While the medicalization of the body looks beneath the skin for explanations of emotional, psychological, and physical behaviors and responses, physiognomy stays on the surface, on the skin, studying facial features, the lineaments of the body, and even gesture and expression. In the novels of the eighteenth century, especially, the body comes to be a central site of meaning, one on which a language more eloquent than words is thought to be inscribed. This superficiality is perhaps worrying enough as it is, but this hermeneutics becomes even further complicated upon examining how assumptions about gender, race, and class are written on the bodies of eighteenth-century literary characters.
Gender is especially relevant, as the female body becomes a site for contesting notions of virtue.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther Werther on Miss von B's great soul. Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story Dorriforth described. Matthew Lewis, The Monk Lorenzo's first impression of Antonia. Matthew Lewis, The Monk Ambrosio is charmed by Matilda. Matthew Lewis, The Monk Theodore plays the beggar.