Cranial Compatibility

Phrenology, Measurement, and Marriage Assessment

Bibliographic Data

ID3560243
AuthorsCarla Bittel (Loyola Marymount University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume112
Issue4
Pages795-803
Publication date2021-12-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueIsis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-1753 • E-ISSN: 1545-6994
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/716881
OpenAlexW4200601549
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

This essay examines phrenological tools as instruments of matchmaking and focuses on the personal ad as a site for producing and exchanging knowledge about individuals. It shows how cranial measurement produced character profiles for the purpose of judging suitable marriage partners and how users integrated those profiles into personal advertisements published in the Water-Cure Journal. A popular but contested science of the mind, phrenology maintained that one could truly know others and oneself through measuring “organs” of the mind via protrusions on the skull. While much has been written about phrenology, less attention has been paid to its focus on marriage and mating and to how users enrolled phrenology to find and judge the viability of a mate. Focused on the American context in the 1850s, this essay will show that notions of race and gender, heredity, and marital “relations” were embedded in the shorthand of phrenological measurements and personal ads

Character (mathematics · Context (archaeology · Phrenology · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Medicine · Psychology

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