City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2018 Diagnosing the Will to Suffer: Lovesickness in the Medical and Literary Traditions Jane Shmidt The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/2900 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] DIAGNOSING THE WILL TO SUFFER: LOVESICKNESS IN THE MEDICAL AND LITERARY TRADITIONS by JANE SHMIDT A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2018 © 2018 JANE SHMIDT All Rights Reserved ii Diagnosing the Will to Suffer: Lovesickness in the Medical and Literary Traditions by Jane Shmidt This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Comparative Literature in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________ ______________________________ Date Andre Aciman Chair of Examining Committee ________________________ ______________________________ Date Giancarlo Lombardi Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Elizabeth Beaujour Rachel Brownstein Monica Calabritto THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract Diagnosing the Will to Suffer: Lovesickness in the Medical and Literary Traditions by Jane Shmidt Advisor: Andre Aciman Throughout Western medical history, unconsummated, unreturned, or otherwise failed love was believed to generate a disorder of the mind and body that manifested in physiological and psychological symptoms. This study traces the medical and literary history of lovesickness from antiquity through the 19th century, emphasizing significant moments in the development of the medical discourse on love. The project is part of the recent academic focus on the intersection between the humanities and the medical sciences, and it situates literary texts in concurrent medical and philosophical debates on afflictions of the psyche. By contextualizing the fictional works within the scientific theories that informed them, this study argues that the lovesick patient was a point of contact between literature and medicine and that literary authors participated in their own way in medicine’s quest to understand love’s complex psychological processes and to explain the relationship between those processes and bodily functions. This study aims to uncover the ways in which literary works reflected, diverged from, and anticipated scientific thought on the psyche and its afflictions, synthesizing three bodies of knowledge that rarely comment on one another: the history of medical science, the literary iv representation of disappointed love, and Freudian psychoanalysis. Questioning the tendency of medical science after the Scientific Revolution to conceive of lovesickness as a somatic malfunction that excluded the involvement of the rational faculty, literary works by Racine, Richardson, Austen, Gogol, Turgenev, and Dickens dramatized cases of lovesickness that resisted simple physiological etiologies. These accounts portrayed the lovesick subject as an active agent in constructing desire and as a willing sufferer of its effects. They explored psychical processes that were troubling for the concurrent medical model and addressed its limitations by uncovering psychological etiologies that anticipated future scientific discourse. Literature illustrated that love suffering may serve other needs of the psyche, such as to negotiate social norms that restrict the communication of feeling, to exercise a perverse power over the beloved, or to confront and mitigate early traumatic experiences, in a way that would not be described by medical science until the emergence of psychoanalytic frameworks. v Acknowledgments During my graduate studies, I had the great fortune to work with some incomparable mentors without whom this dissertation would not be possible. I wish to thank my dissertation director, Distinguished Professor Andre Aciman, for his guidance, insight, and most importantly for his patience, as he generously devoted his time to reading multiple iterations of this dissertation. The idea of working with him was my source of motivation when applying for graduate school, and his seminars have proved essential for my development as a scholar and have provided me with frequent reminders of the significance and the allure of literary study. He has been the kind of mentor that I both wanted and needed – he encouraged my interest in this subject of study and helped me frame it in a way that illuminated my contribution to scholarship. My other committee members, Elizabeth Beaujour, Rachel Brownstein, and Monica Calabritto read the dissertation manuscript with meticulous attention and provided nuanced feedback that greatly enriched the final product. My sincerest thanks to Professor Elizabeth Beaujour; without her support, I could not have completed this dissertation. She advised the Gogol, Turgenev, and Dickens chapter and served as first reader, helping me consider the overall organization of the study as well as the stylistic details. Professor Beaujour’s courses have been the foundation on which my reading of Russian literature has formed. I owe a debt of gratitude to Professor Monica Calabritto, whose course on love in the pre-early modern period has introduced me to medical and philosophical thought that became central to the early chapters of my dissertation. Thanks are especially owed to Professor Rachel Brownstein for generously stepping onto my committee to help me think through works of 18th and 19th century British literature. The support that I received from these mentors has been invaluable. All of the faculty vi at the Comparative Literature department of the CUNY Graduate Center are not only brilliant scholars and educators, but they are personally invested in the academic and professional success of their students, and I am extremely grateful to Giancarlo Lombardi, Bettina Lerner, and Vincent Crapanzano for their attention and advocacy. My family has been incredibly encouraging throughout my studies. For their faith in me, I am grateful to my parents and grandparents, who have been my most ardent supporters. My grandmother has fostered my love of literature since childhood; she has always encouraged me to succeed and has taken pride in my accomplishments. I also wish to thank my beloved source of inspiration and fortitude – my sister, Anna, who has been my unwavering champion and who has believed in me even when I doubted my abilities. I could have accomplished nothing without her. I would also like to thank my friends, fellow graduate students, and colleagues who were my source of moral support over the years and contributed, in one way or another, to the completion of this work. Last but certainly not least, I wish to thank my husband, who has always celebrated my academic pursuits and has given me the strength and courage to achieve my professional goals. A good deal of this dissertation exists in its present form owing to his patience, as I used him as a sounding-board for my ideas, to which he always listened attentively no matter how many times he heard them. For giving me confidence and happiness, I thank him from the bottom of my heart. vii Table of Contents iv Abstract Acknowledgments vi Introduction 1 Chapter I: The Lovesickness Paradigm: Etiology of Illness and the Imagined Beloved 13 Chapter II: Physicians and their Tools: Diagnosis, Symptoms, and Treatments 51 Chapter III: “I Make My Guilty Torments All Too Plain”: Lovesickness as Confession in Racine’s Phaedra and Richardson’s Clarissa 88 Chapter IV: “Had I Died, It Would Have Been Self-Destruction”: Indulged Lovesickness and Mastering the Other in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility 130 Chapter V: "I am not at all happy as I am": Narcissistic Object-Choice in Gogol’s Nevsky Prospect, Turgenev’s First Love, and Dickens’ Great Expectations 173 Conclusion: The Lovesick Patient in Literature and Medicine 231 Bibliography 244 Introduction When Jane Austen’s young and romantic Marianne in Sense and Sensibility is betrayed and humiliated by Willoughby, the heroine’s profound romantic disappointment produces an affliction of the mind and body. Not only is her strength instantly depleted, but she is ultimately struck with a severe illness, the symptoms of which include fever, weakness, and delirium. Recognizing the dire effects of unfulfilled, unrequited love on her sister’s delicate constitution, Elinor attempts to subdue Marianne’s passion until it becomes increasingly evident that recovery is the opposite of what the patient wishes. Marianne nourishes the affliction by roaming the cold countryside, avoiding company, and indulging in her melancholy thoughts. The uninitiated apothecary in charge of her care, unaware of the young lady’s personal woes, diagnoses Marianne with an infection and, expecting a speedy recuperation, offers various unsuccessful remedies to treat her body. What the physician fails to diagnose is the psychosomatic nature of the heroine’s malady and that her unwillingness to be cured is the greatest obstacle to recovery. Marianne’s complaints coincide with the symptoms of an illness that was recognized in the medical and literary