The following article examines the literary representations of hypersensitivity between 1870 and 1900. In literary texts the characterisic manifestations of this phenomenon were closely connected to the type of the nervous character (la névrose). The concept of ‘la névrose’ was indeed widespread in the late nineteenth century, and it soon became very popular, which is not altogether surprising, because its various symptoms and causes were ardently discussed in the medical and philosophical discourse and were, moreover, disseminated by various scientific publications.