From the late 18th to mid-19th
centuries a peculiar trend swept through European fashion. Through couture and cosmetics,
this vogue emulated the physical ravages of a much-feared disease,
tuberculosis, aestheticizing its symptoms as enviable qualities of physical beauty.
Pale skin, stooped posture, white teeth, an emaciated figure, and a white
complexion that evinced delicate blue veins were lauded by the era’s posh
fashion journals. Carolyn A. Day aptly terms this craze a “tubercular moment,”
a cultural phenomenon that elevated the grim realities of physical illness to a
plane of desirable beauty. Medical discourses promoting the fragility and
refinement of the “sensible” body were inspired by romanticized notions of
morbidity, suffering, and illness. These discourses coincided with the the ideologies
of Romanticism, a philosophical movement that was popularly understood to be a counter-discourse
to the Enlightenment through its emphasis on emotion and imagination. Day cites
the English poet, John Keats, whose legacy emphatically contributed to the cult
of sensibility, as he embodied a living example of the refined tubercular body
endowed with artistic genius but doomed to illness. The male artist was an
example of a body too sensitive, too delicate to endure earthly life, but one
whose intellect left an indelible imprint on culture.
The romanticized construction of
tuberculosis, however, waned in the 1830s and 1840s due to dominant Victorian views
that emphasized the inherent biological weakness of the female body. This shift
in rationalizing consumption was the direct result of understanding women as
burdened with a surfeit of sensibility. By contrast, consumption was understood
differently to be an emasculating illness that denoted male weakness and was
therefore no longer popularly considered to be a portent of gifted creativity. During
this period, a number of women’s fashions dictated the tastes of the middle and
upper classes. Corsets, cosmetics, and the gossamer neoclassical style of dress
were used to emulate the frail frames, drooping postures, narrow torsos, and
pale complexions of the consumptive body. Thin fabrics, sandals, and hair
pieces also contributed to styling the ‘gorgeously’ spectral image of the tubercular
body. Dresses were contrived to feature the bony wing-like shoulder blades of the
consumptive back, emphasizing an emaciated frame. Physicians and cultural
pundits condemned the trappings of this fashionable dress because they were
thought to impose health risks. Tight corsets, for example, were considered to
harmfully compress the lungs, while diaphanous dresses and sandals exposed
women to cold weather. Despite the stentorian warnings of physicians, the
tubercular wardrobe continued to house articles that were thought to excite tuberculosis.
By the 1850s, public health and sanitary reforms
reshaped cultural discourses that associated tuberculosis with beauty.
Tuberculosis was gradually viewed as a pernicious biological force that needed
to be controlled. As a result, the Victorian model of womanhood—the weak and
susceptible female body—gave way to a model of health and strength. Literature,
as Day points out, contributed significantly to altering the consumptive chic
discourse and the link between tuberculosis and ideal femininity. She
references Alexandre Dumas fils, whose influential novel, La Dame aux Camélias, presents redemption for moral transgressions
through tubercular suffering. Through popular literature, tuberculosis was
gradually supplanted from the sphere of upper-class women and placed in
association with ‘fallen’ women, an unsavory association that led the genteel public
to change perspective. Literary influence was important, but the increased
visibility of consumption in the lower classes was likely the most visceral reality
that forced upper classes to distance themselves from fashions that beautified
the illness.
