A remote and desolate location that is now within reach
The story describes Barclay’s beautiful chestnut hair being cut off to treat her “brain fever.” Cutting off a woman’s hair was a common practice to treat fevers at the time, as it was believed to reduce body temperature.
It seems that her exhausting nature is ultimately her downfall. After so much scolding from her husband, Mrs. Copperfield is worn out and too weak to recover from childbirth. She eventually passes away.
In Dickens’ 1847 novel ‘Dombey and Son,’ the character Alice Brown is inexplicably ill for more than a year. She exists in a delicate state of fatigue until eventually fading away.
Rodolfo notices how beautiful she is in that moment (linking back to the beautiful consumption face once again), and touches her saying “Che gelida manina,” or, “What a cold little hand.” Mimi also falls victim to tuberculosis.
The character of Mrs. Copperfield in Charles Dickens’ ‘David Copperfield’ is the epitome of a troublesome woman in classic literature. She is described as childish, overly emotional, too soft, petty, and nagging. She complains constantly, isn’t “firm” enough with her children, and is a constant bother to her husband.
Winterbourne travels to Rome to visit Daisy, but is dismayed to learn she has been dating a number of young Italian men with questionable reputations. One evening, he spots her on a date with an Italian man at the Colosseum. This supposedly causes Daisy to catch a deadly illness called “Roman fever,” which kills her within a matter of days.
In the Sherlock Holmes book ‘The Adventure of the Crooked Man,’ Nancy Barclay develops “brain fever” after suffering a terrible shock at the death of her husband.
In Mervyn Peake’s 1950 fantasy novel ‘Gormenghast,’ the fragile and ethereal Lady Fuchsia Groan accidentally falls to her death while daydreaming.
Henry James’ 1879 novel ‘Daisy Miller' follows the eponymous heroine, a young American lady, as she travels around Europe. She is considered to be charming but somewhat crass and uncultured by the aristocrats she meets on her travels. Nonetheless, the sophisticated Mr. Winterbourne becomes enamored with her when they meet in Geneva.
She is locked in her tower room (another common theme) during a great flood. She stands in front of the window in a reverie, and steps onto the windowsill without realizing what she’s doing. A sudden knock on the door startles her back to reality, but she slips and falls to her watery grave.
In Gustave Flaubert’s seminal work ‘Madame Bovary,’ the protagonist, Emma Bovary, is obsessed with romance novels. This is considered to be her downfall, as it gives her unrealistic expectations of life.
As the boat arrives in Camelot bearing her corpse, Lancelot sees her and notes how beautiful her face looks. In some classic texts, a beautiful face is associated with tuberculosis. The disease caused people to become thin and pale with flushed cheeks, which was considered the ideal look for an English rose!
In Patrick Süskind’s best-selling book ‘Perfume: The Story of a Murderer,’ more than 25 teenage girls are murdered by the protagonist because he is intoxicated by their smell and wishes to recreate it.
She recovers, but unfortunately her system was weakened by the severe illness, and she later succumbs to complications, which no amount of blankets could prevent. She is martyred as the character who gives the most, and eventually gives her own life.
In the beloved novel ‘Little Women’ by Louisa May Alcott, Beth is the sister who sacrifices and cares for the others. She is constantly putting the needs of others ahead of her own (as a good little woman should), and so it is particularly devastating when she falls ill with scarlet fever. The family rallies around her to nurse her back to health, desperately trying to warm her with blankets.
The iconic Miss Havisham in Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’ is known for her ghostly appearance. She’s a wealthy spinster who was abandoned by her fiancé on the day of their wedding, and refused to take off her wedding dress. As such, she hasn’t changed her outfit in what is presumably decades at the time of her death.
She has never left her garden of dangerous flowers and cannot touch another living thing without killing it. Her father believes that this protects her from the harms of mankind. She eventually dies when a boy she falls in love with tries to give her an antidote to the poison so they can be together.
Syrinx was so desperate to get away from Pan that she decided to turn herself into something he couldn’t possibly be attracted to, and transformed herself into a bunch of reeds. However, he was so committed to possessing her that he turned her into an instrument: a panpipe. She literally turned herself into an inanimate object and he still didn't get the message!
In the strange short story ‘Rappaccini's Daughter’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the female love interest is used as a sort of experiment by her father. Rappaccini is a prominent scientist who specializes in poisonous plants, and has a garden full of them. It seems that he has dosed his daughter with poison so that she becomes immune to its effects, but also becomes poisonous herself.
Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ is considered to be a story of an epic romance, but at its heart it’s a story about depression. He writes of Anna’s limited experiences of happiness, and her many years of melancholy and disillusionment. In some translations, this is referred to as “night brain.”
This unfortunate condition is what leads Anna to end her own life by throwing herself in front of a train. Following her demise, the gossipy and judgmental Countess Vronsky declares, "Her death was the death of a bad woman, a woman without religion.”
In Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel ‘The Awakening,’ the protagonist finds a new sense of freedom and liberation while vacationing by the sea. It comes to symbolize everything Edna lacks in her daily life as a wife and mother. The book ends with her returning to the sea and swimming until she loses her strength and presumably drowns.
While Hardy writes Tess as a sympathetic character, the book still gives a pretty dark look into the misogyny of the times it was written. Her life was ruined and she was looked down upon by everyone for being the victim of an assault. That sounds worryingly familiar...
Sources: (Bustle) (Cultured Vultures) (The Toast) (Elle)
‘Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ is a rough one. The 1891 novel by Thomas Hardy tells the story: Tess is assaulted as a young woman, she has a baby as a result, her baby dies, she meets a nice man, she confides in him about her tragic past, he is disgusted by her, and she is eventually sentenced to death for the murder of the man who sexually assaulted her.
‘The Lady of Shalott’ is a 19th-century poem by the English poet Alfred Tennyson. It tells the story of a noblewoman stranded in a tower near Camelot. One day, she sees Lancelot passing by outside and falls in love. She escapes her tower and takes a boat down the river to find him, but dies before she arrives.
Miss Havisham meets a gruesome end when she wanders too close to the fire. Her rotting, paper-like gown immediately goes up in flames and she dies of the burns.
Madame Bovary gets into massive debt trying to buy perfection, but ultimately she is never happy and ends up taking her own life.
The opera ‘La Bohème’ by Giacomo Puccini was based on a book written by Henri Murger in 1851. Mimi, a young bohemian woman living in Paris, is the protagonist. When she first meets her love, Rodolfo, she passes out after losing her breath coming up the stairs.
Throughout history, women in literature have been killed off by vague ailments, usually as a result of their own sinful natures. Whether that means contracting “Roman fever” from spending an evening outdoors with an Italian man, or being driven to self-harm by reading too many romance novels, there is clearly a common theme: female characters are fragile and unable to take care of themselves. They certainly should not be left to their own devices, as their emotional natures will be their demise!
Click through this gallery to see the most absurd and poorly explained female deaths in literary history.
In the ancient Greek tale of Syrinx and Pan, Syrinx was a nymph who gained an unwanted admirer in Pan, the god of shepherds. He became obsessed with her and was determined to have her, despite her efforts to reject him.
The most absurd female deaths in literature
Women in 19th-century fiction had a rough time!
LIFESTYLE Fiction
Throughout history, women in literature have been killed off by vague ailments, usually as a result of their own sinful natures. Whether that means contracting “Roman fever” from spending an evening outdoors with an Italian man, or being driven to self-harm by reading too many romance novels, there is clearly a common theme: female characters are fragile and unable to take care of themselves. They certainly should not be left to their own devices, as their emotional natures will be their demise!
Click through this gallery to see the most absurd and poorly explained female deaths in literary history.