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Victorian Philosophies of Weeping: Performance, Sympathy, Emotion
23
Emotions are contagious.
They may well arise in the organic structure proper to a certain individual...[but] they very quickly acquire the power to set in train in all those concerned, by means of a sort of imitative contagion, the emotional complex that corresponds to the event which happened to and was felt by a single individual.
The emotions became a sort of institution. They were controlled in the same way as a ritual. Many of the ceremonies practised by primitive peoples are simulated situations witht he obvious aim of arousing in all, by means of the same attitudes and gestures, one and the same emotion, wleding them all together in a sort of superior individuality and preparing them all for the same action.
'Sensibility and history' (1941)
'the clouding of the eyes
does not necessarily
involve the clouding of
the brain'
Masks or faces? p. 41
Victorian philosophies of weeping
1888
San Francisco
Stockholm
(cc) photo by Franco Folini on Flickr
(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr
(cc) photo by jimmyharris on Flickr
Budapest
(cc) photo by Metro Centric on Flickr
Performance
Sympathy
Manifestation
Henry Carter
March, 1863
Utterance
Contagion
Expression of emotion
Natural sign
Medical symptom
1945
18th century
Weeping prophets
Men of feeling
Revolutionary politics
"It is an important fact which must be considered in any theory of the secretion of tears from the mind being affected, that whenever the muscles round the eyes are strongly and involuntarily contracted in order to compress the blood-vessels and thus to protect the eyes, tears are secreted, often in sufficient abundance to roll down the cheeks. This occurs under the most opposite emotions, and under no emotion at all. "
Darwin, Expression, p. 163
"Englishmen rarely cry, except under the pressure of the acutest grief; whereas in some parts of the Continent the men shed tears much more readily and freely."
Darwin, Expression (1872)
pp. 154-5