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441 When Novels Were Novel (with Jason Feifer)

The History of Literature

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Why Women Shouldn't Read Novels

There was a belief in the eighteenth century that men had what was called a catabolic constitution. Women had an anabolic constitution, which is similar to how we now understand warm and cold blooded creatures. And there was concern that when women were reading ovels and getting emotionally invested in the novels, it was drawing upon that limited storage of energy. The novel devotee is as much a slave as the opium eater or the inebriate says one medical writer.

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