Vivienne Parry asks why wet feet brings on putrid fever or the like in many literary heroines. “For, I confess,” she writes, “part of me has always longed to grab them and say: ‘You only got your slippers wet. For heaven’s sake, girl, just get a grip!'” (via Books, Inq.)
“But Dickens tries to convince us that Lady Dedlock too dies of smallpox.”
Not so.
I’ve just reread Bleak House. “Smallpox” is never mentioned. It’s likely that Esther Summerson, Lady Dedlock’s daughter, catches it (accounting for her temporary loss of good looks). There’s no suggestion that Lady Dedlock dies of some disease; she presumably dies from effects of exposure to cold and wet, hunger, and profound depression.