Reading the Brontë body : disease, desire, and the constraints of culture / Beth Torgerson.

New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

x, 180 pages ; 22 cm

Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska--Lincoln, 2001.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Sick of mankind and their disgusting ways": victorian alcoholism,social reform, and Anne Bronte's narratives of illness -- Ailing women in the age of cholera: illness in Shirley -- Hysteria, female desire, and self-control in villette -- Vampires, ghosts, and the disease of dis/possession in Wuthering heights.