“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 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.