Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts : Shyness, Power, and Intimacy in the United States, 1950-1995 / Patricia McDaniel.
McDaniel, Patricia, author.
2003
BF575.B3
Available Online

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Title
Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts : Shyness, Power, and Intimacy in the United States, 1950-1995 / Patricia McDaniel.
Author
McDaniel, Patricia, author.
ISBN
9780814759936
DOI
https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814759936.001.0001
Published
New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2003]
Copyright
©2003
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource
Item Number
10.18574/nyu/9780814759936.001.0001 doi
Call Number
BF575.B3
Dewey Decimal Classification
155.232
Summary
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.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Series
The American Social Experience ; ; 16
In
New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
Available in Other Form
print 9780814756775
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Online Access
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Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter one. Introduction
Chapter two. The Emotional Culture of Shyness from the Middle Ages to the Early Twentieth Century
Chapter three "Build Him a Dais" Shyness and Heterosexuality from the Roles of the Fifties to The Rules of the Nineties
Chapter four. Assertive Women and Timid Men? Race, Heterosexuality, and Shyness
Chapter five. Shyness from Nine to Five
Chapter six "Intimacy Is a Difficult Art" The Changing Role of Shyness in Friendship
Chapter 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

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