Less than meets the eye: the strange career of Dorothea Dix. [Review of: Brown, T.J. Dorothea Dix: New England reformer. Harvard University Press, 1998].

Abstract

Over a century ago Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard asserted that purity of heart is the will to one thing.' By this standard Dorothea Dix's heart was pristine. Possessed of an indomitable will and wholly devoted to her personal crusade on behalf of the insane, Dix dedicated virtually her entire adult life to proclaiming that the neglect and mistreatment of these poor crazed beings amounted to nothing less than a national sin. Over four decades and tens of thousands of miles, Dix crisscrossed the country to publicize her cause, earning well-deserved fame as one of the most intrepid women in American public life. Like other romantic reformers of antebellum America, Dix understood her divine mission to encompass far more than the specific ends of her reform activities.2 Mistreatment of the insane was a barometer of the sordid spiritual life of a people obsessed with ambition and greed. By transforming the care of its weakest members, Dix as moral autocrat (p. 261) sought to save the nation. Unmarried and without close attachments, like Jean D'Arc, she eschewed a personal life in order to sacrifice herself for her country. Despite her herculean efforts for the more humane treatment of the insane, Dix long remained something of an enigma for historians. For more than a century, scholars recounted a romantic and largely apocryphal tale of Dorothea Dix based on her career in the Civil War. Most Americans still know her as the