The Eyes Have It: Physiognomy, Gender and Construction of the Public and Private Self in Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley

Abstract

In Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849), the narrator remarks of the eponymous heroine: ‘Her nature is in her eye …’ (Brontë [1849] 2008, 326). Specifically, throughout the text, Shirley’s eyes are described as flashing; Caroline’s, meanwhile, are described as glowing. While Brontë’s interest in and exploration of phrenology is well-documented, Shirley’s focus on the eyes is quintessentially physiognomic. This article explores the two major sequences that describe the heroines’ flashing and glowing eyes in relation to Brontë’s use of physiognomic principles and her ideals of gender. I argue that Brontë’s portrayal of Shirley and Caroline not only questions the allegedly unifying power of physiognomy but also gives it a phrenological treatment in which the external signifier does not always match the internal signified. Furthermore, the specific imagery of flashing and glowing is emblematic of Shirley’s refusal to adhere to binaries. While flashing ‘reads’ as masculine and glowing ‘reads’ as feminine, Brontë’s conception of Shirley and Caroline demonstrates that masculinity and femininity, far from being a binary, work on a scale.

Keywords:

• physiognomy
• Charlotte Brontë
• phrenology
• gender
• masculinity
• femininity
• public and private spheres

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For more, see Senseman (1952); Jack (1970).

2 See, for example, Tytler (2011, 2016). For a more comprehensive look at Tytler’s work on physiognomy in the European novel at large, see Tytler (1982).

3 ‘Novels … the greatness of Miss Austen, her marvellous dramatic power, seems more than any thing in Scott akin to the greatest quality in Shakspeare’ (Fraser’s Magazine 36, 687).

4 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Glance (v.1), Sense 4”, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1042994709.

5 ‘Man for the field and woman for the hearth: / Man for the sword and for the needle she; / Man with the head and woman with the heart: / Man to command and woman to obey; / All else confusion’: Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The Princess (1847; Project Gutenberg 1997), II, 437–41. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/791.

6 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Flash (n.2), Sense I.1.a”, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1111429722.

7 Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “Glow (v.1), Sense 1.a”, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/9589281991.

8 This seems to anticipate Margaret Hale in the riot scene in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, a character who also blends different gender attributes.

9 For more, see Bodenheimer (1988, 49); Gilbert and Gubar (1979, 381–82); Moglen (1976, 176).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

AnnaLiese Burich

AnnaLiese Burich holds a master’s degree in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. She specialises in gender and Victorian literature. Her Master’s thesis, uncovering the work of the teenage female editor of a manuscript magazine in the 1890s, won Columbia University’s 2023 Robert John Bennett Memorial Award.