Summary

Chapter Four expands on the romanticization of tuberculosis. The chapter begins with a lengthy passage from Oliver Goldsmith’s satirical play “She Stoops to Conquer” (1773). In this play, the glamorous character Mrs. Hardcastle claims that her disappointingly unstylish son, Tony Lumpkin, has contracted tuberculosis. Mrs. Hardcastle actually hopes that her son has this disease, because it would make him seem fashionable and desirable. She believes that the disease would socially elevate Lumpkin, even though it would physically harm him. Because this play was satirical and humorous to its audience, Sontag argues that it must have been common in England during the later 1700s for the socially elite to actually want to contract tuberculosis. Sontag also notes that tuberculosis was aesthetically desirable at this time period because it made its sufferers pale and thin, which were seen as physically attractive traits.

Sontag extends this observation...