Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
SHARRONA PEARL. About Faces: Physiognomy in Nine- without any clear indication of how these subjects are
teenth-Century Britain. Cambridge: Harvard University related.
Press. 2010. Pp. xii, 288. $49.95. I also wish Pearl had done more to define the intrigu-
ing concept of “shared subjectivity” that she introduces
Anyone who has read a Charles Dickens novel has en- early in the book. Pearl wants to use this notion to chal-
countered physiognomy at its wittiest extreme. To take lenge the prevailing historiography, which holds that
just one example from Hard Times, we find the school nineteenth-century science pushed inexorably toward
headmaster Mr. Gradgrind described as having a objectivity. Her goal has great merit, and it is a com-
“square wall of a forehead,” a mouth that is “wide, thin pelling idea that physiognomic perception, while sub-
and hard set,” and a head “all covered with knobs.” The jective, was not hopelessly idiosyncratic. Still, what ex-
message is no less clear now than it was then: Grad- actly a shared subjectivity is requires considerably more
grind’s rigidly analytical character is written all over his discussion than it receives here, particularly since the
body. introduction presents the concept as central to the
The idea that the face opened a window to the soul book’s analysis.
is at the heart of physiognomy, an ancient set of beliefs In some parts of the text, I also craved more detail—
and practices that Sharrona Pearl takes on in this book. for instance, examples of how stage actors, theater man-
Pearl’s study focuses on an especially interesting mo- agers, and portrait painters “expanded the range of