Illness and Death
Gabrielle developed a terminal illness while living in Switzerland, although she had arguably been in poor health for several years. She died in Austria in December 1793, shortly after hearing of the execution of Marie-Antoinette. Her family simply announced that she had died as a result of heartbreak and suffering. Most historians have concluded that she died of cancer, though contradictory royalist reports of her death suggested consumption as an alternative cause. No specific mention of her disease was made in the various allegorical pamphlets which showed the Angel of Death descending to take the soul of the still-beautiful duchesse de Polignac. Her beauty and early death became metaphors for the demise of the old regime, at least in early pamphlets and in subsequent family correspondence, the duchess's beauty was a much-emphasised point.
Read more about this topic: Yolande De Polastron
Famous quotes containing the words illness and, illness and/or death:
“... how I understand that love of living, of being in this wonderful, astounding world even if one can look at it only through the prison bars of illness and suffering! Plus je vois, the more I am thrilled by the spectacle.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
“The fact that illness is associated with the poor—who are, from the perspective of the privileged, aliens in one’s midst—reinforces the association of illness with the foreign: with an exotic, often primitive place.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Now they heap the funeral pyre,
And the torch of death they light;
Ah! ‘tis hard to die by fire!”
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)