Abstract

Meiners traces Sara Coleridge's illness though her diaries and her essay "Nervousness." The author notes that in her writings Coleridge destabilizes salutary and sympathetic effects of nature characterized by the Romantic poets. Sara's writing presents a distinctly feminine view of illness, which is defined by contradictions and not by the need to eliminate them. Through both Sara's concealments and her explanations, she seeks to maintain control over how she is viewed as an invalid and to seek out a "language in which to communicate the radical incommensurability of suffering."

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