From Agatha Christie and Charles Darwin to Keira Knightley, Francoise
Hardy and Morrissey, the socially awkward and anxious have changed the
world for the better.
In April 1958, Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap became the
longest-running production in British theatre, having given 2,239
performances to date. Her producer had arranged a party at the Savoy
Hotel to celebrate her success.
She donned her best bottle-green
chiffon dress and elbow-length white gloves, and made her way through
the lobby to the party room – only to find that the doorman failed to
recognise her and refused entry. Instead of hastily demanding “Don’t you
know who I am?”, the 67-year-old author meekly turned away, sitting in
the lounge all by herself. Despite outselling every other writer of the
time, she said she was still paralysed by “miserable, horrible,
inevitable shyness”.
“I still have that overlag of feeling that I am pretending to be an author,” she later wrote.
How
could someone so successful still be so insecure? This is the paradox
at the heart of a new book, Shrinking Violets, by the cultural historian
Joe Moran, which explores shyness
in politics, literature and psychology. Shyness may seem a trivial
matter to those who aren’t afflicted, but as Moran points out, these
feelings can even be a matter of life and death; the American doctor
Henry Heimlich (who gave his name to the Heimlich Manoeuvre) once
observed that “sometimes, a victim of choking becomes embarrassed by his
predicament and succeeds in getting up and leaving the eating area
unnoticed. In a nearby room, he loses consciousness, and if unattended,
he will die or suffer permanent brain damage.”
Interested to know
more, I called Moran to discuss the inspiration for his book and the
conclusions he has drawn from his extensive research.
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| Despite selling millions of novels, Agatha Christie described suffering
from "miserable, horrible, inevitable shyness" (Credit: Alamy) |
Moran says he has felt shy for as long as he can remember – and that
he could easily identify with Christie’s predicament at the theatre that
day. “It’s the kind of thing I probably would have done.”
Those
feelings that may have shaped his career long before he decided to
explore the subject academically. His previous books held up a
magnifying glass to the minutiae of everyday life. Queueing for
Beginners, for instance, explored the history of everyday objects and
routines – from water coolers to duvets to standing in a line at the
shops – while Armchair Nation examined Britain’s television viewing
habits. “I think shyness probably does turn you into an amateur
anthropologist, really – you are more likely to be an observer.”
Moran
sees Shrinking Violets as following a similar vein, turning the
spotlight of his attention inwards as he examines the thoughts and
feelings that many people are too embarrassed to discuss. Its strange,
contradictory nature – including the fact we often feel shy about our
own shyness – struck him as particularly a rich subject for study. “It
often doesn’t make a lot of rational sense.”
‘In-between spaces’ – such as photocopying rooms or corridors – become a particular minefield for a shy person
Many
people may expect that shyness permeates every situation, for instance,
but Moran notes that it “ebbs and flows” depending on the context. He
might feel more comfortable giving a lecture to a hundred students than
taking questions afterwards, for instance. He notes that he is more
comfortable in situations where the etiquette is clearly defined, but
his self-confidence is more precarious when a situation is ambiguous: in
a large group at the pub, for instance, he finds himself falling
between two conversations, but unsure how to join either. “There always
seems to be a key point when you’re left behind.” In the office, meeting
people in those “in-between spaces” – such as photocopying rooms or
corridors – can become a particular minefield for a shy person. “You
don’t know whether you are supposed to stop or for how long.”
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| Bill Gates is reportedly an introvert, which means he feels a greater need to spend time in his own company (Credit: Alamy) |
Moran describes one 19th Century aristocrat, the Duke of Portland,
who was so shy he built a 15-mile-long labyrinth of tunnels under his
stately home so he would not have to face his staff. But not all shy
people are introverts. As Susan Cain, author of the book Quiet, has also
regularly pointed out, the two are quite different.
While introverts may need time by themselves, while not necessarily
caring what others think of them (Cain uses the example of Bill Gates) a
shy person may well crave company, while also feeling nervous and
anxious about the way they are perceived. In this way it is perfectly
possible to be a shy extrovert – to simultaneously fear and crave the
limelight.
The Duke of Portland built a 15-mile labyrinth of tunnels under his stately home so that he would not have to face his staff
Moran’s
book portrays this full spectrum. Consider Dirk Bogarde, who, having
learned how to hide his feelings from bullies at school, likened himself
to a hermit crab hiding in a scavenged shell. “I was safe from
predators,” he wrote, “and by predators I meant everyone I met.” He had
hoped to conquer his shyness in adulthood, but he found it was “a
malady” that “crippled me before I walked into a crowded room, theatre,
restaurant or bar”. Acting in the West End, he would throw-up before
every performance, saying “you can’t be as frightened as I am now and
still be alive. This is as near death, execution, and everything else
that I’ve ever come across.” As Moran points out, Bogarde was not taking
these words lightly: he had fought at D-Day and in the following
battles in Normandy.
Other examples include Charles Darwin (who
believed himself to have no “social sophistication” and to be “an
abysmal public speaker”), Keira Knightley
(who finds she is tongue-tied at parties), the writer and neurosurgeon
Oliver Sacks, the French president Charles de Gaulle, Smiths’ singer
Morrissey and even the epitome of ‘60s Parisian cool, Francoise Hardy
(pictured at the top of this page). Some of these public figures may
benefit from “Maskenfreiheit” – a German word that expresses the freedom
you can feel from wearing a mask or acting a part. This sensation of
“unrealness” helps Moran himself with public speaking, although the
shyness and anxiety return as soon as you feel your real personality
becomes exposed. Some shrinking violets may only thrive when they reach
the spotlight.
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| Dirk Bogarde reportedly felt more terror on stage than he had ever
experienced during World War II. It was, he said, as close to death as
you could get (Credit: Alamy) |
Clearly shyness doesn’t necessarily prevent success, but does it come
with any tangible benefits? Some evolutionary biologists might argue
that these feelings come from basic prehistoric behaviours that aided
out survival. Recent studies on animal personalities have charted the
“shy-bold spectrum” in a range of species, finding that it often pays
for some individuals to be timid and anxious. Whereas the braver animals
may find more mates and eat more food, the shyer individuals, hiding on
the side-lines, might avoid attack – both successful evolutionary
strategies.
If so, a kind of rudimentary shyness is a very basic,
primitive trait. Moran is sceptical this is the whole story, however. “I
don’t think you can talk about shyness without talking about that
capacity for what Darwin called self-attention,” he says. “We can think
about ourselves, reflect on ourselves, and be aware that there might be
other humans thinking about us.” Living in large groups, we needed to
start caring what others’ thought of us – even if that also brought
about uncomfortable feelings, like embarrassment and blushing.
“We
create these strange, circular, self-fulfilling and self-defeating
cycles of meaning – we think of ourselves as shy, and we’re shy about
that, and we’re embarrassed about being embarrassed,” he says.
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| Some people, like Keira Knightley, may appear confident on the public
stage, yet they really feel anxious and shy underneath (Credit: Rex
Features) |
Moran thinks that human shyness has been compounded by the problems
of language – an infinitely expansive, but also imprecise, tool of
communication. “When we talk, it’s always an approximation of what you
feel,” he says, describing us as “isolated consciousnesses” who can
never fully understand each other’s minds. “I think that’s true of
everyone but maybe shy people are more aware of that imperfection.”
The
consequence may be the so-called ‘esprit de l’escalier’ (staircase wit)
– the tendency, after we have left the room, to replay what we should
have said. It is an agonisingly frustrating condition but it may come
with its compensations. “A lot of the writing and art that I write about
in the book… it kind of emerges from the sense that the spoken word or
face-to-face contact is imperfect or has failed,” Moran says. Instead,
the artists try to express what could not be said at the time. “I
wouldn’t say that’s the only motivation for art or writing but you can
see how it might inspire people.”
Moran has also explored the
different ways that shyness is expressed in different cultures. The
Stanford Shyness Survey is a questionnaire that helps psychologists to
assess individual differences in shyness, and the research suggests that
some countries – including Japan, the UK and the Nordic countries of
Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland – do indeed tend to score higher
than countries such as the US. It is hard to tell whether that reflects
true differences in actual feelings, since the words for shyness in
these languages may have more positive connotations (perhaps also
evoking the idea of unassuming modesty, for instance) that may mean
people are simply happier to label themselves as shy.
A barking dog does not catch a hare – Finnish proverb
But
some cultures certainly do seem to be more tolerant of shy behaviours.
Many Finnish proverbs, for instance, underline the value of
contemplation and forethought, with phrases such as “one word is enough
to make a lot of trouble” or “brevity makes a good psalm” or “a barking
dog does not catch a hare”. “If you go to Finland there’s a different
etiquette,” Moran says. “There’s a greater appreciation of silence in
conversation.”
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Music and
literature may be one way for artists like Morrissey to express the
feelings they find hard to articulate in everyday life (Credit: Alamy)
|
In some countries (particularly the US) shyness can now be diagnosed as a psychiatric disorder, a move that has worried some psychologists,
who believe it is a move to “treat” or “correct” anything that falls
outside the norm. DSM-IV – the “psychiatrists’ bible” – includes
highly-specific variants such as “shy bladder syndrome” (the inability
to urinate in a public toilet) and treatments range from talking therapy
and lessons in social skills to anti-anxiety drugs. “I’m a bit torn
about it,” Moran says, “because I don’t romanticise my own shyness. It
can be a bit debilitating; it can be a bit of a pain and a burden. There
are certainly extreme examples of shyness where people can’t live their
lives… where they suffer such extreme social anxiety. But I do think
there is a bit of a trend to medicalise things that may just be within
the range of human experience.”
Moran is talking from experience
here. He once wondered about asking for the drug Seroxat, which was
meant to take the edge off social anxiety. But he suspected that his
shyness was too resilient for a cure; it would be like “shouting at the
wind, arguing with the rain” or “trying to find a cure for being alive”.
Having
now written his book, he’s come to realise that shyness may be far more
common than he had once realised. Many people – often those he had
least expected – have confessed to feeling social awkwardness or
embarrassment regularly. “One of the mistakes you can make when you are
shy is to think that you are very unusual in the way you are interacting
with people – but some of these problems are universal.” With Moran as
its reluctant, mild-mannered cheerleader, the Shy Pride movement may
have just been born.
(BBC)
