 Now you've probably heard me make constant reference to physiognomy and I've constantly referenced in this story The idea of physiognomy, which was a very very prevalent Victorian viewpoint and it really influenced how people especially Victorian people viewed others Now what I wanted to do in this video is really just explain in depth What the concept of physiognomy is in a nutshell, okay? So that you can be really really clear on what I mean when I refer back to this Victorian issue And of course this is contextual important information now bear in mind firstly the spelling of physiognomy, okay? So it's P-H-Y-S-I-O-G-N-O-M-Y. Okay now physiognomy is a really interesting theory Of course, it has been Disproven today because as I go over it you will see why perhaps this theory is very deeply flawed however, this theory of physiognomy which really heavily influenced a lot of Victorian people is An idea that was developed by an Italian Criminologist called Cesar Lombrosso and he lived between 1835 to 1909 So of course he was a Victorian Italian criminologist Now he came up with this notion of physiognomy which basically meant Reading the face to uncover character in other words We could tell somebody's soul somebody's characteristics somebody's inbuilt Ideas by just looking at their face, okay? So maybe already that's a bit of a flawed assumption, okay? In other words, it's like saying that you can tell a book how good it is by just looking at the cover However going back to physiognomy. It's this notion of reading the face to uncover character Now according to this Italian criminologist Cesar Lombrosso He believed that one could identify a criminal even in advance or for example when you're doing a criminal investigation Actually during the Victorian era this notion was used when people would line up criminals, okay? He himself Cesar Lombrosso Sometimes would identify who he believed were for example rapists Thieves and things like that through using this concept So he believed that one could identify a criminal through simply the physical appearance if they looked in this way And actually he even said it went as far as saying that one could identify what crimes somebody was capable of committing Purely based on their physical appearance Maybe this person based on the physical appearance is capable of committing arson setting fires to things This other person based on their physical appearance is capable of stealing this other person is capable of being a rapist Just purely based on the physical appearance The other aspect of physiognomy is this notion that Cesar Lombrosso believed that the Born criminal according to his words could be recognized by physical characteristics And some these are some of the physical characteristics that he stated such as Asymmetrical facial features long arms and a sloping forehead Now one of the things that maybe perhaps we could talk about in terms of seeing the limitations of this is the sum element of Classism and also an element of racism in this concept of physiognomy because Lombrosso relied on racist stereotypes So he also would state for example again his own words that someone with a Mongolian characteristic for example someone who looks Asian ethnically could maybe class and be classified as a criminal Another aspect of it. He would say is Someone who has according to his words a projection of the lower face and jaws found in negro So of course not necessarily that favorable to an entire race of people. Okay So this is really what physiognomy really is. Okay, and when I reference physiognomy, this is exactly what I mean this theory come up Developed by Cesar Lombrosso about how one could judge somebody's Criminality based on their facial appearance and most importantly this was extended by Victorian people to The belief that somebody could tell even someone's soul whether they're a good person whether the virtuous person Whether they're in a moral bad person purely based on the physical appearance Of course, maybe some of the shortcomings and hence why this theory has been disproven ever since okay One of the shortcomings is firstly it relied heavily on very racist stereotypes a whole group of people For example, all Asians are they all criminals are all black people criminals. Okay, again, this is very debatable I would say no, you can't necessarily judge somebody's criminality based on their race But also there was a very strong element of Classism as well and of course even for instance Disability right so for example, if you're born disabled What does that mean does that therefore mean you're born a criminal very unlikely? Of course as I mentioned There's also an element of classism somebody who's born with a slipped forehead or somebody who's born with Asymmetrical features for instance an underfed child during the Victorian period might actually end up developing Asymmetrical features a child who for instance has had to be put to work in a factory Maybe the suffering injury this causes them to become disabled or this causes them to have asymmetrical features again They can then be classified much later on as adults as criminals This is incorrect because just because you have asymmetrical features or don't necessarily look socially acceptable doesn't necessarily mean that you are not virtuous and in contrast if you look at for example cases of Jack the Ripper somebody who on the surface was Symmetrical in appearance respectable in appearance actually he committed really horrible grave serious crimes So of course this theory has been disproven since because you can have people who look very perfect on the face People who are very wealthy who have no reason to commit crimes, but they still go out and do these crimes Okay, but this is important to understand when looking at this novel and of course Hopefully this clarifies any questions you might have about the concept of physiognomy