Alice James's illness

Jean Strouse embarks on the difficult task of explaining Alice James's nervous condition or breakdown - difficult because there's so little documentation and she must infer from comments made about Alice in letters from other family members and from AJ's diary from later years - but it seems that she had some kind of serious form of depression. Strouse writes that mental illness was in the mid-19th century was of 2 general types, neurasthenia (nervous condition) or hysteria (worse, and primarily suffered by women). There was no great treatment for either. Neurasthenia was actually vaguely fashionable, at least among women of the leisured class - made them (seem) more intelligent, sensitive, and alluring (as did consumption, in a way). It would seem that whatever AJ endured was worse than the fashionable high-strung case of nerves, as it struck her very young - 16 or so? - and really seemed to incapacitate her. Treatment then was bizarre to say the least; she went w/ her aunt to live with her treating physician in NYC who basically tried to alleviate symptoms thru orthopedic devices - one can only imagine. However - AJ does seem to recover and goes w/ Henry and Aunt Kate to Europe for her first visit since she was about 12 - and the tour of England and Paris seems very successful - she responds strongly to the works of art, and seems generally healthy - tho she is watched attentively and nervously by all, like a tender plant. (The James brothers each has his own version of or bout with nerves and depression, btw - a very odd and demanding family.) Strouse speculates that AJ's case was in part her attempt to flee the competition with her brothers for greatness and with her mother and aunt for domestic control, for which she was clearly not well suited. Strouse seems to imply that she may have had talent to match the older brothers but didn't have the capacity to develop her talent, in part because of low expectations, or none, for women - though I suspect had she been serious about and capable of great writing her family would have supported that strongly - they were a highly cultivated and literary set and knew or came to know many great female writers. That said, it's also very odd how often Strouse has to note dolefully that none of AJ's letters from various stages of her life - e.g., the European tour -- survive, whereas we have troves of letters from William, Henry Sr., and Henry Jr. - someone somehow thought their letters were worth preserving, but not Alices's.