An early death and an incurable illness were at that time the same pillars of the novel as cruelty and violence are now. Then, as far as I can tell, a young woman was by no means supposed to be in insultingly good health. My grandmother constantly told me with great self-satisfaction that she was unusually fragile in childhood: “No one even hoped that I would live to adulthood.” Should the supposedly light breeze blow harder, and she would be gone. Meanwhile, Grandma B. said this about her sister: “Margaret was always very strong, and I was fragile.”
Aunt Grandma lived to be ninety-two, and Grandmother B. to eighty-six, and I personally have great doubts about the weakness of their health. But then extreme sensitivity, hysterical fits, fainting, consumption, anemia were in vogue. My grandmother maintained her adherence to these ideals to such an extent that she often appeared before the young people with whom I was going to go somewhere, in order to mysteriously warn them how delicate and fragile I was and how little hope I would last long in this world. . When I was eighteen, one of my suitors often asked with a preoccupied look:
«Are you sure you won’t catch a cold?» Your Grandmother told me that you are very weak.
I protested indignantly and claimed that I was perfectly healthy.
“But why then does your Grandmother say that you are so fragile?”
I had to explain that Grandma goes out of her way to make me look as interesting as possible. She told me that in her younger years a young girl, in the presence of gentlemen, could only afford to peck at the lightest of things at dinner. The main dishes were brought to her bedroom afterwards.
Illness and early death also found their way into children’s books. My favorite book was Our Golden-Haired Violetta. Little Violetta — sinless and incurably ill already on the first page, on the last she was instructively dying, surrounded by sobbing relatives. The tragedy was mitigated by the incessant pranks of her two brothers, Panni and Ferkin. In «Little Women», the book is generally hilarious, the author nevertheless had to sacrifice the beautiful Beth. The death of little Nell in the Antiquities Store left me indifferent and even disgusted, although in Dickens’ time, of course, whole families wept over her suffering.
The sofa and couch, now associated with psychiatrists, were the Victorian symbols of premature death, consumption, and capitalized Romance.
I am inclined to think that Victorian women benefited greatly from these customs, thus getting rid of tedious domestic duties. By the age of forty, they forgot all the «diseases» and lived for their own pleasure, enjoying the care of a devoted husband and putting all the household burdens on their daughters. They were visited by friends, and the charm of humility in the face of misfortunes pursuing them caused universal admiration. Did they really suffer from any disease? Unlikely. Of course, the back could hurt or the legs were disturbed, as it happens to all of us with age. One way or another, but the sofa was the cure for all diseases.
Agatha Christie. Autobiography.
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In the old days, doctors described hysterical seizures with convulsions, as well as gu.e.e. «conversion» symptoms: hysterical paralysis, speech and visual disturbances. As a student, I memorized the differences between a hysterical seizure and an epileptic one. In my opinion, there were seven, like mortal sins. Since then I have seen countless epileptic seizures. But not a single “classic” hysterical fit. No one! It turns out that hysterical convulsions were a kind of mental epidemic in the period from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th. Like the epidemic of the «dance of St. Vitus» in the Middle Ages. Times change and the symptoms of hysteria change with them. In psychiatry, this is called pathomorphosis.
It is generally accepted that hysterical convulsions were “introduced into use” by doctors: Mesmer in the eighteenth century, and Charcot in the nineteenth. The role of Charcot is especially great. In the famous Salpêtrière hospital, hysterics lay in the same wards as patients with epilepsy. I. observing convulsions, «adopted» this symptomatology. And from there. from Paris, the fashion for seizures spread to the whole world. Like any Parisian fashion.
A similar story happened with fainting. Every decent girl in the nineteenth and early twentieth century had to faint at least once in her life. Even respectable men (including Freud) allowed themselves this.
True, doctors blame corsets for everything. But Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin used to say that any woman can put off fainting until tomorrow.
Today’s girls don’t faint. This form of response to emotional stress has gone out of fashion, as have hysterical fits. And if fainting occurs, then the reason for them is purely organic. And there are such fainting very, very rarely.
What is a woman to do today? Once my sister found my daughter, who was admonishing her sister’s daughter. The eldest cousin was five years old, the youngest three and a half. If you don’t want to do something. tell me your heart hurts! my daughter said. Gold words!
Author — Boris Khersonsky, Source borkhers.livejournal.com
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Today, there is a new fashion in the yard — the fashion for psychotrauma.