Sitting in bed, under a duvet, three blankets, and a mountain of tissues, I feel the only difference between myself and Helen Burns is that I’m an atheist. I wouldn’t wish the common cold on my worst enemy (well, I would, but that’s neither here nor there) and at Oxford illness is not only morally, physically, and emotionally draining, but unfathomably annoying. With two deadlines a week and all my teaching set to end by week 6, postponement isn’t really an option. 

So, as I obliterate yet another double pack of Kleenex, I’m also writing a Shakespeare essay. Will it be awful? Undoubtedly, but at least now I have the excuse of a headache even four ibuprofen can’t banish and uncontrollable fits of sneezing every five minutes. 

The other downside of being sick is that screens start to hurt. My tolerance for Instagram Reels has been so diminished that I, for perhaps the first time in an Oxford term, decided to read for pleasure. Jane Eyre is my conquest. Battered and bruised, I stole it from my mother’s shelves years ago and burrowed into it. I was home from school in all the glory of a stomach bug which works itself out long before the teachers acquiesce to let you back in. And what else does one do in such a situation, but read? 

While I am endlessly thankful for antibiotics, vaccinations, and the establishment of the NHS, something deep within me longs to be sent to the seaside. It would actually fix me. A Victorian-cure-all that actually worked! Well, in some cases.

Tuberculosis is far harder to shake than university bugs, which come and go like cars on midnight cruises, lights streaming past my bedroom window. 

There’s something haunting about Bronte’s description of Helen’s death which is also oddly comforting. The scene reminds me of lying alongside my sister in the morning spells of primary school flus or the afternoon hangovers of our adolescence, though armed with central heating and painkillers. The sickbed in that room which for Jane is filled with horror, for me was rarely so. 

Being poorly at uni makes me long for home. For tomato soup delivered to my room and a lovely mother to do hot water bottle runs for me. When I was quarantined in bed during a Covid scare, I called my sister 20 times a day with fresh demands. 

Here, it’s slightly harder. No car means doctors visits become arduous. The fridge is only stocked if I’ve done the grocery shop (unlikely) and I certainly don’t fancy running to Sainsburys in an unwashed jumper, boasting my college crest in a new ritual of humiliation. 

I think about how in a modern world they all might have lived—and then, about how many children still die of TB today. The capitalism which created these diseases now allows them to roam rampant outside of the Global West. 

Helen dies, but I skip that part of the chapter. I never read Little Women in paralysing horror of what happened to Beth, I skim past Bessy dying in North and South. 

I’m writing this still half on my deathbed and entirely on my actual one, with my essays unfinished and feeling entirely sorry for myself, and entirely sorry for the crimes of my capital.