Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian CultureUniversity of Michigan Press, 2010 M02 9 - 248 pages "Highly recommended . . . Holmes moves seamlessly from novelists like Charles Dickens to sociologists like Henry Mayhew to autobiographers like John Kitto." ---Choice "An absolutely stunning book that will make a significant contribution to both Victorian literary studies and disability studies." ---Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Emory University "Establishes that Victorian melodrama informs many of our contemporary notions of disability . . . We have inherited from the Victorians not pandemic disability, but rather the complex of sympathy and fear." ---Victorian Studies Tiny Tim, Clym Yeobright, Long John Silver---what underlies nineteenth-century British literature's fixation with disability? Melodramatic representations of disability pervaded not only novels, but also doctors' treatises on blindness, educators' arguments for "special" education, and even the writing of disabled people themselves. Drawing on extensive primary research, Martha Stoddard Holmes introduces readers to popular literary and dramatic works that explored culturally risky questions like "can disabled men work?" and "should disabled women have babies?" and makes connections between literary plots and medical, social, and educational debates of the day. Martha Stoddard Holmes is Associate Professor of Literature and Writing Studies at California State University, San Marcos. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 Melodramatic Bodies | 16 |
2 Marital Melodramas Disabled Women and Victorian Marriage Plots | 34 |
3 My Old Delightful SensationWilkie Collins and the Disabling of Melodrama | 74 |
4 An Object for Compassion An Enemy to the StateI magining Disabled Boys and Men | 94 |
5 Melodramas of the Self Autobiographies of Victorians with Physical Disabilities | 133 |
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Common terms and phrases
ability adult afflicted child articulates asserts autobiography beggars begging impostor Bertha biography blind woman Blyth body century charity Collins's concept constructed context courtship Craik crippled critical Dartmouth Medical School deaf dependent desire deux orphelines Dickens Dickens's Dinah Craik disabled characters disabled women discourse discussion disease effect Elizabeth Gilbert emotional excess emotionally Ermine Ermine's example experience eyes fact feelings fiction figure friends gender Gilbert Harriet Martineau Henry Fawcett heroine Hide and Seek identity imagine innocent interviewees Jenny Kitto literary lives London Labour Lucilla Madonna Madonna Blyth marriage plot marry Martin Martineau Mayhew melo melodrama moral mother narrative nineteenth-century nondisabled novel Nydia pain pathos person physical impairment physically disabled Pompeii Poor Law Poor Miss Finch popular produced reader reformers relationships role seems sexuality sight Smike social story street-sellers suffering suggests sympathy Tackleton texts Tiny Tim tion Victorian culture Victorian literature Wilkie Collins workhouse writing
Popular passages
Page x - This world's no blot for us, Nor blank; it means intensely and means good: To find its meaning is my meat and drink.
References to this book
Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins Maria K. Bachman,Don Richard Cox Limited preview - 2003 |