Faint In Shock / Literature

• Alias Grace: Grace Marks faints frequently, at situations such as being sentenced to death or running for her life and hearing a gunshot that she mistakenly believes has hit her. Her most significant faint, however, is when she faints from the grief and shock over the traumatic death of her dearest friend Mary: she stays completely out cold for ten hours, during which no one could wake her, before briefly waking up, evidently possessed by Mary's soul, and promptly passing out yet again, staying gone for almost as long.
• —And He Built a Crooked House—: Mrs. Bailey repeatedly faints throughout the adventure in the tesseract house.
• Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.: Nancy faints in panic when she gets her period for real. Margaret isn't amused, as Nancy has been claiming to have already dealt with this situation in a bid to brag about her own maturity.
• Bark, George: When the vet pulls the cow out of George, the pup's mother faints dead away.
• The Beasts of Clawstone Castle: Major Hardbottom faints when he first meets the disembodied feet.
• The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Tales: Discussed in the story "Steak for Supper" involves six strange creatures following a little boy home. He fears that his "mother would faint and [his] father would roar" if they saw the creatures. Thankfully, the creatures run away, so the mother remains conscious and the father keeps quiet.
• Charlotte's Web: Wilbur is prone to this:
  • He faints when he overhears the humans talking about killing him for bacon and ham; the farmhand Lurvey revives him with a bucket of water.
  • He faints from Stage Fright when he receives his medal at the county fair; this time Templeton revives him by biting his tail.
• The China Bride: Has Troth faint at the sight of a man who looks exactly like her deceased husband. It is not until she revives that she discovers that he is actually a twin that she never knew about.
• Les Colombes du Roi-Soleil: When the girls are told that one of their teachers was poisoned and are pressured for a confession, Isabeau faints. The teachers mistake this for an admission of her guilt.
• The Corpse of Charlie Rull:
  • Cynthia's mother faints when she sees what Charlie did to her horse.
  • Two reporters covering the cops' battle with Charlie at the end faint after witnessing the severed upper body of Charlie continuing to crawl forward even after the sergeant shoots him in half.
• Daisy-Head Mayzie: Downplayed. In the book, Mrs. McGrew says, "I'm going to faint" when she sees that her daughter has a daisy growing from her head, and she's illustrated looking woozy, but she remains conscious. In the Animated Adaptation, however, she does pass out.
• Death on the Nile: Not even personally witnessing her mistress Linnet being presumably shot and killed by her own husband Simon can prepare Louise Bourget for actually seeing the gruesome sight of Linnet lying dead in her bed with a bloody wound in the head the following morning. The poor maid screams and runs out of her mistress's cabin before flopping unconscious into the arms of a steward on the deck.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: In the first book, Greg passes out when he realizes he accidentally put his thumb on snot that Fregley left on a letter for him.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever: In a flashback, Greg passes out (with X's for eyes) when he finds a puzzle box full of crickets.
• The Divine Comedy: Dante faints a few times:
  • Near the beginning of Inferno when crossing the Acheron to the first circle of hell because he's so shocked by how horrible the first tortures are.
  • In the circle, for those who succumbed to Lust. There he meets a couple who are the Romeo and Juliet of his time. This one is triggered mainly by empathy, as he himself had loved a woman from afar his whole life.^note combined with a possible Fangirl episode . . . they were pretty famous
  • He faints again towards the end of Paradiso as he approaches the end of all desires.
• Don't Call Me Ishmael!:Ishmael faints during his first debate because he is so nervous. Everybody else thinks it's hilarious, as Ishmael also accidentally gropes his Love Interest Kelly as he faints.
• Don Quixote: Many, many characters faint, but the most significant faint has to be Luscinda's. Already having agreed to marry her beloved Cardenio, Luscinda is placed under immense duress when her parents make her marry the nobleman Fernando instead. On the day of the wedding, Luscinda hides a dagger on her body, as well as a letter explaining that her loyalty belongs to Cardenio and that she plans to kill herself. During the wedding, however, Luscinda is unable to defy the pressure and ends up following through with the exchanging of vows and consents to the marriage in a weakened and dismayed voice. Realizing the finality of the situation, Luscinda faints on the spot. Not only does this cause Cardenio to storm out of the wedding feeling betrayed, but Luscinda's suicide plan is also foiled as both her suicide note and her dagger are discovered and removed from her unconscious body. Her despair is so great that she does not wake up from her faint until the following day.
• Doom Valley Prep School: This happens at least once, when Ella is surprised to see Petra with male equipment. She only passes out for a few seconds and is embarrassed afterwards. When she sees it again a little later she is just turns away while blushing.
• Double Star: The heroine faints quietly and without fuss after an intense scene which probably means the ruin of all they've been working for. Later another character reveals precautions have been taken and they're safe - whereupon she faints again. Still, given what's at stake and the extended strain she's been under it's hard to blame her.
• Dracula Jonathan Harker pulling one of these fairly early on. He has just been overtly harassed by three beautiful vampire-ladies and apparently his own host.
• Dragonlance: In the novel Dragons of Winter Night, the elven princess Laurana faints at a public banquet after her father calls her a whore, and her older brother gives her a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Dr. Greta Helsing: Leonora van Dorne takes a Screw the Rules, I Have Money! attitude to life's problems, but collapses when she gets her first glimpse behind the Masquerade and sees a Mummy. Fortunately for her, the mummy is of the non-malicious stripe and catches her, though not without a bit of ironic lurching.
• The Enchanted Files: In Diary of a Mad Brownie / Cursed, Ms. Kincaid (Destiny's teacher) passes out moments after she touches Angus's hand and confirms that he's real.
• The Finishing School Series: Dimity faints for real every time she sees blood. The girls are also taught to Fake Faint properly, so a habit of really fainting stands out.
• Gesta Danorum: When Odin makes little snakes appear in the eyes of the boy Sivard Ragnarsson, an old woman acting as Sivard's nurse faints in terror at the sight.
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban:
  • When the Dementors board the train, Harry faints when they search his compartment, due to him reliving the death of his mother (he even hears her screaming).
  • Later, when the Dementors attack him during the Quidditch match, he falls from his broom.
  • He also faints when trying to defend his godfather, Sirius Black, from them, and casts his first Patronus spell to ward them off.
• The House With a Clock in Its Walls: In The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer, Lewis's babysitter Gloria faints when she hears that his parents have died.
• Inheritance Cycle: Eragon faints when his mentor, Brom, is fatally stabbed. But then, he faints at the end of almost every chapter.
• Imieniny: In this novel by Małgorzata Musierowicz, the protagonist Pyza faints very romantically after her little brother gets lost. He turns up safe and sound, and the nice boys who helped him are very happy to offer their help to Pyza.
• Jane Eyre:
  • As a child, Jane is locked inside a terrifying room alone one afternoon as punishment and comes to believe that she is being haunted by the ghost of her dead uncle. She is so frightened that she faints, and doesn't regain consciousness until midnight.
  • At Thornfield Hall, Jane, who has been wakeful in her bed, is approached by the terrifying figure of a strange veiled woman holding a candle deep in the middle of the night. The increasing terror and nervousness from seeing this causes Jane to sink into her bed in a dead faint, and when she regains consciousness it is already morning and the figure is gone.
  • Jane faints after she finds out that Mr Rochester, who she was going to marry, already has a wife.
• Judge Dee: A suspect infuriated by the accusations against him gets up to refute them... and collapses in a faint. His subordinates note that he suffers such crises on occasion.
• Kasia: Kasia faints after almost getting run over by Connor's car. The main story starts because he takes her home to get her out of traffic.
• Kristin Lavransdatter: Kristin faints at a party when she sees Erlend for the first time after many weeks of longing—in front of her fiance and his entire family.
• The Last Test: In this H. P. Lovecraft work, Georgina overhears a conversation late at night that leads her to believe that her brother is involved in carrying out brutal human experiments and savage sacrifices. The thought of this increasingly terrifies her until eventually she faints while lying in her own bed, and remains in her dead faint until the next morning. After she awakens, she mistakenly believes that what she overheard and subsequently thought late last night was a dream (since they were the last things she remembers before waking up in the morning). It's not until noon, when she personally witnesses a subject being captured in front of her, that she realizes that the conversation last night was real, upon which she instantly faints once again and does not wake up until late into the afternoon.
• Laura: Waldo collapses when he sees Laura alive. (The entire plot to this point has been investigating her murder.) He says that it's epilepsy and runs in the family.
• Lessons for a Perfect Detective Story:
  • Several overly emotional wives faint when they learn that their husbands have been murdered.
  • Tenkaichi tends to faint when he's scared.
• Little Women: Marmee faints when she receives the news that her husband has contracted pneumonia while serving as a chaplain in the American Civil War.
• Love and Freindship: Parodied mercilessly by Jane Austen. In it, Laura and Sophia repeatedly faint, which eventually proves fatal to Sophia when she faints and lies unconscious outside in the rain for more than an hour, catching a cold that soon worsens into deadly tuberculosis. The aftermath of this provides our page quote.
• The Mad King: King Leopold faints when he realizes that he's going to be executed as a traitor if he can't convince anyone that he's himself and not his fugitive Identical Stranger cousin. One of many repeated reminders that Leopold is not an admirable manly man like the novel's hero.
• Matilda: After Miss Trunchbull witnesses a threatening message written on the chalkboard, seemingly by the ghost of her late brother-in-law (in fact by Matilda telekinetically manipulating the chalk), she faints so deeply that even a jug of water in the face is unable to rouse her.
• Les Misérables: Fantine faints upon realizing that Mayor Madeleine is a genuinely kind man who is willing to help her reconnect with her estranged daughter Cosette.
• Murderess: Lu faints when she goes after ‘Hat Lad’ on the train and finds only his blood-soaked hat.
• Haruhi Suzumiya: During the SOS Brigade's island getaway, the shy time-travelling Mikuru faints promptly upon seeing the stabbed body of the mansion owner, and stays out of the action for a while under Yuki's supervision, providing Haruhi and Kyon an excuse to go exploring alone together.
• Mr. Men: At the end of "Little Miss Shy", Mr. Quiet faints when Little Miss Shy asks him if he'd like to go to her house for tea.
• The Municipalists: Played for Laughs — OWEN quickly discovers that all the violence and gore in the classic Gangster & Western movies he's watched haven't prepared him to observe when Henry has to treat the injuries he sustained in Biggs' failed assassination attempt. The AI simply can't stand the sight of Henry's puncture wounds and it briefly overloads his circuits.
  "It looks like you've got this covered," he said. "So I think it'd be best if I just—"
  Before he could finish his sentence, he turned into a French bulldog and fainted.
  He lay their motionless in his dog's body with his tongue hanging out. Above him in bold white text was a slowly rotating error message.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: Played for Laughs. Duchess Millidiana Claes, while accompanying Geordo in his marriage proposal to her daughter Catarina, finds her daughter farming. The Duchess immediately faints upon seeing such unladylike behavior from her daughter.
• The Mysteries of Udolpho:
  • Emily faints no fewer than ten times throughout the story from either grief, fear, anxiety, or sudden joy, and also comes close to passing out almost as many times. The prose frequently emphasizes how deeply and thoroughly unconscious she is and how long it takes for her to wake up every time despite people's best efforts to revive her.
  • Annette, Blanche, and a few other characters also contribute to the total count with one faint from each at various points of the novel, but no one comes anywhere close to Emily.
• The Ordinary Princess: When the titular princess runs away, her letter causes her two ladies-in-waiting it to scream and/or faint, leaving only one standing to deliver the letter to the king and queen, then cry
• Pamela, or: Virtue Rewarded: Sees its title character faint whenever Mr. B attempts to force himself onto her, with each faint lasting progressively longer (the first time she stays out for two hours, the next time for three) as though the depth of her unconsciousness corresponds with the audacity of Mr. B's actions and the severity of her plight.
• The Phantom of the Opera:
  • Christine faints on stage after her splendid gala performance. Possibly exacerbated by exhaustion.
  • The first time the Phantom abducts her, Christine faints due to the smell of death on his hand.
  • When Raoul first comes face to face with Erik in the Perros graveyard, he faints. Understandable, as Erik has been trying to freak him out by playing the ghost and throwing skulls at him.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray: Dorian faints at a dinner party that he is hosting after he looks out of the window and sees James Vane, who has threatened to kill him, lurking outside.
• The Pit and the Pendulum: The unnamed protagonist faints when he learns that he's been condemned to death.
• The Quiller Memorandum: Invoked when Quiller is faced with torture. He attempts to delay it by putting himself into syncope, through breathing heavily then holding his breath to drop his blood pressure. He is under massive stress, and he uses this to make his enemies believe he is weak.
• The Railway Children: Bobbie Waterbury, via clever use of red petticoats, manages to prevent a train from careening into a landslide, but has to stand on the tracks to do so. The train finally manages to stop just inches in front of her, and she very understandably collapses in a dead faint. Jenny Agutter's rendition of the scene in the 1970 Film of the Book is iconic.
• Rising × Rydeen: Most girls who get covered in Takara's white, slippery "gel", which is Not What It Looks Like, pass out in sheer shock and disgust.
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • In "The Adventure of the Empty House" in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Watson falls down in a dead faint when Holmes suddenly appears in his study after having been thought dead for three years.
  • "The Naval Treaty" in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes ends with Trevelyan fainting when Holmes presents him with the missing treaty on a silver platter (literally).
• The Silver Chair: Subverted when Eustace falls off a cliff, Jill collapses to the ground and hopes she'll faint, but the author comments it's not that easy.
• Skulduggery Pleasant: The revelation that the title character is a talking, sentient skeleton causes Stephanie to faint.
• In Small Persons with Wings, Chief Wright and his daughter Eileen walk into the pub to find a woman (actually an enchanted mannequin) with her head falling off. They both faint.
• The Sorrows of Young Werther: Charlotte, upon hearing of Werther's suicide, sinks into a faint so deep that others begin to fear for her life.
• "The Spy's Retirement" by Jon Courtenay Grimwood begins with a Staged Pedestrian Accident whose effects include a woman fainting in shock at the victim's injuries. The narrator, who's already suspicious of the situation, notes that she faints very gracefully and falls in a way that prevents her getting hurt. At the end of the story, when she realizes the scam's been rumbled and they're all about to be arrested, she faints for real, much less gracefully.
• Stephanie Plum:
  • Stephanie will occasionally faint when presented with a fatally dangerous situation, or when she has just escaped one.
  • Tank, a hardened ex-military bounty hunter, faints after getting accidentally engaged to Lula. Not so much due to the engagement, but the idea of Lula in a wedding dress.
  • Cal loses consciousness after Valerie's water breaks all over him and he is treated to a full view of her delivering a baby.
• Team Human: Cathy faints upon being reunited with the boyfriend she thought had abandoned her, but it's pointed out that she also hadn't eaten much in the past week, what with her love-stricken distress and all.
• Trueman Bradley: After a scene in which Trueman almost misidentifies the person he's looking for, chases him through an airport, and then jumps off a roof, Trueman faints because all the unexpected events finally got to him.
• The Tummy Beast: This poem by Roald Dahl ends with the eponymous beast speaking, then the protagonist saying, "Now do you believe me, mummy?", only to find his mother unconscious on the floor.
• Twelve Days: The television interviewer faints when the ex-governor and drug lord Ramone Quinones dies during a live interview On December 14.[note]Two days into the advertised appocalypse, where "The sinners" are expected to die.[/note]
• The Twilight Saga: Bad news usually causes Bella to collapse. As does Edward kissing her, once. And a teeny tiny drop of blood. And a few other things.
• The Wandering Inn: When Jelaqua Ivirith, a Selphid, which are basically parasites that inhabit dead bodies, literally opens her stomach to show Erin her true form that is located in that region? Erin faints, when she sees Jelequa waving to her, inside of...well, Jelequa.
• A Witch Shall Be Born. Tamaris faints at the height of her rescue. After months of Cold-Blooded Torture and isolation, having your sister try to feed you to a monster and and then finding yourself in the middle of a battle do make a good excuse.
• Warrior Cats: In the book Veil of Shadows, a group of rebels tries to kill the false Bramblestar. Three of them are killed in the ensuing fight, and Bristlefrost faints when she sees that one of the dead cats is Stemleaf, who she had once wanted as her mate.
• The Witches: The unnamed protagonist (quite understandably) collapses when he realises he's trapped in a room full of women who would gladly do horrible things to him if they find him. He's not wrong.
• Wuthering Heights: Catherine Earnshaw faints several times:
  • As a child, when the Lintons' dog bites her ankle, she faints from the pain.
  • Years later, she mentions having fainted after she locked herself in her room in anguish and anger following her husband Edgar's confrontation with her beloved Heathcliff.
  • Finally, while gravely ill and pregnant, she faints when her tumultuous last meeting with Heathcliff is interrupted by Edgar's return. Only with great effort do Edgar and Nelly manage to revive her, and even then she remains delirious until she dies in childbirth that night.

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