American nervousness, 1903
Subtitle: an anecdotal history
By: Tom Lutz.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1991
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 329
Subjects: Neurasthenia -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; United States -- Civilization -- 1865-1918 -- Psychological aspects.
Other titles: 1903.
Description: "In 1903 an epidemic raged among American artists, writers, and intellectuals, and through the leisure class as well. Called "American nervousness" or "the blues," the psychological disorder diagnosed as neurasthenia loomed large in the lives and writings of such diverse figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Henry and William James, W.E.B. Du Bois, Edgar Saltus, Hamlin Garland, Frank Norris, William Dean Howells, and Mary Wilkins Freeman. In this fascinating account, Tom Lutz examines the complex role played by neurasthenia in a variety of works by both canonized authors and popular writers. His wide-ranging book illuminates a network of attitudes toward gender, class, and ethnicity at a time when social hierarchies were perceived as being in a state of crisis. He argues persuasively that whether perceived as an index of refinement, a disease of the shabby gentility, a fearful response to modernity, or a sign of old-fashioned values, neurasthenia was an illness that helped Americans to come to terms with the cultural and economic changes that radically altered social life between the Civil War and World War I. Written with verve and wit, American Nervousness, 1903, is a book that will appeal to anyone with an interest in American cultural and literary history.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-317) and index.