Shrinking Violets and Caspar Milquetoasts - Shyness, Power, and Intimacy in the United States, 1950-1995 (Paperback)

"Patricia McDaniel provides an insightful look at the historical construction of shyness in Western scoiety. This book is an important contribution to the literature on the sociology of emotions and the sociology of gender."--"Contemporary Sociology"

"This book's significance lies in its treatment of an emotional state and in its use of documents that have heretofore received little attention from historians."
--"The Jourrnal of American History"

"In this thoroughy researched study, McDaniel pretty much provides anything any academic might ever want to kow about shyness in society."
--" Library Journal"

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 differencesbetween and among women and men.

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