Word: hypochondriacal
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Moliere's play concerns a hypochondriac, Argan, who wants his daughter Angelique to marry a doctor, though she meanwhile has fallen in love with a musician. At the same time, Argan's wife schemes to get his fortune, and his brother tries to cure him of his hypochondria...
...townsfolk are happy about Illiers' status as the center of a Proust cult. Until quite recently, many scorned the author as a homosexual, atheistic, hypochondriac aesthete. Also a very difficult writer. Even Mayor René Compère, 67, a pert little man who takes visitors on a lecture tour around the town, has yet to crack the gigantic set of Proust's works that is prominently displayed in his office. Compère argues that les Proustiens, as the literary-minded tourists are known, are not even good for business. Says the mayor: 'They come from...
...dinner with Catherine and Anna sets loose a welter of tensions and animosities. Anna, you see, has "flipped," committed a sexual act, undefined but traumatic, with an adolescent hoodlum at her school. She barrages Catherine with demands, seeks protection against the outside world (through a pure vegetarian diet, through hypochondriac fantasies about death). Catherine "drinks a little" to ease the tension and chews raw hamburger, when Anna isn't looking. Ceil, "over-dressed Sheena of the blackboard jungle," wants Anna put away in a mental institution, though she's vulnerable (like all the characters in the play) since she stole...
...sick and you should respect me and take care of me.' It is clear from our studies that if the older hypochondriac's environment changes for the better, he will too. He will again become a reasonable, normal person. This is quite different from the reaction of the younger hypochondriac, who is much sicker psychologically and much less likely to respond to a favorable change in environment...