She became very ill after what (John malkovich) told her in the "beyond my control scene) she must have been really heartbroken, but you can't really die from this can you?
Is being heart broken even a medical condition and can it possibly cause death?
By the way love the movie, epic performances, Oscar worthy on every level.
There was this thing people had in those days about going into a decline when thwarted in love. One becomes morose (depressed,) vapourish (cries incessantly), and disinterested in the normal pursuits of the day (eating, drinking, washing, getting out of bed.) What we would call having a pity party for ourselves.
Instead of realizing that this is a stage, which the patient will eventually get over, they called in the doctor. Calling for a doctor in those days was begging for trouble.
The first thing most competent, contemporary doctors would do was to bleed the patient. In this case, by cupping. The cups are heated, small incisions are made though the skin, and a cup is placed over the incision. As the cup cools, the air in the cup contracts, drawing blood through the incision from the body into the cup. You repeat a couple of times, and in a few days, if the patient has not improved, repeat again.
Now, instead of just being morose and depressed the patient is also anemic, and, since the doctor never washes his knives, or his hands, the incisions have probably become septic. From there it is a small step to infection, fever the shock of blood loss and death.
So, you see, diegoag88, with the help of a doctor, people in those days really could die of a broken heart.
No but you can die from being stupid! ...And you probably will!
shareshe quite delicate to begin with, her phisyc look so fragile compared to others in this movie. she got ashtma attack every times vicount near her.
maybe she already had an illness, the stress from heart broken just accelerate it
It's not asthma, it's because of the corset. Because of corsets women back then had respiratory problems for silly issues (silly to our contemporary eyes), like strong scents or even embarrassing situations, like happens to madame de Tourvel. And she was even lucky, some women fainted instead of showing just anxiety symptoms.
Btw, as stated previously, she probably dies because her depression is badly handled by those pedestrian-XVIII-century physicians, as they were called. Moreover, let's not forget that until late XIX century the origin of psychical diseases was almost entirely unknown.