Performing Self-Reliance: Americans’ Emotional Styles during the Great Depression

In the 1960s, Clyde Fields, a Utah dentist, reflected back on how the Great Depression had affected people. “I would say . . . that people learned a little more self-reliance. . . . they tried to do more for themselves. . . .they learned to be more cooperative and helpful toward one another. There was more of a spirit of cooperation. We were all in this boat together. . . . There was more of a spirit of friendliness.” Fields’ conflicting messages—celebrating both self-reliance and community simultaneously—was by no means an anomaly, for many Americans have expressed such tensions. Since the mid-19th century, Americans have heard countless celebrations of self-reliance as a central national virtue and value. However, many Americans felt—and continue to feel--a profound ambivalence about the trait, seeing it as isolating, anti-social, and perhaps even sinful. Indeed, a recent Pew poll showed that only 29% of Americans surveyed endorsed self-reliance. Yet while self-reliance is more mythology than reality, it has nevertheless left a deep imprint on many Americans’ sense of self, affecting what feelings and behaviors they display. This paper will explore how Americans from all walks of life gradually learned to “perform” self-reliance in public life, even as they often harbored other, more communal, commitments and dispositions. Focusing on the 1930s, it will examine how individuals facing the prospect of unemployment and dependence created an emotional style designed to project autonomy and self-reliance.