Date of Award
4-2025
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
English
Program
English (MA)
Program
Literature and the Environment
First Advisor/Chairperson
Caroline Krzakowski
Abstract
This thesis examines the impacts of nineteenth-century tuberculosis epidemics on gothic literature published between 1842 and 1872. In this period of time, tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United States and in Europe, killing an estimated one in seven people. Using theoretical lenses of psychoanalysis and material ecocriticism, this project considers borders between material bodies—specifically those between bacterial agents and humans—to be illusory and socially constructed. The first chapter focuses on the ways in which representations of tuberculosis, and its associated entanglement with the environment, appear in the work of two authors from the United States: Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The second chapter considers Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla, paying close attention to moments of symptom description, physical description, moments of transmission, and character’s relationships to their environment, in order to break down the cultural influence of tuberculosis that the vampiric tale may demonstrate. Through exploring literary moments imbued with consumptive qualities this thesis analyzes the aestheticization of tuberculosis that has been internalized in cultural subconsciouses, and what such contents may reveal about historical processes of disease aestheticization. At present, tuberculosis is still the deadliest infectious disease in the world, and it is of vital importance to consider its relationship to humans. Through the analysis of literature, this thesis’s goal is to provide an avenue into thinking about the astoundingly far reach of the global health catastrophe of tuberculosis.
Recommended Citation
McMahon, Jennifer Marie, "Death Becomes Us: The Consumptive Body in Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature" (2025). All NMU Master's Theses. 886.
https://commons.nmu.edu/theses/886
Access Type
Open Access
Signed signature page
Included in
Aesthetics Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Diseases Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Medical Humanities Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons