Unimagined Community and Disease in Ruth 1

Ruth dies of typhus. Contrary to the assertions of otherwise perceptive scholarship, Ruth is not a victim of typhoid, cholera, or a sexually transmitted disease. ² Although, as Heather Levy has noted, Gaskell omits some of typhus’ symptoms, Ruth's condition is largely in line with typical presentation. ³ Ruth experiences an oppressive headache, fever, flushed cheeks, fatigue and disordered cognition, temporary lucidity, and delirium. Certain symptoms stressed by Gaskell—amnesia, choreic hand movements, lack of aggression, and ataxia—were also identified by mid-century fever specialists as characteristic of the last stages of typhus. William Jenner, for example, who established the non-identity of the two diseases, typhus and typhoid, in 1849, noted that typhus patients were generally inactive, sometimes sinking into a “coma-vigil” (rather like Ruth's waking unconsciousness) that was invariably fatal. The critical impulse to convert that which is clearly identified as typhus into a disease more readily explicable in terms of sexual transgression and punishment is understandable given the novel's principal subject, but this critical move does disservice to the novel's attention to contemporary medical theory and practice. If we insist on reading Ruth's death only as a consequence of her relationship with Bellingham/Donne, then we fail to acknowledge that which Florence Nightingale praised—Gaskell's depiction of the development of a hospital matron (qtd. in McDonald 785). Criticism that interprets Ruth's career as a paid nurse as a marker of her social degradation fails to acknowledge the professional identity that Ruth helps to create.