Literature and MInd Post 9: Boredom and The Rambler

Although in a humorous and perhaps satirical way, can Euphelia's problems from this issue of The Rambler demonstrate this transition that Spacks discusses in Boredom?

"Thus I am condemned to solitude; the day moves slowly forward, and I see the dawn with uneasiness, because I consider that night is at a great distance. I have tried to sleep by a brook, but find its murmurs ineffectual; so that I am forced to be awake at least twelve hours, without visits, without cards, without laughter, and without flattery. I walk because I am disgusted with sitting still, and sit down because I am weary with walking...I am thus weary of myself that the current of youth stagnates, and that I am languishing in a dead calm, for want of some external impulse" (The Rambler No. 42).

"Early discourse about methods of occupying time suggests that the problem of leisure not only provides alternative ways of talking about boredom, it constitutes one of the causes for the new concern with boredom itself as a problem. By the nineteenth century, however, the notion that satiety, weariness, disgust, chagrin, ennui-inability to enjoy leisure-reflect internal inadequacy appears to yield largely to belief that such unpleasant states will dissolve given adequate eternal stimulation" (Spacks 18).

By looking at these two passages, one can see some great similarities between the two. For instance, there is the use of "disgust" associated with the "inability to enjoy leisure" found in both, and both refer to weariness, as Euphelia is in fact "languishing in a dead calm." Also, boredom is shown as a problem in both quotes. The poor girl who writes this letter in The Rambler is talking as if she is a prisoner, in a way "condemned" too this boredom. She does not talk of it as if there is something she can do about it. Finally, Euphelia attributes all her suffering to the "want of some external impulse," which are shown as a remedy for this "unpleasant state" in Spacks. What is truly interesting is that Euphelia is talking about this boredom in the way that Spacks argues to occur more in the nineteenth century. This issue of The Rambler is from 1750, and therefore the ideas are 50 years before their designated time period.

Perhaps the reader can take this as blatant evidence of the transition period between thinking of boredom as evidence of "internal inadequacy" and as the lack of "external stimulation." Euphelia is showing one of the two combating ideas that were most likely bouncing around at during the eighteenth century. The humorous nature of the letter seems to suggest that the issue of no "external impulses" to be found is one that is being satirized. Either way, it proves that this kind of thinking, whether looked down upon or not, was around at this time. The reader can see what Spacks is describing in her work occurring right before his or her very own eyes.