‘My thistle-down personality’: Disseminating selfhood in the diary and letters of Alice James

With her delicate constitution, her collection of bodily disorders and a predisposition to hysterical fits, Alice James was afflicted with all the symptoms of what the Victorian era labelled as invalidism – a vague and debilitating condition, usually synonymous with lasting weakness and seclusion within the bounds of the sickroom. And yet, James’s diary consistently evidences the dispersive force of her ‘thistle-down personality’. The image of chaotically scattered seeds undercuts the assumptions of isolation and immobility that often underlie descriptions of chronic illness in the nineteenth century. Examining how James’s use of personal pronouns revitalizes (dis)connections between the diarist and the world, this article investigates the volatile quality of selfhood in her diary and letters. In creating an airy subject, wavering between cohesion and dissemination, her writings challenge the notion of the invalid as an irrevocably stationary figure and renegotiate the representations of fragility with which feminine illness is typically associated.