WHY DO VIOLETS SHRINK? FULFORD ON WHY WE’RE SHY.

WHAT EVOLUTIONARY SENSE COULD IT POSSIBLY MAKE FOR HUMANS TO BE BASHFUL? DARWIN COULDN'T FIGURE IT OUT, AND NEITHER CAN WE

Charles Darwin was confounded by an “odd state of mind” that he recognized in himself and many others. Shyness. Why did it exist? He could work out how lust, greed, love, etc. evolved as traits over many millennia. Each of them had a clear purpose in the creation and survival of humanity. But shyness? It was, so far as he could see, of no benefit to our species.

And shyness could lead sometimes to blushing, another non- starter among human qualities. Darwin noted that it makes the blusher suffer and the beholder uncomfortable, “without being of the least service to either of them.” Why? The problem that Darwin never solved is the subject of a splendidly quirky book, Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness ( Yale University Press), by Joe Moran, who teaches cultural history in Liverpool. Moran searches tirelessly through history, literature, folklore and a little medicine without concluding why so many millions of us are shy. It remains as mysterious as it is pervasive.

Some shy people suffer from feelings of inadequacy that they don’t care to acknowledge. Some may have secrets. When people say “I can’t stand cocktail parties,” that usually means they feel misplaced and self- conscious when talking to large groups of people whom they only half know. When they say “I have no small talk,” what they mean is that they’ve never mastered easygoing conversation.

Moran doesn’t know why he’s often shy himself but realizes he’s a chronic case. Before he makes a phone call, he writes out what he wants to say. He keeps a notebook full of topics to raise when he finds himself at a loss for words, which apparently happens often. I’m also painfully shy on occasion and recognize Moran as a fellow sufferer, but I have never developed such an organized strategy. From his perch in England, Moran observes that this is a national characteristic of the English. Certainly they are widely known as a people of few words. In the 19th cen- tury, the French used the phrase “an English conversation” to mean a long silence. Continentals were astonished to discover that many English didn’t talk at meals, which in other countries was considered a time for relaxed conversation.

In England, in some classes, silence is a virtue. The working-class mother of Alan Bennett, the playwright, thought that shyness was a sign of refinement. It saved you from being “common” and prevented you from showing off. Alan Turing, a man of commanding intelligence when dealing with mathematics, was bashful in conversation.

David Lean’s 1945 film, Brief Encounter, was viewed as the perfect English movie, loved for its silences. A middle- class woman, played by Celia Johnson, and a doctor, played by Trevor Howard, meet by chance, fall in love, never get around to stating their feelings and eventually return to their usual lives.

But shy silences are not just limited to Great Britain.

In the 19th century, American literature was a hotbed of reticence. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who saw himself as “mild, shy, gentle,” avoided all unnecessary talking. If he saw anyone approaching him during his evening strolls he would avoid conversation by leaving the road and moving into a field. Emily Dickinson stuck mostly to her room and spoke to visitors from a half-closed bedroom door. Ralph Waldo Emerson, admitting his own “porcupine impossibility of contact with men,” saw that as typically American. “Insular & pathetically solitary” was a national style, in his view. America even had a silent politician. Calvin Coolidge, a Vermont-born Republican president of the United States in the 1920s, was famous for the brevity of his speeches. He was so taciturn that when he died, Dorothy Parker asked, “How could they tell?”

Is there something wrong with people who are reluctant to speak? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has recognized “social anxiety disorder.” Prozac, Zoloft and other medicines are often prescribed to help. However, Moran says he would rather endure his shyness.

Since his university days, Moran has nourished an exotic taste for the ordinary. He’s attracted to the apparently trivial activities and feelings of human life. He reports that “I am often asked, with a certain benevolent bemusement, why I study arcane matters such as the history of crossing the road 1936-76, the phenomenon of the queue in postwar Britain or the cultural politics of the park railing.”

He’s actually written a book called Queuing for Beginners. That title suggests he likes the amiable conceit of treating his work as part of the howto industry. In fact, the British edition of his new book was subtitled “A Field Guide to Shyness.”

His themes are subjects most scholars regard with condescension at best. When asked what he does for a living, he’s self- conscious, even – it must be said – a bit shy. He realizes it must sound like tenured trainspotting but he has a way of pointing his material so that it matters to his readers. When he writes about these subjects, they’re never banal.

He ignores the fields of study universities consider important and digs into the functions that fill the lives of people whether they like them or not. He shows no interest in hobbies; it’s the minute aspects of real, unavoidable life that he examines with care.

He’s quoted the late Doreen Massey, a Marxist geography professor in Britain. She said that every generation talks about the frantic pace of current life, but for many people, common experience “still consists of waiting in a bus shelter with your shopping for a bus that never comes.”

But what are we doing while we wait? Only one thing is certain: we are not talking to each other.

WHEN PEOPLE SAY ‘I CAN’T STAND COCKTAIL PARTIES,’ THAT USUALLY MEANS THEY FEEL MISPLACED