{"id":44885,"date":"2015-12-30T02:57:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T02:57:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=44885"},"modified":"2015-12-30T02:58:30","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T02:58:30","slug":"hairy-paws-and-bald-heads-anxiety-and-authority-in-w-d-howells-an-imperative-duty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=44885","title":{"rendered":"Hairy Paws and Bald Heads: Anxiety and Authority in W. D. Howells\u2019 An Imperative Duty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hairy Paws and Bald Heads: Anxiety and Authority in W. D. Howells\u2019 <\/strong><\/em>An Imperative Duty<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

American Literary Realism<\/a>
\nVolume 48, Number 2, Winter 2016<\/a>
\npages 95-111<\/p>\n

James Weaver<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of English
\nDenison University, Granville, Ohio<\/em><\/p>\n

Intensely concerned with the cultural and personal implications of miscegenation<\/a> and its resultant social upheaval, W. D. Howells\u2019<\/a> An Imperative Duty<\/em><\/a> (1891) documents how late-nineteenth-century racial fears become entangled in the medical discourse of the period. Ultimately a romance that brings together the liberal-minded nerve doctor Edward Olney and the refined but tragically mulatta<\/a> Rhoda Aldgate, the novel traces the ways in which Olney both contests and affirms a racially and socially conservative point of view. As Michele Birnbaum points out, the novel \u201cnarrate[s] the young woman\u2019s coming of age as a medical condition.\u201d We might also see Howells\u2019 novel as the coming-of-age story of its protagonist doctor\u2014a coming of age that relies heavily upon his personal and professional relationship with that young woman. Importantly, we can see Olney\u2019s change over the course of the narrative not just as the expression of his developing love for Aldgate but as the incremental recovery of his professional identity. Despite the personal transformations Olney experiences during the course of Howells\u2019 novel, his professional transformation emerges as the more accurate index of Olney\u2019s attitude toward issues of race and class. As Olney assumes a democratic openness toward Aldgate\u2019s \u201ctaint\u201d of dark ancestry, he also assumes a medical authority that transforms his romance with her into a doctor-patient relationship. That relationship is further predicated on Olney\u2019s lingering anxieties over his medical authority and economic stability as well as on a troubling erasure of Aldgate\u2019s racial identity. Reading An Imperative Duty<\/em> in light of such influential contemporary medical texts as S. Weir Mitchell\u2019s<\/a> Doctor and Patient<\/em> and George M. Beard\u2019s<\/a> American Nervousness<\/em>, then, enables us to see Olney\u2019s transition from nervous doctor to nerve doctor\u2014a distinction that, however coy, aptly indicates how Howells\u2019 hero-doctor is able to \u201ccure\u201d not only his and Aldgate\u2019s racial anxieties but also his own nagging fears about his social, cultural, and medical authority.<\/p>\n

Recent criticism of Howells\u2019 novel has usefully explored the ways in which it engages with the racial discourse of the time, as critics have tried to assess the race politics ultimately articulated by Howells. Many of those essays have situated An Imperative Duty<\/em> against the backdrop of U.S. immigration debates and concerns over citizenship; in dialogue with developments in realist aesthetics and American pragmatism; or in relation to the tradition of passing<\/a> novels, the trope of the tragic mulatto<\/a>, and late-nineteenth-century fears about miscegenation. In this essay I\u2019d like to frame my analysis of An Imperative Duty<\/em> and Dr. Olney against a different cultural backdrop: the rise of \u201cnervous diseases\u201d and the corresponding efforts in the American medical community to organize professionally and consolidate power and privilege through its possession of scientific knowledge. By folding this consideration of Dr. Olney\u2019s professional identity into our larger understanding of Howells\u2019 novel, I hope to illuminate the ways in which the racial and medical discourses of the novel intersect with and reinforce one another, reasserting an entrenched white male privilege despite initially seeming to question those avenues of power.<\/p>\n

Before I turn to Howells\u2019 novel, though, let me contextualize that analysis by rehearsing in general terms the late-nineteenth-century medical discourse regarding neurasthenia<\/a> and by outlining the power relations embedded in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. George M. Beard first employed the term \u201cneurasthenia\u201d to describe a state of nervous exhaustion in an 1869 speech to the New York Medical Association. A Yale graduate and two-year veteran of the Union navy\u2019s medical staff during the Civil War<\/a>, Beard finished his medical degree at New York\u2019s College of Physicians in 1866 and almost immediately began a focused study of nervous diseases that culminated in his 1881 text American Nervousness<\/em>, his most comprehensive treatise on neurasthenia, its causes and effects, and its national significance. In that text, Beard argues against a faculty psychology interpretation of nervousness, contending that the term does not indicate \u201cunbalanced mental organization\u201d or \u201ca predominance of the emotional\u201d but rather \u201ca lack of nerve-force.\u201d As he writes, \u201cNervousness is nervelessness.\u201d For Beard, neurasthenia was thus a strictly…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hairy Paws and Bald Heads: Anxiety and Authority in W. D. Howells\u2019 An Imperative Duty American Literary Realism Volume 48, Number 2, Winter 2016 pages 95-111 James Weaver, Assistant Professor of English Denison University, Granville, Ohio Intensely concerned with the cultural and personal implications of miscegenation and its resultant social upheaval, W. D. Howells\u2019 An […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[8896,22485,11461,668],"class_list":["post-44885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-american-literary-realism","tag-james-weaver","tag-w-d-howells","tag-william-dean-howells"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44885"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44887,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44885\/revisions\/44887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}