towards that same transparency. Such critical stances point to the fact that countenances are mediators, and they are never transparent or without “noise.” The purpose of the supposedly transparent countenance, like a seamless interface, was to provide quick and easy access to a character’s psychological depth. Novelists, like characters, were compelled to provide such instant access to the hearts and minds of their characters. While meeting this demand for depth of character, novelists such as Charlotte Smith used compulsory narration, a means of highlighting the opacity of me

pdf

Share