Death: The Biggest Trend of the 1800s?

I am currently writing this from my deathbed (I have a cold). I have an extremely weak immune system, and I have always been compared to a dying Victorian child. So, since I have literally nothing else to do, I thought I’d delve into the trope of the dying Victorian and recommend some books that feature this theme. 

Book Recommendations that Feature this Theme:

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

I read this one as a kid. A neglected and orphaned little girl, Mary Lennox, is sent to live in a massive, gloomy mansion on the English moors after a whole Cholera epidemic kills her parents and servants. There, she discovers her even more neglected cousin, Colin Craven, a pale, frail, bedridden boy who believes he’s doomed to die. This book is peak Victorian child content.

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

Not Victorian England, but around the same time in The United States, The March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, grow up while navigating love, ambition, and societal expectations. Beth March, the sweetest, softest soul, contracts scarlet fever and never fully recovers. She eventually fades away in the most gentle, heart-wrenching way possible. This is an amazing book about growing up and sisterhood. I’ve always been told I’m an Amy, but maybe I’m really a Beth. 

Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë

An unhinged, Gothic love story about Heathcliff and Catherine, two soulmates who were too toxic for this world. Catherine, being the ultimate dramatic heroine, essentially wills herself into a fevered decline after marrying the wrong man. She dies young, haunts the moors, and Heathcliff spends the rest of his life spiraling into madness over her Victorian illness, but also haunted and angry. I absolutely love this book. Catherine literally fevers herself to death over a man. Yeah.

Charles Dickens

I don’t think I can talk about this trope without mentioning Charles Dickens, but I cannot for the life of me get into a Dickens novel, so I am not the one to give that recommendation. But if you have the patience, the vibes are there. Next.

But what is this trope, and why is it so popular in literature and art?

From what I can gather from a quick Google search, the "dying Victorian child" trope originates from the harsh realities of child mortality during the Victorian era. Diseases like tuberculosis and scarlet fever were rampant, and the cultural response was to turn suffering into an aesthetic. In fact, the pale, thin, and fragile look caused by TB even became a beauty trend- characterized by weight loss, flushed cheeks, and a gaunt, translucent complexion. Women would wear tighter corsets, heavier powder, and more rouge to capture this image. While illness might have been viewed as beautiful in the artistic sense, disease ravaged families, claiming the lives of countless young women and children. TB was a constant presence in the Victorian era, and its association with beauty is an eerie reflection of how society could simultaneously romanticize and fear death. Literature and art from the time are full of fragile, sickly children whose deaths are not only tragic but somehow beautiful.

One of the most famous paintings of the time, Ophelia by John Everett Millais, captures these ideas. The painting, depicting Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet floating in a river, surrounded by flowers, embodies the Victorian aesthetic of death as both tragic and beautiful.

Setting the scene a bit more, let’s take Beth March from Little Women as an example. Beth encapsulates everything that makes this trope: fragility, pureness, helplessness, and beauty.

Image from Little Women 1994

• Fragility: Even before she becomes sick, Beth’s gentle, quiet nature makes her vulnerable, both emotionally and physically.

• Pureness: Beth is the embodiment of innocence. Her love for her family, her selflessness, and her quiet softness make her almost too perfect for this world. It’s the kind of innocence that is preserved by her premature death, as she remains forever a symbol of goodness, untouched by the “corruptions” of the adult world.

• Helplessness: Beth is never the sister that acts boldly, never the one to take charge. She is gentle and passive, which, in the Victorian context, often aligns with the idea of women and children being helpless in the face of illness and death. 

• Beauty: The Victorian era had a strange way of romanticizing death, especially when it involved someone as pure as Beth. The scene where she dies is full of a bittersweet sense of loss and tenderness. In Victorian literature, the death of a child or a young woman often carries this sense of beauty, as though their youth and innocence are preserved in their dying moments. 

Anyway, thanks for reading my fevered ramblings. I genuinely can't think right now, so hopefully it made sense! If I survive this, I will discuss more lively topics. But for now, lean into the morbid Victorian melancholy. I recommend any of these books, and I’m sure there are plenty more. Or at least rewatch Little Women (again).