The materials in the menu to the left (George Combe's Elements of Phrenology, the phrenological assessment of Charlotte Brontė) are part of a corpus of electronic texts calculated to shed some light on the scope and substance of the Brontės' sources for allusive materials.
Combe's Elements of Phrenology(1834) is rarely placed on anybody's reading lists, yet the ideas he promotes were far from disregarded by the general public of the nineteenth century. Phrenology, the belief that character traits manifest themselves in the shape of the head, was not Combe's invention. He is, as readers of the text will immediately discover, a rather devoted disciple of Spurzheim and Gall, whom he idolizes with an embarrassing degree of enthusiasm. Curiously, Combe makes no mention of Lavater, easily one of the more significant proponents of phrenological doctrines. Combe's prose is that of an enthusiast, and, as such, it is often entertaining, even when it is at its most dogmatic. His claims for phrenology--that it represents "a sound and practical system of mental philosophy"--are expressed with a particularly fawning degree of salesmanship in the "Advertisement to the First American Edition" which is prefixed to the text; there he claims that phrenology will enable Americans "to attain a moral and intellectual pre-eminence commensurate with their physical and political advantages." Combe's views are, as one might guess, not particularly balanced. A number of early nineteenth century assumptions about race and sex creep into Combe's text from time to time: please read the text with a judiciously critical eye.
Ideas related to phrenology turn up frequently in the novels of the Charlotte Brontė, and phrenological assumptions also appear in Anne Brontė's works. In Charlotte Brontė's Villette, Madame Beck has M. Paul practice his skill in physiognomy on Lucy Snowe; he is told to "Read that countenance." In Jane Eyre, similarly, Jane feels disinclined to consider Rochester's proposal until she throws her phrenological powers into action: "Let me look at your face: turn to the moonlight . . . [B]ecause I want to read your countenance"(Chapter 23). The same novel also has St.John Rivers venturing to gain a quick assessment of Jane's character by studying her external features. Before Rivers offers her employment, he reads her face, "as if its features and lines were characters on a page"(Chapter 30).
More often than not, the physical principles of phrenology are tested and found wanting in the Brontė novels. In The Professor, Crimsworth maintains that Hunsden hasn't the power to "penetrate into my heart, search my brain, and read my peculiar sympathies and antipathies." Similarly, in Shirley, Shirley Keeldar insists that Robert Moore will have no luck reading her countenance (Chapter 22). Charlotte Brontė generally refuses the phrenological claim that character is reflected on the surface of the head, yet she does seem to have some faith in the phrenological subdivision of the brain into organs which govern particular virtues and vices. When she describes Mr. Yorke, in Shirley's fourth chapter, she does so in the language of the phrenologist: "Mr. Yorke, in the first place, was without the organ of Veneration--a great want, and which throws a man wrong on every point where veneration is required. Secondly, he was without the organ of Comparison--a deficiency which strips a man of sympathy; and, thirdly, he had too little of the organs of Benevolence and Ideality, which took the glory and softness from his nature, and for him diminished those divine qualities throughout the universe." In Anne Brontė's Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Huntingdon insists that he cannot be religious, since he hasn't a sufficient "organ of veneration"--an organ which, incidently, Jane Eyre finds in herself "expanding with every line" read by Helen Burns (Chapter 8). Variously, we hear of the "organ of philoprogenitiveness" (Villette Chapter 11), the "organ of caution" (The Professor Chapter 6), the "organ of Acquisitiveness" (Shirley Chapter 22), the "organ of Adhesiveness" (Jane Eyre Chapter 23), and the "organ of Wonder" (Shirley Chapter 1). The reader who wishes to come to a better understanding of what these "organs" are--and what phrenology espoused--is encouraged to investigate the Elements of Phrenology.
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