‘A man must make himself’

Lord Glenthorn, of Maria Edgeworth’s Ennui (1809), suffers with a debilitating apathy and indifference unless continuously stimulated by external factors. Robin Runia reads this symptomatology within the frame of late eighteenth-century definitions of hypochondriasis, which firmly associated the condition not just with the indolence of the wealthy but also with a foreign decadence. Trying to rid himself of his ennui, Glenthorn trials numerous fashionable activities of the wealthy but finds consolation only in the domestic sphere and the peaceable routines of his servants. Ennui is Edgeworth’s critique of the ‘rampant moral plague of luxury’, but, more importantly in offering a domestic remedy based on duty and the importance of home, it associates the health of the male body with the knowledge and culture of women.