Review of “Homesickness: An American History” by Susan Matt, Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, 2012

The wonderfully named French physician Louis-Alexandre-

Hippolyte Leroy-Dupré wrote that acute homesickness “becomes

more rare each day thanks to rapid communications which modern

industry is beginning to establish among people who will soon be

nothing more than one big happy family.” One might imagine that

this observation was written for the age of Facebook, Skype and

Twitter, but it is fact over one hundred and fifty years old, dating

from 1846.

Susan J Matt is a historian at Weber State University in Utah; her

specialty is the history of the emotions (a previous book is entitled

“Keeping Up With The Joneses: Envy in American Consumer

Society 1890-1930”) This admirably lucid book, based on primary

sources such as diaries, letters and personal interviews, is an

overview of the history of a particular emotion, homesickness.

American society is famously built on the archetype of the pioneer,

the rugged individualist, cheerfully moving on from place to place

without demur. This archetype finds different forms; the

immigrant, the cowboy, the “Organisation Man”, the pilgrim

settler, but all have in common a sense of perpetual motion and

freedom from ties.

As with all archetypes and grand narratives, the details of reality

were very different. Very many pioneers and immigrants returned,

despite the social pressures to remain. Matt places centre stage

the men and women who actually lived these experiences, and

who were often beset by overwhelming homesickness. This was

especially so for women, less in control of their destiny than men.

From the first settlers on, thoughts of home contended with the

various religious, political and economic motives for perpetual

motion. While official rhetoric emphasised the importance of

forging on with the pioneer spirit, diaries and letters allow Matt to

reconstruct the emotional lives often lost to history.

In 1865, twenty –four Union soldiers officially died of nostalgia [2019 note – I should have said “the official cause of death for 24 Union soldiers was nostalgia].

Among the American forces in World War 1, only one casualty had

a cause of death listed as nostalgia. Matt records the varying

opinions of psychiatrists, alienists on physicians on the causes and

management of nostalgia-as-an-illness. Contemporary concerns

such as racial and ethnic purity (“weaker” ethnicities such as the

Irish and Southern Europeans were often held to be more

susceptible) and venereal disease were implicated as risk factors

for nostalgia cases.

Over the later nineteenth century and into the twentieth, public

attitudes to homesickness hardened. Once, children who crossed

thousands of miles to return from boarding schools to families

were celebrated. Their attachment to home was seen as evidence

of a tender sensibility. How homesickness was addressed by the

military in the various wars in the era Matt’s history covers is

revealing. Armies have to balance the motivating power of

attachment to country with the demotivating power of separation

from that same country. In the American Civil War, homesickness

among soldiers was seen as evidence of a nobility of nature. This

attitude persisted through the century. The sole nostalgia fatality of

the Spanish-American War of 1898 was treated with great

sympathy bordering on glorification by the contemporary media.

The inter-war years saw the cultural shift gain momentum. This

was the era where the child rearing “expert” began to opine in

the popular press; no less a figure than the seminal behaviourist

John Watson weighs in on the importance of avoiding excessive

affection with one’s children. The following fifty years saw the

denigration of homesickness gain pace. Where the home-loving

children of previous eras were celebrated, now over attachment to

parents and to home was seen as “sissifying” and a manifestation

of “Momism.” An ethic of universal cheerfulness which celebrated

the “can-do” spirit further cast homesickness into disrepute. The

interests of corporate America were in creating a mobile workforce,

ready to cross the continent at short notice. While this is not a

matter that Matt discusses, this aspect did get me thinking how

the anti-family jeremiads of R D Laing and David Cooper ironically

dovetailed neatly with this corporate imperative. Perhaps, as the

Marxists say, there are no accidents.

Anti-homesickness rhetoric persists today, although the picture is

complicated by the rise of technologies which allow instantaneous

communication, and the global availability of familiar brands. Yet

these developments are palliatives for homesickness, not cures.

Skype, Facebook and similar technologies allow a certain abolition

of distance, and Matt shows how they have perhaps helped in the

rehabilitation of homesickness as a valid public emotion. Indeed,

one of her themes is “the surprising persistence of the extended

family” and how emotions and their expression can be moulded

and shaped by social forces, but are also strangely resistant to them

Indeed, this is a history of the resilience of homesickness, despite

everything. So many approaches in contemporary humanities

emphasise the contingent and socially constructed nature of

things; what Matt manages to do is to acknowledge the role of

social and economic pressures while making a strong case that

emotions are less fungible than theorists, pundits and social

engineers of all political hues would believe. There is also very little

of the jargon and theoretical ballast which many contemporary

historians freight their work

Matt’s title clearly indicates that this is an American history of

homesickness, but the book is of great interest to an Irish

readership too. The Irish immigrant experience abroad is of course

familiar to most of us; a sizable chunk of Irish popular music is

eloquent testimony to the force of homesickness. More

fundamentally, homesickness is a universal emotion; all readers will

find someone to identify with among the lives Matt describes. We

may not always go through the same social transformations as

America at the same time, but we always seem to get round to

them sooner or later. In our age of ghost estates and resurgent

emigration, many of the concerns of the book seem all too

relevant.

Academic careers rival medical careers in demanding frequent

moves (and in requiring a certain insouciance as the proper

response.) In her acknowledgements, Matt salutes her husband

and observes “since we met in Ithaca, New York, in 1990, we have

lived in six different states and travelled many places, but no matter

where we are, when I am with him, I am home.” It is a poignant

note, and one which sets the tone for a humane and thought-

provoking work.