"Nothing Truer Than Physiognomy": Body Semiotics and Agency in Charles Dickens's "Hunted Down" (1859)

Abstract:The narrator of Dickens's short story "Hunted Down" claims that "There is nothing truer than physiognomy" and thus puts great emphasis on the reading of faces as a means of understanding a person's character. In a crime story like "Hunted Down" this seems to be a very promising way to detect criminals, and the short story has consequently been read by many critics as evidence that Dickens actually believed in physiognomics. Yet not even once in this story does the narrator actually analyze a single physiognomic feature, a circumstance that is at odds both with his own claim about the power of physiognomics, and with the critical assessment of "Hunted Down" as proof of Dickens's belief in the pseudoscience. Therefore, this article analyzes the narrator as a dubious reader of physiognomy, who does not put into practice what he says. This circumstance also casts doubt on the idea of Dickens as a believer in physiognomics. I argue that (at least in his late career) Dickens was highly skeptical as to the potential of physiognomic interpretation and that "Hunted Down" is to be understood as an expression of his reservations, which are closely related to his reservations about literary realism.