ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how George Eliot gradually arrives at a skeptical attitude toward physiognomic discourse in her fiction. It argues that Adam Bede's physiognomic judgments fail, because his vision is governed by his erotic desire for the beautiful, young Hetty. The chapter provides Eliot's line of thought regarding realism and physiognomics, from her earliest fiction to her final novel. It presents Eliot's interest in physiognomics and phrenology seriously. The chapter comments on the question of gender concerning the relationship between physiognomics and character. It explores Eliot's challenge of literary physiognomics without referring to non-aesthetic explanations, such as general scientific progress in the nineteenth century, which superseded physiognomics. Eliot's novels show that literary physiognomics, as a predominantly aesthetic phenomenon, disappeared because its literary function had become obsolete in the light of epistemological skepticism (vision) and a nascent idea of personal incoherence (character).
