SOURCE: "Fiction and Illness," in A Review of English Literature, Vol. 3, No. 1, January, 1962, pp. 80-9.

In the following essay, Jelly argues that modern fiction has become increasingly concerned with portraying characters who are afflicted with disease.

It probably began because Flaubert's father was Resident Surgeon at the Rouen Hospital, which may not constitute all the cause but makes a convenient start for what is now a universal condition: the fiction of the world is full of sickness. This might be thought inevitable amidst the general introspection of our time if we were not bound by the honour due to prophets to think that fictional introspection should precede, not follow, its public appearance. If this is so, then the European attitude to illness will deteriorate further unless these novelist-seers prove wrong; and this is possible because such prophecy is only worked out by hindsight. For example, Stendhal gave his...