Smart People Wear Glasses / Literature

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Examples of Smart People Wear Glasses in Literature.

• Firo invokes this trope in Baccano!. After taking the position of the Martillo Family bookkeeper, he immediately takes to wearing a pair of Purely Aesthetic Glasses. Why? Because he's doing a smart-person job now, so he has to look smart (and because he wants to look slightly less like the perpetual teenager he is).
• While the Oxford Clerk from The Canterbury Tales lacks the requisite glasses from this trope (they were just starting to come into fashion during the time period), he is specifically noted as having poor eyesight from staying up and reading books by candlelight.
• Tris from Circle of Magic is the most academic of the main characters, and the only one to wear glasses.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Alex Aruda has a pair of typical Nerd Glasses.
• Discharge! (gelefant):
  • Amelia's the most intelligent girl at school after Nancy and wears black glasses with rectangular lenses and fairly thin frames.
  • Galena's dream is to be a top-level geologist, hence her internship at a college's geology lab. She wears black-blue glasses with large, circular lenses and fairly thin frames.
• Ponder Stibbons in the Discworld series is a brilliant natural philosopher and theoretical wizard who wears thick, round glasses. In The Last Continent, when he's given a chance to help design life on the Disc, he plans for this trope to trump Wizard Beard (which he can't grow) as a symbol of wisdom.
• Intentionally invoked in Divergent by the intellectual Erudite. Purely Aesthetic Glasses are part of their "uniform".
• Don't Call Me Ishmael! has Scobie and Prudence, the resident Teen Geniuses, who both wear glasses. Scobie is brilliant at debating and very good at all his school subjects. Prue plays three instruments and is usually seen reading doorstoppers.
• Earth's Scariest Monsters!: Isabelle wears big, round glasses with thin frames. She's stated to be incredibly intelligent; has three degrees (her majors were anthropology, philosophy, and psychology); and is quite knowledgeable about the paranormal and supernatural.
• Element Bots: Josephine, Starla, Margaret, Skylar, Phoebe, and Chloe all wear glasses and are genius inventors.
• Kosma of The Girl from the Miracles District is a walking encyclopedia and a tech genius, and he wears glasses.
• Glasses Girls:
  • Invoked by Sarah in "Middle School Meganekko." The first time she wears Jermaine's glasses and watch at the same time, she says she feels professional and smart. During their date later in the chapter, she says his glasses make her feel smart. He says she looks smart and that her makeup and outfit combined with his glasses and watch make her look like a powerful businesswoman.
  • Invoked by Olivia in "Freshman Year Frames." The first time she wears Jermaine's glasses, she says she feels smart. He says she looks smart.
  • Alluded to by Jermaine in "Freshman Year Frames." For his literary device assignment in AP English class, he chooses to create a simile. Said simile is "When Ande wears my glasses, she looks as smart as a scientist."
  • Invoked by Frida in "Sophomore Year Specs." The first time she wears Jermaine's glasses, she says she feels smart. He says she looks smart.
• Glasses Stories: Invoked by Myrna in "Lens Shares." When she wore Ricardo's glasses, she said "I feel smart."
• Glasses Stories Redux: Similarly to the original Glasses Stories mentioned directly above, this is invoked by Myrna in "Lens Shares Redux." When she wears Jermaine's glasses, she says "I feel smart."
• In Heart of the Journey Scarlet and her father are just nearsighted enough to need reading glasses. Overlaps with unwanted glasses plot for Scarlet.
• Murph, the Teen Genius introduced in the fourth Henry Huggins book, is the only character to be described as wearing glasses.
• Insect Inside: Invoked by Mila after she snatches Aubrey's glasses off her face, puts them on, and runs off. When Aubrey finally catches up to Mila and begs for the return of her glasses because she can't see anything, Mila refuses and says that Aubrey's glasses make her feel like a smart scientist.
• Magic Attic Club: Megan is the "smart" one of the group of girls who likes to read everything and is good in school, and comes with a set of glasses in her accessories. However, she's almost never illustrated with them on and doesn't wear them in her adventures or collection outside of her starter outfit.
• Magic Hour:
  • Heidi wears black glasses with large, rectangular lenses and fairly thick frames. She's an avid bookworm who's obsessed with fantasy (her favorite genre), folklore, and mythology. As a result, she's fairly knowledgeable about magical/mythical creatures.
  • Ophelia wears round pink glasses, is very intelligent, and is a history buff.
• Monster of the Month Club: Owl, the September Selection, is easily the smartest of the monsters (and the only one able to speak English), and the only one to wear normal glasses.
• George "Sticky" Washington from The Mysterious Benedict Society wears glasses and has a nervous tic of cleaning them. While all the children are some form of smart, be it book smart or street smart, Sticky has been shown to be on a different level from the others due to his Photographic Memory.
• A Red-Hot Paradox: Scarlet wears red glasses with large, square lenses and thick frames (she also has brown glasses with a similar frame and lens shape). She's incredibly intelligent and was a straight-A student from elementary school through graduate school. On the subject of school, she has degrees in archaeology, history, and paleontology.
• Roys Bedoys: Downplayed for Maker. He wears glasses, and seems to have a bit more general knowledge and be slightly more academically inclined than his friends.
• Rune Soldier Louie: Ila is only a novice mage from the Magician's Academy, but what she lacks in prowess is made up for by her extensive knowledge of ancient tomes and magical artifacts. This often helps Louie and his traveling party on their adventures.
• In Skate the Thief, Haman is a wizard in Boss Marshall's crew who handles all of the paperwork and record keeping. He's knowledgeable and diligent, and he's the only character in the book who wears spectacles.
• Tumpkin in The Sixty-Two Curses of Caliph Arenschadd is bookish, and intelligent enough to solve the problem that has every other character stumped. The power of this trope is strong enough that he wears glasses despite them technically being an anachronism in an "Arabian Nights" Days setting.
• Spurned into Oblivion:
  • Marilyn is incredibly intelligent and the smartest student in her class. She wears black-gray glasses with large, circular lenses and thin frames.
  • Mona is supremely smart and knows how to best use any resources given to her. She wears green glasses with slightly U-shaped lenses, thin rims, and somewhat thin temples.
• A Tall Order: Bonnie is the smartest student both in her Spanish I class and her grade as a whole. She begins wearing glasses after she starts struggling to see the boards and screens in her classes.
• Uesugi from Tantei Team KZ Jiken Note, whose epithet is "the numbers guy."
• World's Greatest Animals:
  • Alice is a Perky Goth who wears black, browline glasses with fairly large square lenses. She's a celebrated paleontologist (and paleoartist) who gives a detailed presentation about the paleobiology and paleoecology of Brachiosaurus (her favorite dinosaur) at the natural history museum she works at in "Prehistoric Pals."
  • Monique wears black glasses with large, rectangular lenses and fairly thick frames. She's a highly respected cryptozoologist who earned the nickname the Cryptid Queen.
• Worm has the Number Man, The Smart Guy/Evil Genius (depending on how you see him) of Cauldron, who deliberately dresses like a stereotypical accountant down to the glasses, and is so Good with Numbers that it goes right into Badass Bookworm.