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The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals [61]

By Root 1586 0
produce wrinkles all round the eyes; they appear, however, to be enabled to contract with greater force, as soon as the contraction of the corrugators has given them some support. Lastly, the pyramidal muscles of the nose contract; and these draw the eyebrows and the skin of the forehead still lower down, producing short transverse wrinkles across the base of the nose.[2] For the sake of brevity these muscles will generally be spoken of as the orbiculars, or as those surrounding the eyes.


[1] The best photographs in my collection are by Mr. Rejlander, of Victoria Street, London, and by Herr Kindermann, of Hamburg. Figs. 1, 3, 4, and 6 are by the former; and figs. 2 and 5, by the latter gentleman. Fig. 6 is given to show moderate crying in an older child.

When these muscles are strongly contracted, those running to the upper lip[3] likewise contract and raise the upper lip. This might have been expected from the manner in which at least one of them, the _malaris_, is connected with the orbiculars. Any one who will gradually contract the muscles round his eyes, will feel, as he increases the force, that his upper lip and the wings of his nose (which are partly acted on by one of the same muscles) are almost always a little drawn up. If he keeps his mouth firmly shut whilst contracting the muscles round the eyes, and then suddenly relaxes his lips, he will feel that the pressure on his eyes immediately increases. So again when a person on a bright, glaring day wishes to look at a distant object, but is compelled partially to close his eyelids, the upper lip may almost always be observed to be somewhat raised. The mouths of some very short-sighted persons, who are forced habitually to reduce the aperture of their eyes, wear from this same reason a grinning expression.


[2] Henle (`Handbuch d. Syst. Anat. 1858, B. i. s. 139) agrees with Duchenne that this is the effect of the contraction of the _pyramidalis nasi_.

[3] These consist of the _levator labii superioris alaeque nasi_, the _levator labii proprius_, the _malaris_, and the _zygomaticus minor_, or little zygomatic. This latter muscle runs parallel to and above the great zygomatic, and is attached to the outer part of the upper lip. It is represented in fig. 2 (I. p. 24), but not in figs. 1 and 3. Dr. Duchenne first showed (`Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine,' Album, 1862, p. 39) the importance of the contraction of this muscle in the shape assumed by the features in crying. Henle considers the above-named muscles (excepting the _malaris_) as subdivisions of the q_uadratus labii superioris_.

The raising of the upper lip draws upwards the flesh of the upper parts of the cheeks, and produces a strongly marked fold on each cheek,--the naso-labial fold,--which runs from near the wings of the nostrils to the corners of the mouth and below them. This fold or furrow may be seen in all the photographs, and is very characteristic of the expression of a crying child; though a nearly similar fold is produced in the act of laughing or Smiling.[4]


[4] Although Dr. Duchenne has so carefully studied the contraction of the different muscles during the act of crying, and the furrows on the face thus produced, there seems to be something incomplete in his account; but what this is I cannot say. He has given a figure (Album, fig. 48) in which one half of the face is made, by galvanizing the proper muscles, to smile; whilst the other half is similarly made to begin crying. Almost all those (viz. nineteen out of twenty-one persons) to whom I showed the smiling half of the face instantly recognized the expression; but, with respect to the other half, only six persons out of twenty-one recognized it,--that is, if we accept such terms as "grief," "misery," "annoyance," as correct;--whereas, fifteen persons were ludicrously mistaken; some of them saying the face expressed "fun," "satisfaction," "cunning," "disgust," &c. We may infer from this that there is something wrong in the expression. Some of the fifteen persons may, however, have been partly misled
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