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Sarah contracted smallpox in 1741, a disease that would often leave its victims scarred and disfigured, "lowering [their] value in the marriage market." Scholars have traced the impact that smallpox left on Scott literary output: "Scott's pronounced concern [with deformity...] was motivated by her own experience of being left marked by a severe bout of smallpox [...], a trauma which had played a key role in redirecting her away from emulating the social success of her equally beautiful sister Elizabeth

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