“She Resolutely Refuses to See a Doctor”: Re-reading Emily Brontë and Tuberculosis in 1848; or Charlotte Brontë, Sickness and Correspondence

This article reads Charlotte Brontë’s letters documenting her sister Emily experience of tuberculosis in late 1848, considering how the correspondence has cultivated a one-sided account Emily’s final months. Rereading analytically, I argue that differences between sisters articulates gravitate around implicit conception “good” consumptive, with resistance positioning unfairly as “bad” patient. Informed by Roy Porter’s “patient centred”, read against grain Charlotte’s to challenge dominant accounts illness and death. suggest when considered contextually from point view, offer alternate ways understand behaviour