We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Stendhal's Consumptive Heroine: Lamiel and Tuberculosis.
- Authors
Jones, Sarah
- Abstract
This article offers a close reading of Stendhal's Lamiel , arguing that the eponymous heroine suffers from, but also manipulates the symptoms of, the quintessentially nineteenth-century disease, consumption. It first establishes Lamiel as a consumptive heroine by comparing the novel to contemporary medical discourse on the disease, most notably to the work of René Laënnec. It then analyses the fausse phtisie scene, a passage in which Lamiel uses the blood of a dead bird to simulate haemoptysis, contending that the performative nature of Lamiel's illness is of primary importance. Comparing Lamiel to other Stendhal novels, the article highlights that the heroine asserts her own identity by assuming abjection, whereas other characters are threatened by the abject. It further demonstrates that this scene amounts to Lamiel's rejection of Romantic tropes of passive female patienthood, arguing that the novel forges a new mould for the representation of consumptive heroines. This article contributes to our understanding of how literature can manipulate, undermine, and even reject medical and cultural paradigms of illnesses as ubiquitous to the nineteenth century as tuberculosis.
- Subjects
STENDHAL, 1783-1842; TUBERCULOSIS; HEMOPTYSIS; DISEASES; ABJECTION
- Publication
French Studies, 2023, Vol 77, Issue 1, p31
- ISSN
0016-1128
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/fs/knac253