1 - Life in the sickroom

Summary

There is scarcely a Victorian fictional narrative without its ailing protagonist, its depiction of a sojourn in the sickroom. Although the twelve pivotal illnesses that traverse the length of Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth may mark the upper limit, multiple sufferers are the rule rather than the exception. The Victorian sickroom scene, at its most typical, serves as a kind of forcing ground of the self – a conventional rite of passage issuing in personal, moral, or social recuperation. The scenes are precipitated by or fortuitously linked to moments of crisis during which the sufferers, or those who are called upon to minister to them, have become separated from the social roles and norms by which they previously defined themselves: Lucy Snowe in Villette, for instance, left alone during the long vacation without work or colleagues, without friends or family (“the insufferable thought of being no more loved, nor more owned” [V 15]); Pip, alone in his room, with Magwitch dying in prison, Estella married, Herbert in Cairo, and Joe and Biddy estranged (“I had no home anywhere” [GE 55]); Romola, in flight from Florence and her faithless husband Tito, her father and godfather dead, Savonorola, her spiritual mentor, compromised and about to be executed (“the bonds of all affection were snapped ” [R 61]); Alton Locke wandering through the streets of London following the ignominious collapse of the Chartist rebellion and the loss of his friend and protector, Sandy Mackay (“Sullen, disappointed, desperate… careless whither I went”). Isolated and incapacitated by their loss of socially determined status and in retreat from what they experience as disabling psychological conflict, these characters fall ill themselves or are urgently summoned to the sickbed of another.