INTRODUCTION

To cure her ailing arm, cursed by witchcraft, Gertrude Lodge of Hardy’s The Withered Arm was advised to place the limb upon the neck of a recently hanged man, thereby ‘turning her blood’ and changing her constitution. The scene unites death and disease, but in an unusual fashion. Death becomes the cure of the disease rather than disease the cause of death. Unfortunately for Gertrude the shock of discovering that the hanged man, whose death she has wished for to effect her cure, is her husband’s illegitimate son, leads to her own sudden demise. Death is ultimately triumphant.