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Undergraduate Honors Theses
"Surfaces and Appearances": Character, Physiognomy, and Communication in Charles Dickens's and Wilkie Collins's A Message from the Sea
Rachel GouffFollow
First Faculty Advisor
Dr. Jamie Horrocks
First Faculty Reader
Dr. Frank Christianson
Honors Coordinator
Dr. Aaron Eastley
Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Physiognomy, Communication, All The Year Round, periodical literature
This thesis analyzes the way physiognomy works within Charles Dickens's and Wilkie Collins's novella, A Message from the Sea. The novella develops and promotes a version of physiognomy with limits, illustrating these limits through the experiences of its characters and through the symbolism of various objects such as tombstones, ghosts, and—most notably—the message in the bottle. Physiognomy, used repeatedly by various characters throughout the text, is nearly always able to correctly predict people's general moral character. However, using physiognomy alone leaves a character's history, motivations, and deep emotions as indecipherable as the parts of the bottle's message where the ink has faded and run. In order to understand these more complex aspects of character, observers must seek out a primary source that can fill in the gaps. Thus, physiognomy in this novella reveals itself to be an art as superficial as the message in the bottle; those who only read surfaces will never have access to the full message.
Gouff, Rachel, ""Surfaces and Appearances": Character, Physiognomy, and Communication in Charles Dickens's and Wilkie Collins's A Message from the Sea" (2022). Undergraduate Honors Theses. 267.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studentpub_uht/267