History Main / VictorianNovelDisease

"It's never lupus."

* In ''CrimeAndPunishment'', [[spoiler: Katerina Ivanovna]] dies of consumption after Marmeladov's funeral.

* A variant happens in ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', first to Lucy and then Mina. [[ItWasHisSled Lucy actually dies and Dracula was responsible for both cases.]]

* In one DoctorWho EighthDoctorAdventures novel, ''Camera Obscura'', the Doctor and his companions visit the Victorian era, and the Doctor is a bit under the weather and is [[GoodThingYouCanHeal recovering from having a sandbag dropped on him, and consequently his lungs crushed flat and his heart punctured by his broken ribs]]. He [[MinoredInAsskicking gets into a fight]], goes ash-white and faints, and is suspected of having consumption. Note that he's [[{{Bishounen}} kind of a prettyboy]] and his usual costume is a [[GorgeousPeriodDress bottle-green frock coat, a cravat, a double-breasted waistcoat]], etc., so it doesn't take much to make him look like a consumptive Victorian poet, which may have some connection to the fact he generally [[{{Fainting}} swoons an awful lot]].

If you're the star of a [[VictorianBritain Victorian Novel]], you're preferably [[HairOfGold blonde]] and [[BlueEyes blue-eyed]], [[PurpleProse with an alabaster brow and feet light as the entrance of Spring]]. So pure are your thoughts that you faint at even the ''sight'' of blood, and have little stomach for gory tales.

* Rin's mother in {{Kodomo No Jikan}}. Though they actually stated she had lung cancer.

* The BBC inserted an example into LarkRiseToCandleford ''which isn't in the original book''. The Post Office inspector takes sick after storming out of the post office having caught Dorcas in the act of providing Irish labourers with out-of-hours service. He faints, falls off his horse and is rescued, brought into the post office in a delirium burbling about his lost love Helena (or Eleanor, it's not clear which).

* in ''CrimeAndPunishment'' [[spoiler: Katerina Ivanovna dies of consumption after Marmeladov's funeral.]]

* In ''[[AnneOfGreenGables Anne of the Island]]'', Anne's childhood playmate [[spoiler:Ruby Gillis]] is revealed to be dying of "galloping consumption" (acute tuberculosis of the lungs). May be considered a play on this, as in childhood [[spoiler:Ruby]], instead of fainting gracefully at the scene of a drama, would usually just go into hysterics. However, it's still a TearJerker. Especially since [[spoiler:Ruby]], having been rather shallow all her life, is terrified to die and leave everything she's always considered important behind her. While she says she "doesn't doubt but that she'll go to Heaven", she's afraid because frivolity is all she's ever known, and now she's facing the unknown rather unprepared for it.

* in ''CrimeandPunishment'' [[spoiler: Katerina Ivanovna dies of consumption after Marmeladov's funeral.]]

* in [[Crime and Punishment]] [[spoiler: Katerina Ivanovna dies of consumption after Marmeladov's funeral.]]

* A variant happens in {{Dracula}}, to first Lucy and then Mina. [[ItWasHisSled Lucy actually dies and Dracula was responsible for both cases.]]

Standards of beauty are a funny thing. When the lower class is poor and thin and haggard looking, the nobility commissions portraits depicting themselves as Rubenesque, with rosy cheeks and dimpled arms, to show off their indulgent dining habits as a way of immortalizing their wealth. However, when the economy stabilizes and the poor are able to be plump and rosy-cheeked, then the standard of beauty... ''shrinks.'' Women become diminutive, frail, wan little things, prone to {{fainting}} spells and headaches.

* In one DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse novel, ''Camera Obscura'', the Doctor and his companions visit the Victorian era, and the Doctor is a bit under the weather and is [[GoodThingYouCanHeal recovering from having a sandbag dropped on him, and consequently his lungs crushed flat and his heart punctured by his broke ribs]]. He [[MinoredInAsskicking gets into a fight]], goes ash-white and faints, and is suspected of having consumption. Note that his usual costume is a [[GorgeousPeriodDress bottle-green frock coat, a cravat, a double-breasted waistcoat]], etc., which may have some connection to the fact he generally swoons an awful lot.

-->-- Pierre Auguste Renoir, ''Renoir, My Father''

-->-- Anna Russell

If you're the star of a [[VictorianBritain Victorian Novel]], you're preferably [[HairOfGold blonde]] and [[BlueEyes blue-eyed]], [[PurpleProse with an alabaster brow and feet light as the entrance of Spring]]. So pure are your thoughts that you faint at even the ''sight'' of blood, and have little stomach for gory tales.

You're also dying, probably of [[TheDiseaseThatShallNotBeNamed "consumption,"]] which fortunately has no ill effects other than adding a [[IncurableCoughOfDeath poignant cough to the appropriate sentences,]] and making your eyes ''even brighter'', your skin ''even paler'', and your complexion ''even more'' striking. (What was actually called "consumption" in the Victorian era is known as tuberculosis today, and its real-life effects are not nearly as glamorous as VictorianNovelDisease makes them out to be.)

In its final stages, this develops into all the symptoms of being an IllGirl - being AlwaysFemale, dying of some disease that is very slow at actually making you waste away, and poignant musings on death, culminating in a tragic death scene. The very most telling symptom is when people around you start saying you are TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth.

* Parodied and subverted in ''CountCain'', wherein several vain girls are tricked into injesting various parasites to get that lovely white pallor. [[/folder]]

[[folder:Film]]
* ''MoulinRouge'' is also based off of The Lady of the Camellias.

* In ''[[AnneOfGreenGables Anne of the Island]]'', Anne's childhood playmate [[spoiler: Ruby Gillis]] is revealed to be dying of "galloping consumption" (acute tuberculosis of the lungs). May be considered a play on this, as in childhood [[spoiler: Ruby]], instead of fainting gracefully at the scene of a drama, would usually just go into hysterics. However, it's still a TearJerker. Especially since [[spoiler:Ruby]], having been rather shallow all her life, is terrified to die and leave everything she's always considered important behind her. While she says she "doesn't doubt but that she'll go to Heaven", she's afraid because frivolity is all she's ever known, and now she's facing the unknown rather unprepared for it.

* A gender-flipped example in WutheringHeights where it is Edgar who dies of a wasting illness. Although, admittedly, the former was complicated by a particularly poisonous TragicDream and a MiserAdvisor, while the latter was [[MistakenForCheating increasingly convinced that his wife was having an affair.]]
* Evangeline "Little Eva" St.Clare from UncleTomsCabin.

* Arthur Dimmesdale? From TheScarletLetter? Then again [[spoiler: he actually dies]].

* ''ATreeGrowsInBrooklyn'' has three consumptives: Johnny's brother Andy, neighbor Henny Gaddis, and Sergeant McShane's wife, Molly. Henny is the only one Francie actually meets, and she can't believe he's dying because he has such bright eyes and rosy cheeks.
* In LoisMcMasterBujold's ''[[VorkosiganSaga Komarr]]'', Ekaterin mentions that when girls pretend it's the Time of Isolation, they always leave out all the bits about dying in childbirth, or of dysentery, and if they're every dying romantically of a disease, "it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control."

* A ''{{GURPS}}'' technology supplement for {{Steampunk}} campaigns has controlled inoculation with tuberculosis as a method for rich women to look suitably wan and feeble and hence, attractive. The {{Squick}} is intentional.

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