ABSTRACT

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.

摘要

这篇文章阅读了夏洛蒂·勃朗特 (Charlotte Brontë) 的信件，这些信件记录了她姐姐艾米莉·勃朗特 (Emily Brontë) 在 1848 年末患肺结核的经历，考虑到这些信件如何导致对艾米莉生命最后几个月的片面描述。分析性地重读这些信件，我认为夏洛特所表达的姐妹之间的差异在她周围很明显“好”消费的隐含概念，艾米丽的抵抗将她不公平地定位为“坏”患者。受罗伊·波特“以患者为中心”概念的启发，我阅读了夏洛特信件的主旨，挑战对艾米丽生病和死亡的主流说法。我建议，当从上下文和艾米丽的角度考虑时，夏洛特的信件提供了另一种方式来理解艾米丽的肺结核经历和她在最后几个月的行为。