Charlotte Brontë, Sickness and Correspondence

Another Brontë-related scholar paper:

“She Resolutely Refuses to See a Doctor”: Rereading Emily Brontë and Tuberculosis in 1848; or Charlotte Brontë, Sickness and Correspondence
Claire O’Callaghan

Women's Writing, 29:4, 566-582, DOI: 10.1080/09699082.2022.2122324

This article reads Charlotte Brontë’s letters documenting her sister Emily Brontë’s experience of tuberculosis in late 1848, considering how the correspondence has cultivated a one-sided account of Emily’s final months. Rereading the letters analytically, I argue that the differences between the sisters that

Charlotte articulates gravitate around her implicit conception of the “good” consumptive, with Emily’s resistance positioning her unfairly as a “bad” patient. Informed by Roy Porter’s conception of “patient centred”, I read against the grain of Charlotte’s letters to challenge dominant accounts of Emily’s illness and death. I suggest that when considered contextually and from Emily’s point of view, Charlotte letters offer alternate ways to understand Emily’s experience of tuberculosis and her behaviour in her final months.