History Main / VictorianNovelDisease

** The final one is Marie Antoinette, Louis Joseph's mother, who discovers her illness during her imprisonement and trial. It doesn't stop her from putting in his place the one man depraved enough to accuse her of ''incest'' with her other son, or from [[FacingDeathWithDignity showing everyone how the Queen of France faces the guillotine]].

* Subverted by Lady Pole in ''Literature/JonathanStrangeAndMrNorrell''. Superficially she would have appeared to have something like TB (exhaustion, languor, weight-loss, depression, etc.) but in fact, she was being harassed (i.e. slowly tortured to death by being forced to dance, night after night) by faeries. Quite a few people were seriously worried about her health but her mother refused to hear a word of it.

When suffering from Victorian Novel Disease, you can expect to meet plenty of people OopNorth or [[FunetikAksent from Zummerzet]], who will probably end up teaching you a thing or two about class, life in the mills or in the countryside, and how to love someone for real, amongst numerous other lessons. That is when they ''aren't dying of [=VND=] themselves''.

-->She had a scarf wrapped about a thin face that was bright-eyed with consumption. It was odd, he thought, how the dying consumptives went through a period of lucent beauty before [[RealityEnsues their lungs coughed up the bloody lumps and they died in racking agony.]]

In modern times, a virulent strain has developed as the SoapOperaDisease. The LittlestCancerPatient is usually more upbeat about their [[YourDaysAreNumbered impending death]]. A common treatment for this is HealthyCountryAir or a trip to a HealingSpring.

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. Rather like Creator/DrSeuss' star-bellied Sneetches, [[SlobsVersusSnobs the "haves" set as the height of desirability whatever quality the "have-nots" cannot achieve.]]

The epitome of the fragile, delicate woman is the IllGirl -- AlwaysFemale, [[NatureAdoresAVirgin always innocent]] [[ChasteHero and pure]], almost always young [[note]] (usually in her teens or twenties, someone you wouldn't ''expect'' to be terminally ill)[[/note]], always dying of some disease that is very slow at actually killing her. As she lies enthroned in her beautiful sickroom, everyone around her spends countless hours musing poignantly on her death and/or trying to surround her with the things she loved most in life. Her proximity to the eternal gives her immense wisdom and insight, and she will be a neverending source of advice and comfort to her caretakers, to the point where it's hard to tell who is comforting whom. And, of course, since WomenAreDelicate, no aspect of her disease (whatever it may be, [[TheDiseaseThatShallNotBeNamed if it's named at all]]) is "[[{{Squick}} icky]]" in any way, even if it would be total BodyHorror in RealLife: she will never suffer from vomiting or diarrhea, never sweat more than a light glisten despite possibly running a fever, never develop any [[BeautyEqualsGoodness unsightly]] skin rashes, lesions, or lumps, and any [[BloodFromTheMouth blood or mucus she coughs up]] will always land delicately (and unseen) in her lace handkerchief. Even when her weakness becomes so great that she can barely move, [[InspirationallyDisadvantaged she will never succumb to anger, despair, sorrow, regret, sadness, or frustration.]] When at last she slips the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God, those around her (one of them likely [[DiedInYourArmsTonight holding her frail form in his arms]]) will smile through their tears and [[TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth rejoice that her pure soul has taken its flight from this dirty world]]. [[{{Glurge}} Gag]].

Alternatively, if you experience something extremely harrowing or frightening, you can expect to fall into a subtype of [=VND=], where you might ‘faint from exertion’ then spend several months in bed beset by a mysterious half-physiological, half-psychological conundrum of a condition.

* Marguerite aka The Lady of the Camellias (from the novel by Creator/AlexandreDumasFils) is dying of a VictorianNovelDisease. Because nothing, not even the deterioration of one's lungs, should stand in the way of one's career as a successful courtesan!

The epitome of the fragile, delicate woman is the IllGirl -- AlwaysFemale, [[NatureAdoresAVirgin always innocent]] [[ChasteHero and pure]], almost always young [[note]] (usually in her teens or twenties, someone you wouldn't ''expect'' to be terminally ill)[[/note]], always dying of some disease that is very slow at actually killing her. As she lies enthroned in her beautiful sickroom, everyone around her spends countless hours musing poignantly on her death and/or trying to surround her with the things she loved most in life. Her proximity to the eternal gives her immense wisdom and insight, and she will be a neverending source of advice and comfort to her caretakers, to the point where it's hard to tell who is comforting whom. And, of course, since WomenAreDelicate, no aspect of her disease (whatever it may be, [[TheDiseaseThatShallNotBeNamed if it's named at all]]) is "[[{{Squick}} icky]]" in any way, even if it would be total BodyHorror in RealLife: she will never suffer from vomiting or diarrhea, never sweat more than a light glisten despite possibly running a fever, never develop any [[BeautyEqualsGoodness unsightly]] skin rashes, lesions, or lumps, and any [[BloodFromTheMouth blood or mucus she coughs up]] will always land delicately (and unseen) in her lace handkerchief. Even when her weakness becomes so great that she can barely move, [[InspirationallyDisadvantaged she will never succumb to anger, despair, sorrow, regret, sadness, or frustration.]] When at last she slips the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God, those around her (one of them likely [[DiedInYourArmsTonight holding her frail form in his arms]]) will smile through their tears and [[TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth rejoice that her pure soul has taken its flight from this dirty world]]. Gag.

* In ''Film/WutheringHeights1939'', Cathy dies romantically [[DiedInYourArmsTonight in Heathcliff’s arms]] of a disease that the doctor can’t identify: the main symptoms are fever and inflammation of the lungs, but the doctor thinks it all comes down to [[DeathByDespair “the will to die.”]] This is a LighterAndSofter change from the novel, where her despair triggers a brutal BrainFever, leading to her death in premature [[DeathByChildbirth childbirth.]]

* In the 1939 version of ''Film/WutheringHeights'', Cathy dies romantically [[DiedInYourArmsTonight in Heathcliff’s arms]] of a disease that the doctor can’t identify: the main symptoms are fever and inflammation of the lungs, but the doctor thinks it all comes down to [[DeathByDespair “the will to die.”]] This is a LighterAndSofter change from the novel, where her despair triggers a brutal BrainFever, leading to her death in premature [[DeathByChildbirth childbirth.]]

* In the 1939 version of Film/WutheringHeights, Cathy dies romantically [[DiedInYourArmsTonight in Heathcliff’s arms]] of a disease that the doctor can’t identify: the main symptoms are fever and inflammation of the lungs, but the doctor thinks it all comes down to [[DeathByDespair “the will to die.”]] This is a LighterAndSofter change from the novel, where her despair triggers a brutal BrainFever, leading to her death in premature [[DeathByChildbirth childbirth.]]

** Actually there is a lot of this kind of thing in Wuthering Heights- BrainFever in particular. Emily Bronte appears to flipflop on whether brain fever is caused by intense emotion (when Cathy seems to be suffering more from hypermanic episodes), or by [[CatchYourDeathOfCold getting soaking wet]] or actually contagious. People get it all three ways, and it kills at least three people.

** The Holmes canon has a couple of cases of "brain fever", usually brought on by severe stress, which reads to the modern reader as a much more scientific version of this. (Both Doyle (in RealLife) and Watson (in the story) were doctors, and as such, not likely to tolerate the usual version of this trope, with such a vague diagnosis and such a vague cause--but brain fever was an actual, contemporary diagnosis made by actual doctors, and still is, under the more specific headings of "Encephalitis", "Meningitis", "Cerebritis", Scarlet Fever, and, as in the case of the brain fever in ''The Naval Treaty'', possibly "stress-induced psychotic break".)

** Actually there is a lot of this kind of thing in Wuthering Heights- 'brain fever' in particular. Emily Bronte appears to flipflop on whether brain fever is caused by intense emotion (when Cathy seems to be suffering more from hypermanic episodes), or by [[CatchYourDeathOfCold getting soaking wet]] or actually contagious. People get it all three ways, and it kills at least three people.

* Creator/JohnKeats, Music/FryderykChopin, Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, and [[Creator/CharlotteBronte the]] [[Creator/EmilyBronte Brontë]] [[Creator/AnneBronte sisters]] all had their young deaths that were, at the very least, attributed to tuberculosis. Their deaths led to the popular notion of "consumption" being the disease of bohemian artists. There was even a romantic idea that the disease made creative geniuses even more creative during the time they had left. Creator/LordByron once commented that, "I should like to die from consumption." (Instead, Byron died of a less romantic septic infection.)

* Creator/JohnKeats, Music/FryderykChopin, Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, and [[Creator/CharlotteBronte the]] [[Creator/EmilyBronte Brontë]] [[Creator/AnneBronte sisters]] have all had their young deaths attributed to tuberculosis. Their deaths led to the popular notion of "consumption" being the disease of bohemian artists. There was even a romantic idea that the disease made creative geniuses even more creative during the time they had left. Creator/LordByron once commented that, "I should like to die from consumption." (Instead, Byron died of a less romantic septic infection.)

* Creator/JohnKeats, Music/FryderykChopin, Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, and [[Creator/CharlotteBronte the]] [[Creator/EmilyBronte Brontë]] [[Creator/AnneBronte sisters]] were all killed by tuberculosis at a young age. Their deaths led to the popular notion of "consumption" being the disease of bohemian artists. There was even a romantic idea that the disease made creative geniuses even more creative during the time they had left. Creator/LordByron once commented that, "I should like to die from consumption." (Instead, Byron died of a less romantic septic infection.)

* Creator/JohnKeats, Music/FryderykChopin, Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, and [[Creator/CharlotteBronte the]] [[Creator/EmilyBronte Brontë]] [[Creator/AnneBronte sisters]] were all killed by tuberculosis at a young age. Their deaths led to the popular notion of "consumption" being the disease of bohemian artists. There was even a romantic idea that the disease made creative geniuses even more creative. Creator/LordByron once commented that, "I should like to die from consumption." (Instead, Byron died of a less romantic septic infection.)