ABSTRACT
Charles Darwin’s scientific study The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published by John Murray in 1872, also focuses on expression. It was a text which, like many of the author's other writings, would exert considerable influence on subsequent discussions of the emotions and on Victorian thought in general. The body as the site for individual and social expression and control of the feelings is one of the fundamental topics in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley. The novel will serve as key text which concentrates on how the body and the body politic work together in a fictional text which combines several important strands of the Victorian discourses on emotions. It is important to note that decisive moments in the narrative are frequently described in a manner – and illustrated as such – reminiscent of tableau-scenes in melodramas. Charles Bell compares emotional expression to language, highlighting the link between verbal and non-verbal forms of communicating emotion.
