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Melancholy and the Idle Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century Diane Buie

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Melancholy and the Idle Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century Diane Buie View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Northumbria Research Link Melancholy and the Idle Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century Diane Buie BA (Hons) English; MA, English: Restoration to Romanticism A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Northumbria at Newcastle for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Research undertaken in School of Arts and Social Sciences May 2010 Abstract This interdisciplinary thesis explores the connection between mental health and lifestyle in the eighteenth century. The thesis draws upon scholarly and medical writings on melancholy, from Robert Burton‘s Anatomy of Melancholy (1622) onwards, and consider these works alongside eighteenth-century literary representations and biographical testimonies from those suffering from melancholy. The thesis provides a new perspective and understanding of the terms in which depression and other associated nervous illnesses were medicalised in the eighteenth century. I argue against recent scholarly work which regards melancholy as a label interchangeable with nervous illnesses such as vapours, spleen and hysteria. I argue that in the eighteenth century melancholy was a clearly identified medical condition in its own right and that it was a depressive illness which can be closely related to today‘s depression. The thesis argues that there is a direct link between idleness and the melancholy state of mind and that a depressed state of mind was often the result of an idle lifestyle. Melancholy is also considered in relation to gender and the idle lifestyle that many females were forced to adopt. It then focuses upon three prominent literary figures: Samuel Johnson, William Shenstone and William Cowper, all of whom suffered from depression. The thesis considers Johnson‘s preoccupation with idleness as a symptom of his melancholy, a notion that has received little critical attention. Shenstone‘s experience is used to illustrate the depressing effect that a retired lifestyle could have on the individual. I argue that his melancholy was largely caused by the conflict created between his decision to live the idle lifestyle of a country gentleman and his desire to remain amongst society. Finally I re-evaluate the account of the mental turmoil expressed by Cowper in his spiritual autobiography Adelphi and provide evidence that suggests Cowper may have feigned the symptoms of religious melancholy in an attempt to resist the pressures placed upon him to follow a profession. Ultimately the thesis reveals that, in the eighteenth century, idleness was regarded as a major cause of, and symptom of, melancholy. Idleness was also seen as an obstruction to one of the most widely prescribed methods of cure for melancholy: occupation. Contents Introduction p. 1. Chapter One: Melancholy I. Defining Eighteenth-Century Depression p. 7. II. Melancholy and Associated Nervous Disorders p. 16. III. Melancholy as a Psychological Illness p. 30. Chapter Two: Idleness I. The Issue of Idleness p. 36. II. The Pressure to Succeed p. 47. III. An Industrious Nation p. 55. IV. Idleness a Cause and Work a Cure p. 65. Chapter Three: The Female Condition I. The Changing Role of Women p. 78 II. Rich Idle Women p. 86. III. Education and Employment p. 98 V. Medical History p. 106. Chapter Four: The Changing Face of Retirement I. William Shenstone p. 119. II. A Retired Lifestyle p. 126. III. Depression and the Idle Lifestyle p. 141. IV. Gardening: Cause or Cure? p. 153. V. The Perception of Idleness p. 160. Chapter Five: The ‘Black Dog’ Revisited I. Samuel Johnson p. 165. II. Robert Burton and William Law p. 168. III. Johnson and the Issue of Idleness p. 180. IV. Happiness p. 188. V. Johnson‘s ‗Unhappy Valley‘: Melancholy in Rasselas p. 197. Chapter Six: Religious Melancholy I. A Fashionable Illness p. 210. II. Adelphi: Anxiety Reconstructed p. 218 III, Influence p. 229. IV. Working for a Living p. 238. Conclusion p. 256. Bibliography p. 260. Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge my gratitude to the Leverhulme Trust who funded my three-year studentship, thus enabling me to produce this thesis, as well as funding the ‗Before Depression‘ project it contributes towards. I also wish to thank my principal supervisor, Professor Richard Terry, for his invaluable guidance and support throughout and Professor Allan Ingram who has been my second supervisor since January 2009 and director of the ‗Before Depression‘ project. Finally, I would like to say a big thank you to all of the members of the ‗Before Depression‘ project who have encouraged and supported me. Declaration I declare that the work contained in this thesis has not been submitted for any other award and that it is all my own work. This thesis contributes towards the larger ‗Before Depression‘ project: a three year research project by the English departments of the universities of Northumbria and Sunderland and funded by the Leverhulme Trust. Name: Signature: Date: Introduction One of the main aims of this thesis is to explore the way in which the illness we now refer to as depression manifested itself in the eighteenth century. For instance, what were the set of feelings or symptoms attributed to the illness then? How did people refer to their depression in the eighteenth century? What label or labels were attached to or associated with the illness and how did sufferers describe their experience of the illness? However, it is dangerous territory that we enter into when we look back on the past and attempt to extract from medical literature, personal letters and journals, evidence of what we believe represented a depressed state of mind. For example, what is the difference between the symptoms described by an eighteenth-century person feeling slightly dejected and the same person in a severely depressed state? Was there a definitive point when a dejected state of mind became classed as a medical condition? The physician Timothy Rogers suggests that ‗[i]t is a very slight Melancholy and which is not deeply rooted, that can be drowned in wine, or chased away with sociable divertissements‘.1 Rather alarmingly, the polar extreme of this mild melancholy is referred to by John Arbuthnot as ‗a Disease more terrible than Death‘. 2 Over recent years much research has been undertaken in the area of eighteenth- century depressive illness and these very points have been raised, analysed and debated. The overriding impression we get from this body of work is that there is a basic disagreement as to whether today‘s depression can, or even should, be equated with the 1 Timothy Rogers, ‗Advices to the Relations and Friends of these under Religious Melancholy‘, in, Counsels and comforts to troubled Christians. In eight sermons by James Robe (Glasgow, 1749), Eighteenth Century Collections Online < http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/unn?db=ECCO > [accessed 16 January 2008], pp. 257-278 (p. 276). 2 John Arbuthnot, An essay concerning the nature of ailments…The second edition (London, 1732), Eighteenth Century Collections Online < http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/unn?db=ECCO > [accessed 17 December 2009], p. 374. 1 eighteenth-century illness. The first problem we encounter when we begin to read around the subject is that there is confusion amongst critics as to which term denoted the eighteenth-century depressed state of mind: was it melancholy or melancholia? Many of the major writers on the subject appear to use the terms interchangeably. In Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times, published in 1986, Stanley W. Jackson suggested that there is ‗a remarkable coherence in the basic cluster of symptoms‘3 between melancholia and today‘s depression. The year 2000 saw the publication of Jennifer Radden‘s The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva, which gives a history of the depressive illness but still does not settle on which term was used in the eighteenth century to denote the illness.4 In 2003, Radden posed the question: ‗Is This Dame Melancholy? Equating Today‘s Depression and Past Melancholia‘, and she refuted Jackson‘s argument, suggesting that only a ‗SUPERFICIAL CONTINUITY LINKS today‘s clinical depression with melancholy and melancholia [...]‘.5 But should we be attempting to compare depression with both of these terms? To further complicate the matter, very often critics use the terms spleen, vapours, hysteria and hypochondria when referring to eighteenth-century depression and consequently it is implied, and the reader assumes, that the symptoms relating to these various labels are generic to all, melancholy included. In George Rousseau‘s ‗Depression‘s forgotten genealogy: notes towards a history of depression‘, published in 2000, Rousseau questioned whether in fact we should be attempting to compare today‘s depression with eighteenth-century depression, because 3 Stanley W. Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1986), p. ix. 4 Jennifer Radden, ed., The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 5 Jennifer Radden, ‗Is This Dame Melancholy? Equating Today‘s Depression and Past Melancholia‘, Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, 10.1 (2003), 37-52 (p. 37). 2 until the semantic dimensions and territorial border zones are further clarified it is difficult to agree on any pre-1800 model of depression. The conundrum for classification is apparent. One can compile examples and label all depressive rather than hysterical, mad, manic, melancholic, nervous, splenetic, vapourish, or consumptive. [...] But until definitions are agreed to and applied, there can be no stable theory among these unstable pre-1800 categories.6 The first aim of this thesis, therefore, is to define melancholy. In chapter one I argue that melancholy in particular was a relatively stable category and that it was the depressive illness most closely related to today‘s depression.
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