Reading Neurasthenia: Nervous Exhaustion and its Afterlives in Pío Baroja’s El árbol de la ciencia [The Tree of Knowledge] (1911)

Abstract

Foregrounding the assimilation of discourses about neurasthenia in Spain, this article analyses the literary representation of nervous exhaustion in Pío Baroja’s El árbol de la ciencia (1911) [The Tree of Knowledge] through the interconnected lenses of gender and social class. By considering the cultural association of neurasthenia with social and intellectual status, and its differential application in men and women, the representation of nervous exhaustion in El árbol de la ciencia is shown both to reinforce and subvert dominant medical theories of the period. Proposing a new reading of this novel, I contend that symptoms of neurasthenia inform the trajectory of the protagonist Andrés Hurtado, who treats the deprived areas of Madrid as a doctor and burns out, eventually finding himself unable to practise medicine. The final section explores the afterlives of neurasthenia as a precursor to present-day conceptualisations of burnout in the context of work productivity.