• 1 Burgess opens his discussion by proposing that “Blushing may be considered the poetry of the Soul!” (...)

“[The cheek is the] external arena of the emotions of the soul – that focus of every involuntary exhibition of internal feeling and sympathy”
Thomas Burgess, The Physiology or Mechanism of Blushing, 1839 (Burgess 115)1

• 2 I am not concerned here with the further question of whether or how a woman’s flush differs from a (...)
• 3 Pallor, in which blood drains from rather than flows into the face, can readily be explained with r (...)

1My title comes from a passage early in Hardy’s third published novel, A Pair of Blue Eyes, serialized in Tinsleys’ Magazine between September 1872 and July 1873, and issued in volume form in the latter year. Elfride Swancourt, the owner of the blue eyes, persuades a reluctant Stephen Smith to agree that if forced to choose he would save her, and leave his mentor, Henry Knight, “the noblest man in England”, to drown: “‘There; now I am yours!’ she said, and a woman’s flush of triumph lit her eyes” (Hardy 2009, 62). The phrase is a striking one, and poses a number of questions: in particular, what is the connection between the emotion (“triumph”) and its physical manifestation (“flush”)? Are we to assume that the triumph occurs independently of the flush, of which it is then the cause, or instead that the emotion and its expression are mutually constitutive, two sides of a single coin? How, if at all, does a flush of triumph differ from (say) a flush of rage or jealousy?2 If, as we like to believe, emotion is at least in part under the control of the will, is that also true of the flush that expresses or accompanies it? And conversely, if the blush is “involuntary”, as Thomas Burgess proposed and common experience seems to suggest, what does that imply about the degree of our freedom to refuse or to allow the emotions that trigger it?3

• 4 Darwin’s choice of terms here is a little odd. Shyness and modesty are usually seen as traits of ch (...)
• 5 The “change of colour” is “a genuine example of moral instinct – it is the result of a consciousnes (...)
• 6 Darwin consulted both Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy (1789) and Charles Bell’s Essays on the Anato (...)
• 7 Mary Ann O’Farrell argues for a distinction in the nineteenth-century novel between an expressive b (...)

4In developing these principles, Darwin insists on the physical basis of the emotions, the universality of their expression, and the extent to which humans share forms of expressive behaviour with other, non-human animals. This gives a particular interest to Chapter 13 of Expression, covering “Self-attention – Shame – Shyness – Modesty: blushing”,4 in which he identifies the blush as “the most peculiar and most human of all expressions. Monkeys redden from passion, but it would require an overwhelming amount of evidence to make us believe that any animal could blush” (Darwin 1998, 310). Earlier theorists, such as Thomas Burgess in The Physiology or Mechanism of Blushing (1839), had argued that the capacity to blush proved that humans had been gifted by their creator with a conscience, and knew when they had crossed the line between right and wrong. 5 This is consonant with the idealist theories of Johann Lavater in the 1780s, and later of the anatomist Charles Bell, which held that by a wise decision of the deity the human face was essentially legible: the “moral life of man”, wrote Lavater, “reveals itself in the lines, marks, and transitions of the countenance” (Lavater 9)6. Darwin instead offers a naturalistic explanation, implicit in his chapter title: blushing derives from the habit of “self-attention”. Crucially, however, it also has a social dimension: “It is not the simple act of reflecting on our own appearance, but the thinking what others think of us which excites a blush” (Darwin 1998, 324). Darwin’s hypothesis is that the blush originated among our ancestors in the heightened self-awareness that occurs when we realise that others are regarding our personal appearance, and especially our face. This self-attention reacts through the vaso-motor system on the facial capillaries and causes them to relax, with the consequent familiar reddening of the cheeks. Reiterated through countless generations, the process has become so far habitual that we have learned to blush whenever we suspect that any one is blaming, praising, or simply noticing, not only our physical appearance but also, through the power of association, “our actions, thoughts, or character” (343). Whether in relation to our conduct or our appearance, the precondition of the blush is the belief that we are or might be observed by other people. It is this inter-subjectivity, the capacity to think of the self as seen by others, or thought of by others, that Darwin sees as distinctively human7.

• 8 Both Hardy and Darwin notice that where the flush reflects an excited emotion it may also produce a (...)

5At this point, a comment on terminology is necessary: my title refers to the blush but, inconveniently for my purpose, the quotation within it speaks of Elfride’s “flush of triumph”. Darwin makes a physiological distinction between the flush and the blush. The former, he suggests, is produced by strong emotions such as anger or great joy, which cause the face to redden by increasing the flow of blood to the heart, whereas what he calls the “true blush” is owing to changes in capillary circulation in the facial skin. At times Hardy seems to make a similar distinction, associating the flush with more urgent or violent emotions than the blush, but he is not consistent in doing so. Thus, for example, Stephen “flushes hot with impulse” when he proposes that he and Elfride should marry in secret, while she responds with “quick breathings, and hectic flush, and unnaturally bright eyes” (Hardy 2009, 93);8 Knight flushes “with mingled concern and anger at [Elfride’s] rashness” when she walks on the parapet of the church tower (153). However, Elfride’s “slow flush of jealousy” when she overhears a kiss and wonders if it was given by Stephen, and if so to whom, seems not to be of this sudden and overpowering kind (66). Later, when Knight recalls telling Elfride that he had never kissed a woman, he experiences a flush “which had in it as much of wounded pride as of sorrow” (284). This accords with Darwin’s argument that the blush arises from self-attention in relation to the opinion of others, and it’s not clear that any significance attaches to calling it a flush. When Elfride realises that Knight is allowing her to win at chess, she starts up with an “angry colour”; this might be an intense form of blush, but the fact that her heart is beating so “violently” that the table is “set throbbing by its pulsations” suggests the flush is dominant (159). The same point might be made about her “flush of triumph”. Whether this is wholly a flush, caused by an excited beating of the heart, or a blush, produced by the sense of her self as seen by others – and triumph seems to imply an awareness of others, whether as an audience to one’s success, or as rivals to be vanquished – is difficult to determine; perhaps there are elements of both. In this paper the flush is considered only when the context suggests that it might equally have been named a blush.

• 9 “I was a child till I was 16; a youth till I was 25; a young man till I was 40 or 50” (Hardy 1985, (...)

6There is no evidence that Hardy read Expression (or indeed that he read firsthand any of Darwin’s work, since none of Darwin’s books were in his library), but if he had he would have found it congenial. Like his own notebooks, Expression is a treasure-trove of curious details, anecdotes and observations, intermixed with bold speculation, and Hardy’s natural history of the blush chimes closely with Darwin’s. The narrator remarks that Stephen Smith has “a boy’s blush and manner” (Hardy 2009, 14); Stephen is twenty years old, but he is, as Hardy confessed of himself, late in development9, and his propensity to blush is a sign of his immaturity. Darwin notes that blushing is more common among women and the young, and the tendency is one of the characteristics shared by Elfride and Stephen:

• 10 Darwin noticed as “a curious question” that while the blush causes only the face, ears and neck to (...)

11If it is true that women and the young blush more often than (for example) a man of Knight’s assumed maturity, one reason might be that the pressure to obey social conventions weighs more heavily on them. In his professional life at least, Knight sets the norms, rather than having to defer to those set by others. Away from his work, however, he is hardly less vulnerable than Stephen: when he tells Elfride that he has never kissed a woman, “The man of two and thirty with the experienced mind warmed all over with a boy’s ingenuous shame as he made the confession” (Hardy 2009, 270-271)10. The “experienced mind” belongs to the reviewer and barrister-at-law, not to the first-time lover, who in this respect is little more than a boy – and, as appears later, has an adolescent terror that the woman he loves might be able to compare him unfavourably with a rival. The reviewer, his identity consolidated within the “huge” editorial “WE” of The Present (60), does his work invisibly, while the lover is all too painfully aware of being seen: when Elfride remarks that she thought he was “rather round-shouldered”, “Knight looked slightly redder” (165). He “get[s] red” again (282) when Mrs Swancourt tells him that his comments in praise of amatory clumsiness merely reflect his lack of experience. The key element in each case is the sense of exposure, as he finds himself stripped of the role in which he had clothed himself.

• 11 The notable exception is George Eliot, another close reader of Darwin, though she is unwilling to a (...)

12For the most part Victorian fiction treats the blush as a unitary phenomenon: heroine after heroine grows red, with no further detail offered11. Both Darwin and Hardy, however, discriminate between different physical kinds of blush. Elfride’s blush at the piano deepens by degrees as she becomes increasingly conscious of Stephen’s gaze, and her own reaction to it. Hardy anticipates here a distinction made by recent commentators between the classic and the “creeping” blush, which typically develops more slowly and lasts longer (Crozier 2010, 2012). The term itself occurs twice in The Woodlanders. When Fitzpiers pays a medical visit to Felice Charmond, he observes “a blush creep slowly over her decidedly handsome cheeks” (Hardy 2005, 169). Her blush develops in tandem with a process of mental reflection, as she wonders if Fitzpiers recognizes her from their earlier meeting, years before, and concludes that he does not. The interplay between an unspoken thought and a gradual change of colour is repeated when Grace Melbury reads the letter telling her that she will soon be free to marry again: “a creeping blush tinctured her white neck and cheek” (246). By contrast, when she guesses that her father has also written to Giles, urging him to renew his courtship, “the discovery sent a scarlet pulsation through her for the moment” (251). The three elements here are analytically distinct – a mental act (“discovery”), an internal physical response (“pulsation”), and its external manifestation (“scarlet”) – but they are experienced as virtually instantaneous.

• 12 The outlier is Jude the Obscure, in which Jude (as a boy) and Sue each blush once, and Arabella not (...)
• 13 A memorable example of the latter occurs when Tess stands outside the locked door of Angel’s parent (...)
• 14 For further discussion of the scene, see Dillion & Mallett.

15Hardy’s interest in how and why men and women change colour runs throughout his work12. This emphasis on what is visible on the body, and more particularly on the face, is not fortuitous. It is an aspect of his resistance, as Havelock Ellis noticed in one of the best contemporary essays on Hardy’s fiction, to the direct representation of the consciousness of his characters. His usual method of narration is instead impersonal: as Ellis puts it, “he is only willing to recognize the psychical element in its physical correlative. This dislike to use the subjective method or to deal directly with mental phenomena is a feature in Mr. Hardy’s psychology which has left a strong mark on his art” (Ellis 358-359). Hillis Miller makes a similar point in Thomas Hardy: Distance and Desire when he observes that almost every sentence Hardy wrote is “objective”: “His self­awareness and that of his characters are always inextricably involved in their awareness of the world. Their minds are turned habitually outward” (Miller 1). We learn what characters think or feel either through their bodily reaction, or through what they see, or the novelist sees on their behalf13. Consider, for example, the scene in which Clym confronts Eustacia after having discovered, or so he supposes, her part in his mother’s death. She is coiling her hair, and sees his face reflected in the looking-glass, “ashy, haggard, and terrible”: “And while she looked the carmine flush with which warmth and sound sleep had suffused her cheeks and neck dissolved from view, and the deathlike pallor in his face flew across into hers” (Hardy 2006, 269). Clym’s conclusion is that she “knows what is the matter”, because “[he] see[s] it in [her] face”. But the narrator tells us no more than her change of colour: we have no access to her thoughts14. As the scene progresses, we “see” a number of physical reactions: a “shudder” which causes the fabric of her nightdress to shake, a “slight laugh”, a deep flush (“the red blood inundated her face”), a fit of sobbing. There are individual words suggestive of her feelings (“weary”, “bitterness”, “indifferently”), but there is no attempt to get behind them. Finally we are told that her hands “quivered so violently” that she is unable to tie her bonnet-strings: moments later, she leaves (270-274).

• 15 In contrast, George Eliot’s account of the interview between Dorothea and Rosamond in Chapter 81 of (...)

16This is a method of narration all Hardy’s readers will recognize15. My point, of course, is that the blush is one of the physical actions he finds most helpful to this method. In A Pair of Blue Eyes, taken here as a representative text, Elfride, Stephen and Knight blush, flush or turn pale with pique, triumph, jealousy, perplexity, mortification, embarrassment, vexation, anger, gladness, and shame; their faces become rapid red, vivid scarlet, crimson, vermillion, lively red, an angry colour, lily-white, livid, cold, heated, and bright. We are told a good deal about the precise physical change, as when Elfride reacts to seeing Stephen Smith again for the first time after her engagement to Knight: “She pressed a hand to her eyes, as if to blot out the image of Stephen. A vivid scarlet spot now shone with preternatural brightness in the centre of each cheek, leaving the remainder of her face lily-white as before” (Hardy 2009, 248). But it is left for the reader to judge how this specific change of colour correlates with the psychical event that in some way prompts it.

• 16 The punctuation and emphasis are Darwin’s; “slight” is an interlinear insertion.

17That way of putting it leaves open several questions: in particular, whether the relation between the emotion and the blush is causative or merely associative. In Notebook N, begun in 1838 and marked “Private”, Darwin proposed that emotions could be described as “effects on the mind, accompanying certain bodily actions”, but then hesitated over the verb: “but what first caused this bodily action. if the emotion was not first felt?” Yet he was reluctant to assign priority, and a clearly causative role, to either mind or body: better, perhaps, to regard an emotion and its expression as a single event, each a constituent part of the other. The note continues: “without <slight> flush, acceleration of pulse. or rigidity of muscles. – man cannot be said to be angry” (Darwin 1987, 581-582)16. Or, as Hardy might have responded, without a sudden flush and a brightening of the eyes a woman cannot be said to feel triumph.

• 17 For the quotation and useful discussion, see Davis.
• 18 Hardy used the phrase when reading Henri Bergson in 1915 (Hardy 1984, 400), and recalled it as the (...)
• 19 An earlier version of this paper made the further point that there is something more at issue for H (...)

21But Hardy was reluctant simply to assign priority to the body over the mind. In 1882 he transcribed part of a Spectator review arguing that the external “framework” of the universe might have “inner qualities analogous to those which we call mental” (Björk I, 148). The context here is W. K. Clifford’s proposition, in an essay of 1878 entitled “On the Nature of Things-in-Themselves”, that while a molecule of inorganic matter does not possess consciousness, it does possess “a small piece of mind-stuff […] When matter takes the complex form of a living human brain, the corresponding mind-stuff takes the form of a human consciousness, having intelligence and volition” (Clifford 57-67). Lewes’s essay on “Modern Thought” reaches a similar conclusion, albeit by a different route: “all physical facts are mental facts expressed in objective terms, and mental facts are physical facts expressed in subjective terms” (Lewes 321; italics in original)17, These ideas appealed to Hardy, as ever anxious to oppose “our old friend Dualism”18, though it is not clear in either case that they are a solution to the problem of the mind-body relation rather than merely a restatement of it. But as Hardy often insisted, he was a poet and a novelist, not a philosopher. Physical and mental facts are not identical in his fiction, but – so far as he could come to a conclusion – they appear as twin halves of a single event. It may be that the ambiguous work done by the little word “of”, in “a woman’s flush of triumph”, reaches as far as the more formal discussions of Clifford, Bergson, Lewes, or Herbert Spencer19.