The 19th century was a time where many great Russian literary authors spoke out on what was important to them. Many events and conditions helped shaped the society and how people lived. During the 19th century, lovesickness was viewed as an illness. Lovesickness is when the person you love does not share the same feelings towards you and because of that you experience psychological and physiological problems. Such as depression, insomnia, irregular pulse and many other symptoms. In the 19th century novel “White Nights” by Fyodor Dostoevsky lovesickness is experienced by people of both genders and displayed differently by the characters and their actions.

There are many symptoms that connect to a person that is suffering from being lovesick. When a person experiences a deep form of love for someone, they often tend to develop insomnia, irregular pulse, fever and other symptoms. The reason a person develops these symptoms is if they are not receiving the same love back. During this stage the brain activity is not normal. We tend to get distracted at doing simple everyday tasks, we think about our lover too much or other things that cause you to only focus on that specific person. According to Benedict Carey in the brain in love it states, “The biology of romance helps account for how we think about passionate love and explain its insanity: why we might travel cross-country for a single kiss, and plunge into blackest despair if our beloved turns away.” Scientist from everywhere have researched how it is that a person’s brain activity affects how we feel towards love. It is a strong feeling in where we act different and do actions that we have never thought about.

In the novel “White Nights” we are introduced to a character who has isolated himself from everyone and let alone with his thoughts. He identifies himself as the dreamer and that is how he is known throughout the novel. He meets this beautiful girl as he is on his way home and is nervous on how to approach her. “And timid though I am with women, this was too good a chance to be missed!” (Dostoevsky 9). The dreamer has not had contact with women for a long time and running into Nastenka, he realizes that he can no longer be shy towards woman. After speaking to her, he notices that he can confide in her and goes on to tell her his life story. The dreamer can be defined as lovesick because he has never found a woman to whom he can tell her story. After spending the whole day together and both must return home, the dreamer tells Nastenka that he likes the connection they have formed, “Only two minutes and you’ve made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you’ve reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts” (Dostoevsky 15). He is constantly shy toward woman but with Nastenka he felt as he had known her forever and can be comfortable with her. Many times, the signs that a person is in love is not seen very quickly, some may interpret it as love but won’t really say it. According to Sobel “The diagnostic (and “treatments”) of lovesickness in this period’s representative’s literary works offer insight into the complex and painful process…” Sobel talked about many different literary novels during the Russian century to interpret and show what characters dealt with when diagnosed as lovesick. This can explain how the dreamer felt because once we get to see how he really feels towards Nastenka, Dostoevsky analyzes how the dreamer experiences this painful process of not being able to be with her.

Nastenka is a seventeen-year-old girl who has lived with her grandmother since she’s been little. Because of an incident Nastenka made when she was fifteen, she has been attached to her grandmother by a pin. She does not have the normal life like other girls, she has never experienced love in the way that she wants to because of her grandmother. When she finally does it ends in a way that is devastating. She has a love story that did not end well. She fell in love with a lodger that lived in the attic of her apartment and was devasted when he left her all sudden. Nastenka experiences lovesickness in the form that she cannot be with the lodger the way she wanted. He left and proposed that they get married in a year when he returns to St. Petersburg, but as a year passes, she concludes he has forgotten her. The dreamer then encourages Nastenka to write a letter to the lodger explaining that she still remembers the promise he had told her. “I have lived in such happy anticipation of your return that it is hardly that I cannot bear the suspense even one day longer. Now that you are back, I cannot help wondering whether you have not after all changed your mind.” (Dostoevsky 38). In this letter she reveals to him that she has been waiting patiently for his return but if he does not feel the same way towards her, she will accept the fact they cannot be together. Love letters in the 19th century was important because it is how people expressed themselves through writing. According to Lystra “The range, depth and intensity of masculine emotional expression in love letters challenges any unqualified generalization that nineteenth-century men were less emotional or less forthcoming about their feelings than nineteenth century women”. Men are not open to discussing their feelings as women are and it is why many women tend to write more love letters. Which is what Nastenka did because the lodger never reached out to her after returning to St. Petersburg. Since woman tend to be more sensitive towards their feelings, they tend to do what is necessary to get the attention of men.

In the novel “White Nights”, Nastenka accepts the decision that the lodger will not return to her and marry her the way he promised. As she is getting ready to live her life with the dreamer, the Lodger appears and sparks a reaction to Nastenka. “But Nastenka did not look. She stood speechless, motionless. A minute later she clung somewhat timidly close to me. Her hand trembled in mine. I looked at her. She clung more closely.” (Dostoevsky 55) Her body reacted in a way that showed how she still felt love for him after all that she had gone through with the dreamer. From getting engaged to desperately leaving to go back to the lodger. Research has been done in which people’s pulse was measured after hearing specific name. It was said that if a person’s pulse increases, the researchers would be able to tell how that person feels toward the called-on person. Mesualm’s research about physicians such as Erasistratos, Galen, and Avicenna showed how medicine in the 19th century was viewed and interpreted by the physicians. The research method Erasistrator imposed was observational behavior. The old story of Antiochus and how he fell in love with his stepmother is what brought Erasistrstors to investigate his lovesick illness. He observes everyone that comes to the room where Antiochus is staying and concludes that not a single person affects him until his stepmother steps inside the room. His body temperature and the way he acts changes and allows the researcher to take note of this. According to the diagnosis of love-sickness, “Galen thus stresses the experimental approach. Where he obtained this particular methodological information is not clear, the taking of the pulse is not explicitly stated in any of the primary sources now extant concerning this well-known example of Erasistrators skill as a diagnostician”. The conclusion towards the irregular pulse beat is not in his research and that is where many other physicians expand more on it. This is where many other physicians explained their theory that they believed, it still connected to Galen but with more detailed explanations.

The way the dreamer reacts is also important in the way he is viewed as lovesick. In a short matter of time he went from someone who is anti-social to falling in love with the first girl he ever encounters with. He maintains a friendship with Nastenka because she is someone who has also confided in him and has not given up the chance to get to know him more. Nastenka is on the verge of losing the dreamer because of the way she cannot forget about the lodger. The dreamer is hopelessly in love with Nastenka but is keeping his feelings to himself. “Why don’t we say straight out what’s in our hearts, if we know that our words will be spoken in vain? It is as though we were all afraid that our feelings would be hurt if we revealed them too soon.” (Dostoevsky 45). It sounds as though Nastenka is saying these things to get the dreamer to express his feelings towards her. At this point the dreamer is letting Nastenka agonize on the lodger who will not return to Nastenka, but he is doing it because he loves her and wants to see her happy. During the reunited moment Nastenka and the lodger have, the dreamer is left to only see his beloved walk away. “The weather was dreadful. It was pouring, and the rain kept beating dismally against my windowpanes. It was dark in the room; it was dull and dreary outside… I was beginning to feel feverish.” (Dostoevsky 56) The dreamer lives a life in where he is not happy, this cloud of sadness lingers on him and he gets to the point where he starts to feel ill. Many times, we experience symptoms from rejection. According to Richard B. Rosse, the diagnosis of love trauma syndrome is something people can experience from having a love that failed. As he states in his book, free yourself from a broken pain, “The person’s response when first learning about the love trauma syndrome involves intense emotional distress. This distress includes feelings of sadness, fear, anxiety and hopelessness, and might involve physical reactions, such as feeling nauseated… even feverish”. Rosse studies the patient’s case and how it affected the individual and takes what he knows to diagnose patients with the syndrome. The dreamer can be diagnosed with love trauma syndrome because he experiences these physical reactions to losing Nastenka.

The 19th century novel “White Nights” by Fyodor Dostoevsky, both characters deal with being lovesick in different ways. Nastenka the main character is in love with someone whom she cannot be with, while the dreamer the man she just met falls into utterly love with her. The dreamer knew that he cannot fall in love with Nastenka but after connecting with her in a way he’s never connected with anyone, his feelings for her expanded. Their diagnosis of being lovesick is similar in the way they both feel as though they will never receive the same love back. But different when both characters receive different outcomes in which it affected their physical emotion. They both go through symptoms and rejection differently which is why it is viewed separately.

Works Cited 

Sobol, Valeria. Febris Erotica: Lovesickness in the Russian Literary Imagination. Seattle: University of Washington Press. (2009). Print.  

Carey Benedict. “The Brain in Love.” 

“The Diagnosis of Love-Sickness: Experimental Psychophysiology Without The Polygraph.” Psychophysiology 9.5 (1972): 546-551. 

Rosse, Richard B. The Love Trauma Syndrome: Free Yourself From The Pain Of A Broken Heart. Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Pub, 1999. eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost).  

Lystra, Karen. Searching The Heart. Oxford University Press, 1989. 

Dostoevsky, Fyodor (1848). White Nights (1st ed.).