This article revisits Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) in light of current debates surrounding illness and caregiving by asking: how can feminist ethics of care illuminate the place of characters with disabilities within cultures of self-reliance and self-sufficiency? By drawing on critical care ethics, I argue that caregiving communities engage more central characters into the peripheral narrative spaces inhabited by disabled minor characters like Miss Marchmont and Marie Broc. These are characters who, because of their disabilities, forge very few connections with others in the novel. In contrast, the networks of care that develop around characters with illnesses are extensive, involving friends, family, servants, strangers and medical professionals. By establishing a contrast between the experiences of illness and disability in Villette based on the research on care webs outlined in Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Care Work (2018), I sketch the pre-history of caregiving practices since the mid-nineteenth century in Britain. I argue that Brontë’s representations of the ‘care web’ and the ‘care dyad’ highlight the need for ethics of radical care as they exist today.

本文重温夏洛特·勃朗特（CharlotteBrontë）的《维莱特（Villette）》（1853）根据当前有关疾病和护理的辩论，提出了这样的问题：女权主义的护理伦理学如何在自力更生和自给自足的文化中阐明残疾人的地位？通过运用重症监护伦理，我认为照顾社区将更多的中心人物带入了由残障的小人物（例如Marchmont小姐和Marie Broc）所居住的外围叙事空间。这些人物由于自身的残疾而与小说中的其他人很少建立联系。相反，围绕患病角色发展的护理网络是广泛的，涉及朋友，家人，仆人，陌生人和医疗专业人员。通过在Villette中的疾病和残疾经历之间建立​​对比基于Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha的《护理工作（2018）》中概述的有关护理网的研究，我概述了自19世纪中叶以来英国护理工作的史前情况。我认为，勃朗特（Brontë）对“护理网”和“护理二元组”的表述凸显了当今急需护理的道德规范的必要性。