Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness

by Joe Moran

A deeply perceptive and beautifully written cultural history of shyness, from one of our most astute observers of the everyday
Shyness is a pervasive human trait: even most extroverts know what it is like to stand tongue-tied at the fringe of an unfamiliar group or flush with embarrassment at being the unwelcome center of attention. And yet the cultural history of shyness has remained largely unwritten-until now.
With incisiveness, passion, and humor, Joe Moran offers an eclectic and original exploration of what it means to be a "shrinking violet." Along the way, he provides a collective biography of shyness through portraits of such shy individuals as Charles Darwin, Charles Schulz, Garrison Keillor, and Agatha Christie, among many others. In their stories often both heartbreaking and inspiring and through the myriad ways scientists and thinkers have tried to explain and "cure" shyness, Moran finds hope. To be shy, he decides, is not simply a burden; it is also a gift, a different way of seeing the world that can be both enriching and inspiring.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Science, Sociology, Mental Health, Audiobook, Philosophy

281 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 21, 2017

About the author

Joe Moran is Professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University and is the author of seven books, including Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime, Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV, Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness and First You Write a Sentence. He writes for, among others, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement.

Reviews

[Peter Boyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I am the son and the heir/Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar"

Being a shy person myself, I was drawn to the subject of this book. In an entertaining study, Joe Moran traces the origins of shyness throughout history, an issue which has afflicted a surprising number of high-achieving cultural figures. He doesn't try to solve the problem of being shy, but his stories of people who are "interestingly and idiosyncratically shy" make it a comforting read for anyone who suffers from the condition.

Shyness is not solely a human trait, he explains in the first chapter. Animals are known to operate on the "shy-bold continuum." The braver types have an advantage when food is scarce, but the timid specimens that stay hidden tend to win out when predators are near. "Natural selection prefers a range of personalities in the same species," he states - for example, bold albatrosses are better hunters, but the shy ones make more attentive parents and affectionate partners.

I was amazed to learn that levels of shyness varies from country to country. The condition is widespread in the Nordic region, which can be attributed to the population staying indoors so often to avoid cold weather. As one travels further south towards the Mediterranean, the sunnier climate means that people can be more sociable and outgoing, and shyness is less prevalent as a result. Japan is particularly affected by shyness - a generation of young men (dubbed hikikomori) has spent years without leaving the house and the government has been forced to hire outreach workers to visit them, in order to encourage them to interact with their peers.

Moran provides several examples of notable people who were crippled by shyness. Poor Dirk Bogarde used to vomit every night before going on stage. This is a man who fought on D-Day and yet proclaimed his terrifying West End experience "as near death, execution and everything else that I’ve come across." The famously shy Agatha Christie reluctantly agreed to become chairwoman of the Detection Club on the stipulation that she would never have to make a speech. Morrissey spent much of his early years confined to his bedroom (with windows painted black), writing passionate letters to the NME, before being rescued by Johnny Marr. And in my favourite anecdote, the fifth Duke of Portland built a network of tunnels beneath his estate so that he so could avoid small talk with servants. Suddenly my own lack of social grace doesn't seem so bad.

It is an enjoyable read, even if it doesn't contain anything particularly groundbreaking. Moran may not offer solutions to conquering shyness, but it is clear from his research that the more a person detaches from society, the more this problem takes root. Shrinking Violets is not a miracle cure for shyness - it's more like a hand reaching out to take yours, a reassurance that you're not alone.

[Kate Vane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a little disappointed in this book. It’s full of anecdotes and observations but I don’t feel I’m any further forward in understanding what shyness is.

The vignettes chosen by the author seem to conflate introversion, social anxiety, autism, mental illness, rebellion and plain eccentricity. He says that we can all be shy in different contexts but focuses on ‘shy’ individuals or groups. He touches briefly on cultural aspects of shyness, how in some societies it is seen as positive and in others negative. There’s some passing discussion of the impact of technology (eg it’s easier to ask someone out by text than face-to-face).

Many of his case studies are of middle- and upper-class English men. They are able to take their ‘shyness’ (if that is an adequate term) to extremes because they have the resources to keep the world at bay. In one of the more interesting chapters he discusses whether shy people can and should learn to adapt or whether they should structure their lives to minimise social interaction. But it’s hard to answer this without a working definition of shyness – does the shy person love solitude or is she desperately lonely but somehow unable to connect?

Although he touches on the physical nature of shyness – and particularly blushing – I would have been interested to know more about the physiology of it. What about that elusive ‘chemistry’? Why do we have a visceral reaction – positive or negative – to some people before they’ve even spoken? Some people set us immediately at ease, others leave us on edge or flat and empty. A rare few transform us into more vivid and articulate versions of ourselves. Maybe ‘shyness’ is in part a greater sensitivity to these signals?

I suppose this book lives up to its billing as field guide. There are some detailed descriptions of selected specimens. But I was hoping for a bit more insight and analysis.

[Murray Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moran’s book is “a field guide, a collective biography and a necessarily elliptical history of the shy”. It’s something of a wander through a series of lives lived with that “multilayered and unsummarisable condition”, “the sense of an emotional life both bottled up and brimming over”, and takes in a wide variety of people, from English nobles (one of whom built a whole series of tunnels beneath his estates so he could go for walks without the fear of encountering anyone), army generals and politicians, as well as the sort you’d expect to find (poets, novelists, musicians, actors).

Shyness, as Moran presents it, is both a universal and an isolating condition, which has, at times in the past, been accepted and even praised as a virtue (at least, among those who can afford to indulge it), or (as in the 1960s and the present day) as a medical condition to be cured or medicated. Ultimately, I found many of the examples Moran presents — the lives led, the sometimes very original ways people got round their often debilitating self-consciousness (“It is common enough for writers to use a pseudonym, but [Janet] Frame took the rarer step of publishing under her own name and living pseudonymously”) — to be inspiring, as well as deeply human in their endless creativity and resilience.

[Owlseyes]

The Case for Shyness
Joe Moran’s book Shrinking Violets is a sweeping history that doubles as a (quiet) defense of timidity.
in: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week:
Joe Moran has spent his life trying to get to grips with his shyness. In this Field Guide to Shyness, he explores the hidden world of reticence, navigating the myriad ways scientists and thinkers have tried to explain and cure shyness, and uncovering the fascinating stories of the men and women who were 'of the violet persuasion'.

"It feels like coming late to a party when everyone else is about three beers in and entering that state that allows them to have fluent exchanges that settle on some pre-agreed theme as if by magic."

Darwin referred to shyness as an "odd state of mind". It has no obvious benefit to our species, so why is it so pervasive, not only in humans but in other creatures - from the Virginia opossum to salamander larvae?

Read by Nigel Planer
Written by Joe Moran
Abridged and produced by Hannah Marshall
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07q2tp1

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this. Informative and easy to read from the outset. Inspiring and reassuring to know that others have suffered and suffer with shyness in ways similar or far more extreme have I have in my life. Really good to have included a mixed bag of real life shyness sufferers too, from Lowry to Morrissey to Bobby Charlton. A perfect companion to Susan Cain's Quiet.

[Bernard O'Leary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really a field guide at all, just a rambling collection of anecdotes about shy people through the ages. Some nice stories though.

[Rob Adey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very strange route into 'shyness', being mostly a look at a small sample of people who were mostly relatively famous and/or wealthy, almost all writers, and almost all male. What's more, pretty much all of them were suffering from a shyness so marked that even the most wary of the careless medicalisation personality traits would have them off down the chemist for a quarter-pound of diazepam. I think I'd have preferred a treatment closer to that which one of the subjects here, Oliver Sacks, might have written.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subtitle of the edition I read was "A field guide to shyness" which describes this book well. Aspects of shyness covered include stage fright and embarrassment. The stories of famous shy people such as Bobby Charlton, Charles de Gaulle and Charles Schultz are fascinating. The author is obviously a Morrissey fan as the section on him is particularly well written, and he outs himself as a shy person. Worth a read whether you count yourself as shy or not.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less about shyness than about people who were shy throughout their lives - but I found it fascinating anyway. Would have enjoyed a little more about the pathology and origin of shyness, though

[Sylvie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The subtitle says it all.

You are running through a field, running away from something, anything and everything, and you meet one person after another, the famous and the not so famous; those you’ve not heard of and they all look confident - you know the will overwhelm you with their egos. Naturally, you avoid them. Then you meet someone, and you know you are in safe hands, that this is a mind that is far ranging and sympathetic, a mind that can shape words and sentences that please you.. you could spend all your time listening to him. His name is Joe Moran. You have read his other book, First You Write a Sentence, and loved it. Then, he tells you that all the people you met suffer or suffered from shyness, and found some strategies to get on with life. He tells you something that surprises you, coming from a lecturer, a man who stands in front of students and delivers a talk – he himself suffers from shyness too. What a confession to make.

Shyness he says may not be overcome, but you can get to know it. This is what he says:

the human brain is the most complex object in the known universe, the journey from one brain to another is the most difficult we will ever make, and every attempt at conversation is a gamble, with no guarantee we will be understood or even heard. Given these unbending realities, isn’t a little shyness around each other forgivable?

He offers comfort in ideas. He delves into the subject and talks about evolution. In her book, The Scars of Ecolution, Elaine Morgan argues that many parts of the human body are merely accidental residues of the weird purposelessness of evolution. From this, Joe Moran extrapolates that it’s a myth that natural selection rarely finds the perfect solution.

it (evolution) just eliminates the unworkable, and ends up with billions of different solutions to the problem of being alive. Perhaps that is all that shyess is. Just one of those billions of different solutions to this problem. But it is a solution, part of what nature writer Richard Maybey nicely calls the “redundant embroidery” of existence. Shyness is another piece of evolutionary happenstance, an unplanned derivative of our strange human capacity for thinking about ourselves.

If you try to take a picture of him, he will instead hand you one of his drawings – you can see it on the back flap where his author photo should be – a semi circle of a face, with two eyes.
Although he sees technology such as smarphones and computers as friends of shy people, he will deflect you away from selfies. I'm not sure that, as a shy person, you'd want to take one anyway.

[Peter Geyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to know how to rate this book, stars or shelves. There are moments of insight and pages of turgidity, for this shy reader, anyway.

What's it about. Well, Jo Moran is an English academic who admits to being shy, something he never really clearly defines, which leads to both trouble and also raises queries about the category.

His method is to mix some personal revelations about his difficulties in this area, some of which I share (which was very helpful) and others I do not, and provide themed chapters about people of the past and present that he considers shy. These are pretty extreme examples.

There's a potted history, lots of odd English aristocracy, a very interesting chapter on embarrassment, which might get to the nub of the issue, tongue-tied or stammering people, those with stage fright, artists (broadly labelled), the "war against shyness" and some final reflections.

We get stories about remote islands of Scotland and the socologist Erving Goffman, military leaders like Wavell, the idea of British reticence, the notion that Americans don't have particular language categories for aspects of shyness, people who are bullied, who can't get out the front door, musicians like Nick Drake and singers like Morrissey, the non-film (i.e. true) story of the stammering King George VI and so on. There are authors described here who want their words to speak for them, but may be unable to accept praise; the autistic Temple Grandin is also briefly mentioned.

Shyness as social embarrassment, as I mentioned earlier, was particularly interesting and here it's hard to work out whether this is solely a cultural imposition (shaming, for instance) or there are people naturally inclined to this kind of embarrassment. I think there's no right answer to this.

Actually, I wonder whether Moran casts his net too broadly, but then part of his agenda is to describe different kinds of shy people who dealt with their shyness in different ways. In so doing, he may overlap shyness and introversion, which are different things. He mentions the latter rarely, always with pathological implications, which may be accidental. He mentions Jung twice, without giving the idea that he's read closely what he had to say, and with regard to the term "introversion" doesn't seem to be aware that it has a beginning in time, and so those who lived beforehand couldn't have used it. To be fair, he does do a brief examination of "shyness" in an historical context, but it's too sketchy for my liking and people centuries apart are lumped together unconvincingly.

The war on shyness has to do with contemporary views on communication (a topic I hadn't considered until reading this), the rise of positive thinking and various therapies. The abrasive Albert Ellis gets a run, identified here as the father of cognitive behavioural therapy (it used to be rational-emotive therapy in my day). The DSM gets a mention for its project of labelling and disease making, which is accurate enough, although I think his understanding of its origins, development and purpose is a little too sketchy.

It would be fair to say there were lots of ups and downs here: I found eccentric aristocrats, a painter and Morrissey extremely tiresome, the latter perhaps being an expression of my age compared to the author, as well as living elsewhere. Other stories were invariably interesting and informative.

Having said that, there were many insights and experiences of recognition I found valuable, normalising, even, which seems to have been the same for Moran. I don't walk into bars by myself, like to enter and exit rooms quietly, sometimes with an escape route already identified. There are other variables here like mild claustrophobia, sensitivity to noise and an inability to grasp small talk, although I'm getting a little better with age (I think).

In his musings towards the end, after talking about possibilities of medication and the like, Moran presents the idea that shyness just is. He calls it a "gift" actually, terminology I greatly dislike. But his point is that it's natural and a shy person needs to learn how to manage it, although that may never be able to be completely the case. He says this in response to various self-help change processes, which he lists and comments that the idea there is that shyness always has to be "busted" or "conquered.

He writes:

"If I have learned one thing from exploring the lives of shy people, it is that our personalities do not do these kinds of handbrake turns. All the people I have written about in this book were as shy at the end of their lives as at the start of them. They found ways to hide it, channel it, finesse it or work around it, but it never went away"

This resonated with me as far as my life experience has gone and to me it's all about self-understanding i.e. Who am I? What kind of person? This is a different question to "Who do i want to be?" although there's obvious overlap. Jung helpfully mused on this in his own case towards the end of his life. I think this view is more subtle and useful than the kind of advice routinely given these days.

I live in an outer suburban area where people mostly keep to themselves. Next door and over the road there are mothers (one single) who yell at either one or all of their children. The woman over the road yells at them to stop yelling; she yells at them for almost anything, actually and it can be heard clearly in the room I'm sitting in. I also wouldn't count her as one of the world's great listeners.

I find this disturbing for the expected reasons. However, the main target of this yelling is a little boy with a squeaky voice. A few weeks ago, this woman told him directly that he didn't feel good about himself, and that the family, including her obviously, cared about him.

Now I have no idea whether this child is shy or not and there may be a bit of projection involved, notwithstanding my mother very rarely yelled at her children, but I'm sure he knows a mixed message or a lie when he hears it. In the context of this book he's already confronted with difficulties in self-understanding and self-knowledge that I think anyone needs in order to be themselves and make of their life what it is.

[Peter Schutz]

I bought this book in 2018, of all years, in Olympia, Washington, of all places and the clerk who helped me find the “Psychology” section was an older woman I found attractive. That I was 19 then and that “older woman” meant her young twenties, and that to this day I still find myself referring to men and women my own age as “older,” and to myself as “a boy,” should tell you all you need to know as to my initial attraction to this subject and to this book.

Now, seven years later, I’ve finally finished it. I still have the same birthday check from my grandma—for my 20th birthday—as the bookmark. It was pretty good. I enjoyed reading it.

A lot is touched on. Subjects spiral associatively and loosely, from one to the next. The common throughline is being British. Because the author is British.

This book taught me that accurate and consistent usage of hyphens is disconcerting and awkward. I’m sure the author would love that. Good for him. I, however, am not in the business of loving little bullshits like that, so I hope he has in the time since he wrote this book, married and had kids and created a life for himself away from gathering, in some file folder filed away somehow, exclusively English sources from which to draw other specicified [spec! you pedantic hobgoblin] hobgoblins of books meant only to calcify his own extended adolescence. The academe suits him well. The ratio of original prose to judicious citation here veers nearly to the 10 or 20 percent line.

[Pete Welter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shrinking Violets is about shyness its many forms and manifestations.

The majority of the narrative is composed of mini-biographical sketches of various historical and recent figures who encountered problems with social situations, often several bios to each chapter. With this, he mixes in his own personal observations on being a shy person. Because of this, the books shifts focus often and wanders about somewhat, a style that some readers enjoy, but that I'm personally not as fond of. He also tends to mix in examples of mental illness other than social anxiety, of eccentric behavior and of autistic behavior, all of which can be interesting but are only tangentially related to shyness.

When he reflects on his personal experiences with being shy, he is often insightful and thought-provoking. He frames shyness in ways that I hadn't thought about, but that a shy person would feel as very familiar. These I count on as the highlights of the book, and I would count them as reason enough to recommend reading this book. However, be warned that those comprise maybe ten percent of the book.

[Jane Barton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I have studied and taught Psychology over a number of years I haven’t come across very much on the topic of shyness, so, as a fellow sufferer, I was quite excited to read this book. Unfortunately I found it didn’t really meet my expectations. There is some material on the possible evolutionary advantages of being shy as well as the various ways in which it manifests across different cultures, timeframes and even species. This was interesting but relatively sparse with most of the book a series of biographies about a long list of historical and contemporary figures who were afflicted with shyness. I found much of this very boring as many of the people were not particularly known to me and their experiences of shyness became quite repetitive.

[Hazel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really interesting. A lot more in-depth than I expected, but it was a pleasant surprise.

The author explores the concept of Shyness from various perspectives; psychological, cultural, biological, sociological, medical, artistic... the list goes on. Using examples of Shy People from assorted walks of life, he analyses the Shyness in terms of its benefits, its drawbacks, its possible causes and potential "cures" (or lack thereof).

There were a handful of parts around the middle of this book that I felt drifted into repetition, but overall the author's style and wit kept me engaged throughout.

Definitely one to inspire further discussion and debate.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book very insightful. I am a shy individual at heart and really have to force myself to fit into an extrovert world. It's exhausting some days and it's always nice to return home when I can relax and not interact with others! Its not that I don't like others, it's just hard to be on all the time. Loved all the stories and theories, they were interesting! Anyone one who is shy, or knows someone who is ought to read this book to better understand themselves or others. Greta book! Easy, quick,interesting read.

[chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars. Fascinating anecdotes, biographies, histories and insights on the culture and afflictions surrounding shyness.

“We are becoming a culture of semi-absent citizens, ‘alone together,’ since even when in public our faces are buried in our cellphones and tablets, headphones cushioning us from other people’s noise and our glances turned downwards to converse with friends elsewhere via those dancing thumbs on our touchscreens. This new machine age allows us to relate to each other in amounts we can control like a saline drip.”

[Carlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

I think I thought this book was going to be more clinical / science-y, delving into what shyness is, the causes, etc. This book does discuss some of that, but a lot of it focused on featuring people in history who were shy. That was somewhat entertaining to learn, but not exactly what I had in mind.

It was interesting to hear about how some species of animals are considered more shy than others. And how some musicians suffer from stage fright (there are actors who do, so makes sense that musicians may as well).

[Akin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does what it says on the tin – a cultural contextualisation of shyness. Skews very much to the English speaking world (given the very eclectic nature of the book, this stands out) but nonetheless very interesting. The author's idiosyncratic approach to the subject helps.

Very much an anti-self help book (which is refreshing in itself: I'm getting fed up of sweeping sociological studies that claim to be able to change the world) but even so strangely reassuring. It is very easy to get lost in the belief that one's state of mind is borderline pathological, but Moran does extremely well to normalise the condition without dismissing or downplaying it.

Some of the vignettes were close to heartbreaking. Lovely book, warmly recommended.

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was looking for another "Quiet" but this was more an examination of different aspects of shyness such as stage fright, shy artists through accounts of different historical figures. Some readily known such as Agatha Christie and Morrisey, and some less. Not much in the way of science and the author would occasionally interject their own opinions or experience which I felt like interrupted the flow a bit but otherwise an OK read.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was bored to tears at times reading this book, it just didn't capture my attention at all. Only reason it got 2 stars is because of the first chapter, where some of the authors personal experiences were highly relatable for me, so I thought it might help me find more answers and information. I was wrong.

[ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome book, it’s different than I expected - more of a wandering exploration of shyness that an academic exercise. And hilarious in parts. Worth it if only for the brief story of how Morrissey came to be.

[Kristie Saumure · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn't really work for me. I felt like I was simply reading a series of snippets about people in history who were shy. I didn't feel like the pieces came together to form a whole thesis about shyness.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of research went into this book. It is kind of a history of shyness and of public figures who are shy and how they dealt with it. I was mainly interested in the information about blushing - it is fascinating how our body responds to situations.

[Ela (Mouse333) · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 14%

I thought this was going to be a bit different.

The first few pages were funny, but then it started talking about how animals are also shy and who discovered this, and how lots of historical figures were also shy, and that’s not what I wanted to read about.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and thought provoking if you are shy artist

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

“My war with shyness has ended in an uneasy truce.”

Relatable, thought provoking and often down right funny.

[Gergana · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very historical overview of people's psychology and moments of shy attitude and behavior though the centuries - an interesting read

[Mills College Library]

155.232 M8293 2017