Alice James

Alice James (August 7, 1848 – March 6, 1892) was an American diarist. The only daughter of Henry James, Sr. and sister of psychologist and philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, she is known mainly for the posthumously published diary that she kept in her final years.

Life

Born into a wealthy and intellectually active family, James soon developed the psychological and physical problems that would plague her until the end of her life at age 43. The youngest of five children, she lived with her parents until their deaths in 1882. She taught history from 1873 to 1876 for the Society to Encourage Studies at Home, a Boston-based correspondence school for women founded by Anna Ticknor. James never married, seeking affection from her brothers and female friends instead. By 1882, she suffered at least two major breakdowns and would experience several more before her death from breast cancer.

Era of hysteria

In the Victorian era, hysteria was an extremely common diagnosis for women. Almost any disease a woman had could fit the symptoms of hysteria because there was no set list of symptoms. In 1888, twenty years after James was "overwhelmed by violent turns of hysteria", she wrote in her diary that she was both suicidal and homicidal. She was struggling with the urge to kill her father, though this diary entry does not state the reason why she was patricidal. In 1866 James traveled to New York to receive "therapeutic exercise", and in 1884 she received electrical "massage". Hoping that a change of scenery would improve her health, she traveled to England with her companion Katherine Peabody Loring. She suffered recurring bouts of "hysteria" for the next eight years until she died from breast cancer. James sought various treatments for her disorders but never found significant relief.