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Race and Hysteria

According to Laura Briggs’s The Race of Hysteria: “Overcivilization” and the “Savage” Woman in Late Nineteenth-Century Obstetrics and Gynecology, women could be categorized into three steps of civilization: the savage, the civilized, and the overcivilized. Referencing Edward Tylor’s conception that humans evolve through three stages: savage, barbarian, and civilized. Briggs believes that Hysteria was thought to be caused by overcivilization. Terms such as “savage” were reserved for people in extreme poverty or of minority descent (Africans, Asians, Indigenous, Jewish, etc). Because of this distinction between the civilized and the savage during the 19th Century, Hysteria was diagnosed as a disease among mostly middle and upper-class white women.

Many middle and upper-class white men, identified middle and upper-class white women as endangering the race with their low fertility, while non-white women, immigrants, and poor people had many children”. During the 19th Century, white women were categorized as “weak, frail and nervous” which reflected the diagnosed symptoms for hysteria such as nervousness, fainting, and ill reproductive bodies. On the contrary, minority and impoverished women were seen as “strong, hardy, and prolifically fertile.” This caused worry among white men who feared that middle and upper-class white women were causing the depopulation of their race. This growing conception would later be coined, “race suicide” by Edward A. Ross.

As race suicide became a more recognizable fear in Europe and the U.S., many people attempted to solve it by targeting white women's nutrition, overeducation, sexual limbo, and physical health. Additionally, press and Nativist parties ushered a national concern by connecting the reproduction of white women to the reproduction of first and second generation immigrant woman.  “[Race suicide] pitted white women against the more-fecund women of supposedly ‘‘inferior’’ races supports interpretations of race suicide in terms of anti-immigrant sentiment.” As the white public became more unsettled by increased immigration and the declining birthrates of white children, white women were blamed if they lacked the “American ideal” of 4-6 children. Additionally, Immigrants from all minorities were the target of xenophobic remarks and eventually forced sterilization in the U.S. due to eugenics legislation.