Women With Long-Term Exhaustion in Fictional Literature: A Comparative Approach

The main theme of this essay is depictions of long-term exhaustion, a severe form of tiredness, in historical and contemporary fictional literature. Tiredness and exhaustion are real both in a biological and in an experiential sense: the phenomena entail experiences of biological processes that go on in the human body. In this paper, however, it is the cultural dimension of these phenomena that interests us. Although our perceptions are individually and subjectively perceived, they are prefigured by the socio-cultural contexts in which we are situated, and therefore infused with culturally defined norms and values. These norms and values are generated through interactions between human beings, and therefore vary between time and place. Culturally and historically contingent norms about exhaustion define rules about who has permission to be exhausted, and when, where, and how we are allowed to express it. These perceptions are gendered: men and women seem to handle tiredness differently and the (stereotyped) masculine response – to pull yourself together and “handle it like a man” – is perceived as the culturally more legitimate form in our culture, where tiredness is seen as a sign of weakness, and the normative ideals are energy, toughness, strength, and endurance.