Grief

This is another of the photographs that Darwin borrowed from the French scientist Dr Guillaume Duchenne. This one shows what Darwin called the ‘grief muscles’ in action, elevating the inner ends of the eyebrows to express dejection or anxiety. When he showed this photo to volunteers in the nineteenth century, they said it showed ‘despairing sorrow’, ‘suffering endurance’, or ‘melancholy’. Read more on our grief page. You can read Darwin’s whole book for yourself online.