Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis (Master's)

Department or Program

Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

First Advisor

Min Young Godley

Second Advisor

Kristin O'Rourke

Third Advisor

Donald Pease

Abstract

This thesis examines how tuberculosis, known in the nineteenth century as “consumption,” was aestheticized in American cultural and medical discourse, particularly in industrial cities of the North between 1830 and 1850. It addresses the paradox at the heart of the disease’s representation: while tuberculosis was medically pathologized, it was simultaneously romanticized, especially when afflicting elite white women. The central problem explored is how this aestheticization of illness functioned to reinforce gender, class, and racial hierarchies by transforming suffering into a symbol of virtue, refinement, and social status. Using a cultural-historical methodology, this project analyzes a range of sources, including medical treatises, women’s magazines, advertisements, fashion critiques, and advice literature. Through close analysis and contextual interpretation, it demonstrates how medical rhetoric and consumer culture worked in tandem to produce and circulate the image of the consumptive woman as a desirable and morally elevated figure. It also draws on the work of scholars such as Susan Sontag, Clark Lawlor, Michel Foucault, and Carolyn Day to situate the American consumptive aesthetic within broader transatlantic and metaphorical frameworks. The findings reveal that tuberculosis became a flexible cultural metaphor aligning fragility, moral sensitivity, and elite femininity with the visible symptoms of disease. While white, upper-class women were permitted to suffer beautifully in medical and visual culture, working-class and racialized individuals were denied access to this ideal. Their suffering was framed as pathological, unsightly, and morally suspect. Moreover, the thesis shows that physicians were not detached observers but active participants in consumer culture, selling remedies, endorsing fashion norms, and contributing to a commodified vision of health. Tuberculosis thus emerges not only as a medical condition, but as a cultural script through which social power was negotiated. The consumptive woman exemplifies how nineteenth-century American society transformed illness into a tool for reinforcing ideals of femininity, class distinction, and white superiority. By foregrounding the role of consumer culture in shaping medical and aesthetic discourses, this thesis repositions tuberculosis at the center of antebellum debates about identity, morality, and social order. The consumptive ideal offered women symbolic value only through suffering and decline, a paradox that affirmed subordination even in moments of cultural visibility.

Download

Available for download on Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Share

COinS