Cancer and the emotions in 18th-century literature

Abstract

This essay argues that the emotional rhetoric of today’s breast cancer discourse—with its emphasis on stoicism and ‘positive thinking’ in the cancer patient, and its use of sympathetic feeling to encourage charitable giving—has its roots in the long 18th century. While cancer had long been connected with the emotions, 18th-century literature saw it associated with both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ feelings, and metaphors describing jealousy, love and other sentiments as ‘like a cancer’ were used to highlight the danger of allowing feelings—even benevolent or pleasurable feelings—to flourish unchecked. As the century wore on, breast cancer in particular became an important literary device for exploring the dangers of feeling in women, with writers of both moralising treatises and sentimental novels connecting the growth or development of cancer with the indulgence of feeling, and portraying emotional self-control as the only possible form of resistance against the disease. If, as Barbara Ehrenreich suggests, today’s discourse of ‘positive thinking’ has been mobilised to make patients with breast cancer more accepting of their diagnosis and more cooperative with punitive treatment regimens, then 18th-century fictional exhortations to stay cheerful served similarly conservative political and economic purposes, encouraging continued female submission to male prerogatives inside and outside the household.

The Relation of Ideology of Positive Thinking with the Perception of Cancer Risk and Ways of Treating It in Medellin, Colombia

“…Sontag 33 highlighted that cancer has long been associated with repression and mismanagement of emotions. Gallegher 34 maintain that these ideas began to popularize in the XVIII century with their incorporation into the literary portraits of the time. In these stories, patients with cancer were characterized as people who were prey to emotions such as pain, anger, and envy; emotions that they were unable to handle and caused the disease.…”

“…In these stories, patients with cancer were characterized as people who were prey to emotions such as pain, anger, and envy; emotions that they were unable to handle and caused the disease. As in the novels of the XVIII century, today’s self-help books establish the link between these emotions and the etiology of the disease; therefore, there is still pressure to reduce or destroy the expressions of sadness, fear, anger, and despair 34 to maintain “positive thinking” and hold patients with cancer responsible for their illness if they fail to do so. 10 Notably, these narratives contribute to legitimizing the idea of individual responsibility in the etiology of cancer, the omission of structural problem management, and the lack of attention paid by the state to its responsibility for the common good, ideas that are in line with the interests of neoliberal government rationalities 35 but are contrary to the medical evidence.…”

Effects of psychological intervention on negative emotions and psychological resilience in breast cancer patients after radical mastectomy

“…In a study by He et al [ 11 ] which included 200 BC patients, it was found that patients' negative emotions, such as depression and anxiety, were significantly reduced after emotional management, and the recovery of BC patients was good. Many studies have also found that negative emotions greatly affect the incidence of BC[ 12 - 15 ]. In a study by Xu et al [ 12 ] a total of 9343 studies were screened, aiming to explore the connection between negative emotions and the incidence of BC, as well as possible risk factors.…”

From blocked flows to suppressed emotions: the life of a trope

“…35. N Gallagher (2020), ”Cancer and the Emotions in 18th-Century Literature,” Medical Humanities 46, no. 3. doi:10.1136/medhum-2018-011639, 2.…”