Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts

Shyness, Power, and Intimacy in the United States, 1950-1995

Patricia McDaniel

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780814756782
• eBook ISBN: 9780814761212
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Since World War II Americans' attitudes towards shyness have changed. The women's movement and the sexual revolution raised questions about communication, self-expression, intimacy, and personality, leading to new concerns about shyness. At the same time, the growth of psychotherapy and the mental health industry brought shyness to the attention of professionals who began to regard it as an illness in need of a cure. But what is shyness? How is it related to gender, race, and class identities? And what does its stigmatization say about our culture?
In Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts, Patricia McDaniel tells the story of shyness. Using popular self-help books and magazine articles she shows how prevailing attitudes toward shyness frequently work to disempower women. She draws on evidence as diverse as 1950s views of shyness as a womanly virtue to contemporary views of shyness as a barrier to intimacy to highlight how cultural standards governing shyness reproduce and maintain power differences between and among women and men.

Index

Abolitionists, 35

Abortion, 17, 18

gag rule, 19

Aggression: in men, 35, 62, 85, 86, 110, 127, 128, 129

in women, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 57, 61, 75, 78, 79

Agoraphobia, 122

AIDS, 18

American Psychological Association, 17–18

Andelin, Helen, 53, 54

Anxiety Disorders Association of America, 8

Assertiveness: American colonists and, 31

black men and, 73, 129

communication and, 57, 126

dating and, 54–56, 61

intimacy and, 120, 121

men’s authority and, 27, 74, 78–79, 81–82, 129

views of black women’s, 38, 39, 67–68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80–81, 82, 129

at work, 91–96, 100, 101, 127, 128

Assertiveness training, 7, 17, 95, 121

Avoidant personality disorder, 171n. 6

Backlash, 18, 114

Baker, Ella, 71

Bashfulness: modesty and, 37, 53

reserve and, 58

shyness and, 22, 33

young men and, 48, 61, 65

Biology: and communication, 63–64, 66

and sex roles, 52, 53, 62–63

Birth control pills, 16

Black men: as heads of households, 73

images of, 35, 39, 41, 68–69, 72, 73, 77, 82, 129

unemployment, 16, 70

Black nationalists, 78, 81, 82

Black Panthers, 73

Black Power, 72

Black women: and domesticity, 16, 70, 72, 73

as heads of households, 16

images of, 38, 67–68, 72, 75, 78–79, 106, 111...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• One Introduction
• Two The Emotional Culture of Shyness from the Middle Ages to the Early Twentieth Century
• Three “Build Him a Dais”: Shyness and Heterosexuality from the Roles of the Fifties to The Rules of the Nineties
• Four Assertive Women and Timid Men? Race, Heterosexuality, and Shyness
• Five Shyness from Nine to Five
• Six “Intimacy Is a Difficult Art”: The Changing Role of Shyness in Friendship
• Seven Conclusion
• Appendix A: Data and Methods
• Appendix B: Sampled Self-Help Books, Child-Rearing Manuals, and Magazine Articles
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author