The Emotional Economy of Holidaymaking
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The chapter reflects on how the history of emotions of Victorian and Edwardian holidaymaking can offer a better understanding of leisure consumption and of the entanglement of emotions, morality, and economy more generally. The book asserts that medical conceptions of emotions were imperative to the popularization of holidaymaking and to the transformation of its main objective from physical cure to emotion management. Nonetheless, the emotional economy model reveals that medical thought was by no means the only sphere of knowledge production significant for holiday culture; rather, heterogeneous bodies of knowledge all contributed to the formation of both the meaning of ‘the emotional’ and its commercial experience. The book illustrates the blurred lines between commercial and political, healthy and moral, as well as the overlapping roles of the producer, the advertiser, the doctor, and the holidaymaker. Addressing the different conceptions of emotional and moral economy, the chapter reflects on the theoretical potential of these models and offers guidelines for a comprehensive use of the concept of the ‘emotional economy’. Specifically, it elaborates on the need to account for the conceptual history of emotions, the performative dimensions of emotional experience and consumer behaviour, and the interaction between multiple spheres of knowledge production. Looking ahead to the central place of tourism in twenty-first-century societies and its relation to stress and burnout, the chapter calls on future research of past and present leisure cultures to take emotions seriously, and to rethink common notions of rationality, authenticity and agency.

This chapter shows that by the turn of the century, British spa and seaside resorts were explicitly proclaiming the emotional effects of holidaymaking and gradually advertising happiness and joy as their main product. It analyses the commodification of emotional experiences and its effects on notions of gender and class. The emotionalization of holidaymaking did not challenge its therapeutic function; rather, the crucial change was that the therapeutic framing of amusement opened holidaymaking to the lower classes, while at the same time paving the way for physicians to become involved in various aspects of the holiday industry. Through the analysis of travel guides, advertisements, popular literature, and texts written by vacationers, the second part of the chapter explores some of the challenges faced by resorts in their new function as an emotional industry. In order to provide emotional change, the resort industry had to adjust itself to all kinds of unstable perceptions of the moral dispositions and emotional meanings of time, space, sights, and sounds (e.g. modernity, technology, urban space, nature, crowds). In contrast to common assumptions about consumerism, it is shown that the kind of consumption practised in holidaymaking was not entirely subordinated to or manipulated by the production system; rather, the value of the product was co-produced within a broader emotional economy.

The chapter analyses parliamentary papers, documents from labour unions, moralist writings, and publications in the press in order to enquire into how political and legislative actors in late-nineteenth-century Britain sought to legitimize workers’ holidays. It gives special attention to the ways in which medical knowledge—with its newly gained authority—and the shift in interest from physical to emotional conditions influenced approaches to working hours, leisure time, and holiday legislation. The chapter details the ways in which shifting perceptions of health, class, gender, and emotions influenced legislation; this stands in contrast to previous research, which focused on the effect of economic interests and conditions. Similarly, it discusses how the pathologization of ‘the worker’ by the medical community helped make legislation more egalitarian and how it ultimately facilitated the inclusion of the working classes into the established middle-class holiday culture. The chapter asserts that holiday legislation gave concrete expression to a new understanding of emotions and work that ultimately took the form of particular rights. In this sense, it analyses the overlap between the emotional economy and the moral economy, revealing the relation between contested views on the significance of emotions and the legitimation of certain social practices. Furthermore, the chapter addresses a question that has been overlooked in extant research: ‘Why were watering places considered the ideal destination for workers’ holidays?’ It elucidates the influential role played by the traditional therapeutic view of watering places in converting spa and seaside resorts into major holiday destinations for all social classes.

This chapter explores how the objectives of the nascent holiday resort industry transformed in relation to dynamics of health, pleasure, and social class. It analyses the process of defining holiday as a product by drawing on source material from the different actors in the resort economy, including internal documents of the local corporations, resort publications, travel guides, railway advertising, vacationers’ accounts, and medical literature referring directly to holiday practices. It shows that the emotionally loaded encounter between different social classes at the resort was a core aspect of the shifting practices of holidaymaking from ‘taking the waters’ to commercial amusements, or from health to recreation. In order to comprehend these transformations, the chapter focuses on three watering-places that were among the most popular holiday destinations in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, but which differed in their characteristics: Harrogate—an aristocratic inland spa; Scarborough—a spa and seaside resort with mixed social clientele; and Blackpool—the exemplary working-class seaside town. The chapter concludes by pointing to the impact of the therapeutic rationalization of recreational activities on the resort industry, arguing that the notions of health and pleasure in the history of holidaymaking should not be addressed as opposites, but as interrelated concepts defined and valued within a wider context, namely the relation between leisure, class, gender, scientific expertise, and emotion knowledge.

The introductory chapter of the book outlines and questions the conventional approach to the democratization and popularization of British holidaymaking in the late-nineteenth century. This dominant take interprets it as a process of depathologization or the result of a loss of faith in the healing powers of water and a growing demand for entertainment and amusement. It then lays out the aims and objectives of the book by introducing its central claim that historical changes in holiday culture and tourism consumption can be better understood in light of shifts in the way people understood emotions and the emotional self. The popularization of the British holiday resort went hand in hand with intense debates about the purpose of the holiday (health or pleasure) and its methods (treatments or amusements), all related to broader moral controversies concerning class and wellbeing. The chapter presents the research questions, theoretical framework, and structure of the work. It then explains the theoretical implications of the absence of a dedicated study on the emotional aspects of holidaymaking, and introduces the concept of ‘emotional economy’, which serves as the book’s central analytical framework throughout.

This chapter outlines the role medical discourse played in the emotional economy of holidaymaking in Britain between 1870 and 1918. Physicians were crucial in the effort to make emotions into objects that could be pathologized and managed, and they helped forge a link between nature and health and between workers and holidaymaking. The analysis of medical texts reveals that holidays in nature, ‘taking the waters’, and embracing sea air and sunshine, continued to be viewed as therapeutic throughout the period. However, as the pathology to be healed was increasingly framed in emotional terms, the cure was correspondingly articulated as the provision of ‘positive’ emotional experiences. The chapter examines how emotions were gradually pathologized in the context of modernity and urban labour from the 1860s onwards. Outlining the emotional history of neurasthenia and overwork, which played a central role in the development of psychology as an independent discipline, the chapter shows that ‘the worker’ was increasingly conceptualized by the medical profession as a vulnerable emotional subject irrespective of gender and occupation. The chapter then explores how scientists thought overwork could be cured, demonstrating that the theorization of ‘change’ as a means to manage emotions undergirded the new take on holidaymaking as an efficient way to help people manipulate their emotional state and avoid the negative effects of work. By positioning themselves as the experts on the management of emotions, physicians became closely involved in reframing the goals of leisure and the strategies of the holiday industry.

This chapter focuses on the construction of the holidaymaker as an emotional subject by exploring vacationers’ expectations and experiences and examining how they actively shaped and were shaped by Victorian and Edwardian holiday culture. Drawing on popular stories and poems, vacationers’ accounts, and advice literature, it analyses the reciprocal relations between emotion knowledge, consumption, and subjectivity, emphasizing the various roles individuals played in the emotional economy of holidaymaking: as agents in the negotiation of the value ascribed to emotional experiences, as spectators and performers in the experience, and as co-producers of emotion knowledge. Homing in on moments of disappointment and boredom, the chapter demonstrates that holidaymakers of different genders and classes were aware of the medical view of holidaymaking, even though they did not always experience what was promised. Furthermore, the chapter explores the performative nature of holidaymaking, exposing the ways in which holidaymakers ‘learned how to feel’ by taking a disciplinary view of themselves and others during the holiday experience and by producing and consuming advice and popular literature that provided knowledge on what the emotional experience of holidays was supposed to be like. In contrast to frequent carnivalesque theorizations of holiday tourism, the resorts did not supply only change or contrast; they also provided a sense of normality, security, and familiarity. Tracing the development of the holidaymaker as a self-reflective consumer, the chapter also analyses the affinity between holidaymaking and authenticity.