Phrenology

Phrenology enters the narrative as Professor Pawpaw’s public reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s skull, an examination that turns measurements and touches into claims about character. The scene’s significance lies less in establishing what Poe is like than in dramatizing how a confident system can make the body appear to disclose a person’s hidden nature. Pawpaw names faculties, assigns them degrees, and ends with a prophecy-like judgment; Poe’s unease and Landor’s amused response keep that performance poised between expertise and spectacle.

The examination as performance

Pawpaw’s reading begins with an immediate show of recognition. After seeing Poe, he seizes him by the arm and announces to Landor, “You were right!” He then calls Poe “perfectly remarkable” and points to “Such an enlarged organ!” The language treats Poe’s head as an object whose visible proportions promise access to something not yet known. Pawpaw’s excitement supplies the scene with momentum before any measurement has been taken: he has already decided that Poe warrants attention.

The examination then acquires a formal sequence. Pawpaw asks Poe to remove his hat, winds a length of string around the densest part of his skull, and reports a circumference of twenty-three inches. He also asks Poe’s weight and height; Poe gives 143 pounds and five feet eight and one half inches. These figures make the performance sound concrete, but Pawpaw immediately distinguishes measurement from interpretation. The head, he says, is not as large as he expected; what shocks him is its proportions. The numerical detail therefore does not settle the reading. It serves as a visible, countable threshold from which Pawpaw proceeds to less verifiable conclusions.

Pawpaw’s manner helps make the procedure theatrical. He asks Poe to remain still while he feels the skull, and the narrator describes his hands as trembling as he winds the string. The measuring and touching are presented as deliberate actions, not as an abstract lecture about the method. Poe, too cowed even to nod, blinks rather than answering. The contrast between Pawpaw’s elaborate confidence and Poe’s restrained response makes the examination feel at once ceremonious and uncomfortable.

Faculties assigned to the skull

As Pawpaw feels Poe’s head, he announces traits one after another, giving each a name and a degree. “Amativeness” is “Moderate”; “Inhabitiveness” is “Small”; “Adhesiveness” is “full.” He calls the intellectual faculties “large—no, very large,” then judges “Love of approbation” full and “Philoprogenitiveness” very small. The list continues through cautiousness, benevolence, and hope. The scene thus presents phrenology as a vocabulary of classification: a complex person is divided into separately named capacities and rendered as a set of comparative assessments.

The order and delivery matter as much as the labels. Pawpaw does not keep the findings private or offer them tentatively to Poe. He roars them out “like an auctioneer,” turning an examination of one young man into a public declaration. The narrator observes that the reading continues trait by trait until Pawpaw’s baritone tapers off. That gradual close gives the pronouncements the shape of a performance reaching its finale. Its authority is produced not only by the act of touch but by the confident voice that makes each finding sound conclusive.

The reactions around the examination register how the judgments land. Poe smiles when Pawpaw calls his intellectual faculties very large. Landor smiles at the assessment of Poe’s love of approbation. These distinct responses introduce a small counterpoint to Pawpaw’s single stream of pronouncement: Poe appears pleased by one classification, while Landor reacts to another with amusement. The scene does not explain either response further, but their timing makes the list socially legible as well as supposedly diagnostic. Pawpaw is reading a skull; the others are also hearing claims about a person they know.

The verdict and its uncertainty

Pawpaw’s culminating interpretation is more sweeping than the measurements that precede it. He tells Poe that he has “the bumps of a rootless disposition,” describes the skull’s area devoted to animal propensities as less developed, and declares secretiveness and combativeness highly developed. He then discerns in Poe “a violent and almost certainly fatal division.” The judgment moves from named faculties to a dramatic account of inner conflict and possible consequence. Yet the scene does not provide independent confirmation that the skull reveals these qualities. The verdict remains Pawpaw’s interpretation, delivered with the same certainty as his measurements.

Poe’s reply makes that gap between claim and credibility explicit. Quailing a little, he tells Landor, “You never told me the professor was a seer.” His remark recasts the examination as something bordering on second sight: Pawpaw seems to know more than a mere measurer should. Pawpaw’s barked demand, “Repeat that!” interrupts the comment without clarifying whether he welcomes or rejects the comparison. The exchange ends this part of the scene not with a demonstrated proof, but with a challenge to repeat the words that have unsettled the apparent authority of the reading.

The episode’s central tension is therefore between physical procedure and interpretive reach. A string, a stated circumference, and Poe’s answers about weight and height give the encounter tangible particulars; the inventory of faculties then expands those particulars into a portrait of temperament, and the final claim of a fatal division reaches further still. Phrenology is shown here through the act of someone who treats the skull as a readable record, but the narrative preserves the difference between that claim and established knowledge. Pawpaw’s theatrical assurance, Poe’s discomfort, and Landor’s smiles make the reading consequential as a social scene while leaving its supposed access to character unresolved.