History Main / VictorianNovelDisease

* Creator/AntonChekhov, Creator/JohnKeats, Music/FryderykChopin, Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, and [[Creator/CharlotteBronte the]] [[Creator/EmilyBronte Brontë]] [[Creator/AnneBronte sisters]] all had 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, though it could also be said that he died a cooler death, as his infection came while he was busy fighting for the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire.

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, want little things, and 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.]]

* A gender-flipped example in ''Literature/WutheringHeights'' where it is Edgar who dies of a wasting illness.
** 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.

* ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' contains a [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom notable subversion]]. Evidently, the only thing more wringing than the plot development where someone turns out to have consumption is the plot development where it turns out ''no one'' has consumption.

* 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. Stephen Black, meanwhile, has the same affliction, but notes that unlike Lady Pole (a wealthy white woman of high social standing) he, being a black servant, doesn't get the dignity of calling it an "illness" and is simply considered to be poorly disciplined.

* Averted in Anthony Trollope's 47 novels in which the heroine is generally quite healthy and suffers only in agonizing over the choice of a beau. To be fair, however, Trollope wrote mostly about the middle classes while Dickens wrote mostly about the lower classes.
** Trollope doesn't avoid death, it's just that his characters die realistically and unsentimentally - when they die on stage.

** ''Theatre/{{Rent}}'' is a modernization of ''La Bohème'' that substitutes AIDS for tuberculosis.

[[folder:Film]]

[[folder:Live Action Television]]

* Subverted in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2''. When [[PlayerCharacter Arthur Morgan]] contracts tuberculosis, he [[WeightLossHorror loses weight rapidly]] (to the point where [[NothingButSkinAndBones it's impossible for him to be anything but emaciated and frail]]), his eyes become sunken and bloodshot, and his complexion becomes [[EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette noticeably paler]]. It also [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration affects the gameplay]]: the cores, reflecting Arthur's physical prowess, drain much faster than normal after he becomes sick.

* Creator/AntonChekhov, Creator/JohnKeats, Music/FryderykChopin, Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, and [[Creator/CharlotteBronte the]] [[Creator/EmilyBronte Brontë]] [[Creator/AnneBronte sisters]] all had 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.)

The epitome of the fragile, delicate woman is that she is DelicateAndSickly -- 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 never-ending 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 [[BeautyIsNeverTarnished 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]].

* The Pale Bride of ''VisualNovel/AnalogueAHateStory'' suffered a non-Victorian version of the trope. Though the exact nature of her disease is left ambiguous, it compromised her immune system and left her with [[YourDaysAreNumbered only a few years to live]]. The situation was so bleak that her father opted to place her in [[HumanPopsicle suspended animation]] instead. When the mysterious GirlInABox was awakened centuries later, culture and technology had regressed so severely aboard the ship that her new adoptive family simply couldn't grasp that she was ill. All they saw was an [[RavenHairIvorySkin unusually pale]], beautiful girl.

* Viciously subverted in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'' when [[PlayerCharacter Arthur Morgan]] contracts tuberculosis. He [[WeightLossHorror loses weight rapidly]] (to the point where [[NothingButSkinAndBones it's impossible for him to be anything but emaciated and frail]]), his eyes become sunken and bloodshot, and his complexion becomes [[EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette noticeably paler]]. It also [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration affects the gameplay]], as your cores drain much faster than normal.

* In Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold's ''Literature/{{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 ever 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."

* Viciously subverted in ''VideoGame/RedDeadRedemption2'' when [[PlayerCharacter Arthur Morgan]] contracts tuberculosis. He [[NothingButSkinAndBones loses weight rapidly]], his eyes become sunken and bloodshot, and his complexion becomes [[EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette noticeably paler]]. It also [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration affects the gameplay]], as your cores drain much faster than normal.

The epitome of the fragile, delicate woman is that she is DelicateAndSickly -- 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 [[BeautyIsNeverTarnished 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]].

** 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 [[FaceDeathWithDignity showing everyone how the Queen of France faces the guillotine]].

* ''Theatre/{{Rent}}'' is a modernization of ''La Bohème'' that substitutes AIDS for tuberculosis.

* This is precisely what DelicateAndSickly Peter dies of in the treacly 1982 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross novel ''Remember The Secret''. He's even taken to heaven by angels.

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: see BrainFever.

When suffering from Victorian Novel Disease, you can expect to meet plenty of people OopNorth or [[FunetikAksent from Zummer]][[UsefulNotes/TheWestCountry zet]], 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''.

* Averted--or perhaps subverted-- in {{Creator/Betty MacDonald}}'s ''The Plague & I'' which shows us what it was really like in a TB sanitarium.

* In Susann Cokal's ''Breath and Bones'', Famke suffers from TB in a curious way - she coughs a lot, then coughs blood a lot, then gets treatment, and then it eventually returns...though it [[spoiler: is not what actually kills her in the end.]]

* ''Film/MoulinRouge'' is based on ''The Lady of the Camellias''. [[spoiler:Satine]] develops a fatal case of consumption and dies at the end of the film, but not before singing her last song.

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

* ''Film/MoulinRouge'' is based on The Lady of the Camellias (see below in Literature.)

* In ''Film/MoulinRouge'', [[spoiler:Satine]] develops a fatal case of consumption and dies at the end of the film, but not before singing her last song.

[[folder:Musical Theater]]
* ''Theatre/{{Rent}}'' is a modernization of ''La Bohème'' that substitutes AIDS for tuberculosis.
* Fantine in ''Theatre/LesMiserables'' dies of an unspecified disease ([[AllThereInTheManual identified in]] [[Literature/LesMiserables the novel]] as consumption/tuberculosis) and passes shortly after singing a beautiful song to her absent daughter. Unlike most examples, she is certainly not chaste (she had been employed as a prostitute for weeks before) nor traditionally beautiful (she's already had her hair chopped off and teeth removed, although the number of the latter depends on the production and is almost always HandWaved as her back teeth so that they don't have to perform dental work on an actress every night). In [[Film/LesMiserables2012 the film]], she is barely able to sing and coughs the whole way down.

[[folder:Opera]]
* Verdi's opera ''La Traviata'' was loosely based on The Lady of the Camellias, so it's no surprise that lead female Violetta Valery suffers from this kind of thing.
* Another operatic use of this trope is Mimi in ''Theatre/LaBoheme''. She faints immediately after first entering Rodolfo's apartment; he sees her pale complexion and falls in love. In the end, not surprisingly, she dies from consumption/tuberculosis.
* The operatic version of this trope was mocked by Creator/AnnaRussell in "Anaemia's Death Scene." Anaemia, about to die of TB, claims to have no breath and no strength, but her singing defies her own description.
* In ''The Saint of Bleecker Street'' by Gian-Carlo Menotti, Annina dies of a disease that makes her face look increasingly pale and otherworldly. Her visible wounds are supposed to be the stigmata.

[[folder:Poetry]]
* In Charles Hubert Millevoye's highly popular early-nineteenth-century poem "La chute des feuilles" ("The Falling of the Leaves"), in which a sick young man wanders mournfully in the woods musing on his upcoming death, the illness is not specified, but is likened to a flower withered by a cold blast of wind.

[[folder:Radio]]
* ''Radio/BleakExpectations:'' Parodied to merry hell and back with Flora [[MeaningfulName Diesearly]], who Pip Bin meets, falls in love with instantly, and after a long engagement marries, at which point Flora comes down with frequent fainting spells, which soon render her bedridden, and are eventually diagnosed as being the dread hand of Non-Specific Weakness, which is ''potentially'' fatal. Pip's attempts to cure it wind up causing Flora Diesearly to... [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin die early]].

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* A ''TabletopGame/{{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.
* While ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'' [[MultipleChoicePast has killed Vanessa Hellstromme in several ways]], a mysterious terminal lung disease that made her delicate and weak, but no less beautiful, has factored in on multiple occasions. While it should have been diagnosable by the early 19th century, everything else about Vanessa's disease looks like classic fictional depictions of tuberculosis.
[[/folder]]

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

* Creator/JohnKeats, Music/FryderykChopin, Creator/EdgarAllanPoe, and [[Creator/CharlotteBronte the]] [[Creator/EmilyBronte Brontë]] [[Creator/AnneBronte sisters]] all had 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.)

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 [[BeautyIsNeverTarnished 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]].

* This is precisely what IllBoy Peter dies of in the treacly 1982 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross novel ''Remember The Secret''. He's even taken to heaven by angels.

* {{Exploited|Trope}}, {{Reconstructed}} and played with every which way in ''Literature/TheEssexSerpent''; Reverend Ransome's [[DeathOfTheHypotenuse narratively doomed wife]] Stella is sick with tuberculosis and everyone is very much of the opinion that being a TooGoodForThisSinfulEarth IllGirl suits her to the ground; she feels closer to God and more in love with her family as a result of it. It also [[BettyAndVeronica contrasts her]] with the solid, earthy, IronWoobie heroine Cora. However, far from being TheDiseaseThatShallNotBeNamed, the characters (including a surgeon) talk frankly about TB and its symptoms, treatment and prognosis in line with the ([[ShownTheirWork carefully researched]]) medical knowledge of the era.

* In Creator/LoisMcMasterBujold's ''Literature/{{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."