Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T18:16:16.536Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ABNORMAL NARRATIVES: DISABILITY AND OMNISCIENCE IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 August 2017

Clayton Carlyle Tarr
Clayton Carlyle Tarr*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In Charlotte Brontë’sVillette (1853), Lucy Snowe is tasked to deliver a “little basket” to the mysterious shut-in Madame Walravens (396; ch. 34). After crossing an “inhospitable threshold” (398) that leads to an “inhospitable salon” (400), Lucy is told to wait for the lady of the house, who will serve as both grandmother and wolf in this Red Riding Hood revision. Caught in a dreamlike, “fairy tale” trance, Lucy focuses her attention on a curious picture, which “give[s] way” to expose an arched doorway and a winding staircase. The tapestry momentarily displaced, Lucy hears the taps of a walking-stick, and then spies a “substance” that eventually materializes into the distinct form of Madame Walravens: “She might be three feet high, but she had no shape. . .. Her face was large, set, not upon her shoulders, but before her breast; she seemed to have no neck.” Lucy proceeds to call her host “[h]unchbacked,” and “dwarfish” — a “barbarian queen,” an “uncouth thing,” and an “old witch of a grand-dame” (399–402; ch. 34), who is as “hideous as a Hindoo idol” (473; ch. 39). Most important, Lucy notes the “violence of a temper which deformity made sometimes demoniac” (403; ch. 34). Madame Walravens's physical abnormalities make her not just the villain of a fairy tale, but a supernatural terror. Lucy may only confront the reality of disability by transforming it into a “tale of magic” (399; ch. 34) — one that she escapes by re-crossing the “inhospitable threshold.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 645 - 664
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Arac, Jonathan. Commissioned Spirits: The Shaping of Social Motion in Dickens, Carlyle, Melville, and Hawthorne. New York: Columbia UP, 1989.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
“Attack on the Queen.” Annual Register. London: J. G. F. & J. Rivington, 1842. 118–20.Google Scholar
Barrie, J. M. A Window in Thrums. Ed. Campbell, Ian. Edinburgh: Saltire Society, 2005.Google Scholar
Bender, John. Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.Google Scholar
Boehm, Katharina. Charles Dickens and the Sciences of Childhood: Popular Medicine, Child Health and Victorian Culture. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Smith, Margaret. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Brontë, Charlotte. Villette. London: Penguin, 1994.Google Scholar
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. Aurora Leigh. Ed. Reynolds, Margaret. New York: Norton, 1995.Google Scholar
Byron, Lord. Byron's Letters and Journals. Vol. 10. Ed. Marchand, Leslie A.. London: J. Murray, 1980.Google Scholar
Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution. Vol. 2. New York: John B. Alden, 1883.Google Scholar
Cauvin, Joseph. Letter to William Longman, 8 Dec. 1856. The Letters of Anthony Trollope. Vol. 1. Ed. Hall, N. John. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1983. 45–46.Google Scholar
Chorley, Henry. “Our Mutual Friend.” Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend: A Publishing History. Ed. Grass, Sean. Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. 171–75.Google Scholar
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Ed. Sutherland, John. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.Google Scholar
“Compound Fracture. Result Imperfect.” Buffalo Medical Journal and Monthly Review 12.7 (Dec. 1856): 407–08.Google Scholar
Conrad, Joseph. “Henry James: An Appreciation.” Heart of Darkness. New York: Norton, 2006. 286–88.Google Scholar
Craton, Lillian. The Victorian Freak Show: The Significance of Disability and Physical Difference in 19th-Century Fiction. Amherst: Cambria, 2009.Google Scholar
Colligan, Colette. “Raising the House Tops: Sexual Surveillance in Charles Dickens's Dombey and Son (1846–8).” Dickens Studies Annual 29 (2000): 99–123.Google Scholar
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Brief Insight. New York: Sterling, 1997.Google Scholar
Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London: Verso, 1995.Google Scholar
Davis, Lennard J. “Introduction: Normality, Power, and Culture.” The Disability Studies Reader. Ed. Davis, Lennard J.. New York: Routledge, 2013. 1–16.Google Scholar
Deal, Mark. “Disabled People's Attitudes toward Other Impairment Groups: a Hierarchy of Impairments.” Disability & Society 18.7 (Dec. 2003): 897–910.Google Scholar
“Deerbrook; a Novel.” Edinburgh Review 69.140 (July 1839): 494–502.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. Ed. Spence, Gordon W.. London: Penguin, 2003.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and Son. Ed. Sanders, Andrew. London: Penguin, 1995.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens. 12 vols. Ed. Madeleine House, Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson, Nina Burgis, et al. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1982–2002.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. The Old Curiosity Shop. Ed. Page, Norman. London: Penguin, 2000.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Our Mutual Friend. Ed. Gill, Stephen. London: Penguin, 1985.Google Scholar
Easley, Alexis. “Gendered Observations: Harriet Martineau and the Woman Question.” Victorian Women Writers and the Woman Question. Ed. Thompson, Nicola Diane. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 80–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engels, Friedrich. Condition of the Working Class in England. Ed. McLellan, David. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993.Google Scholar
“The Factory System — The Ten Hours Bill.” Frasier's Magazine 40.7 (April 1833): 377–92.Google Scholar
Farrell, John P. “ The Partners’ Tale: Dickens and Our Mutual Friend .” ELH 66.3 (1999): 759–99.Google Scholar
Fielder, Leslie A. Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self. The Tyranny of the Normal: An Anthology. Ed. Donley, Carol and Buckley, Sheryl. Kent: Kent State UP, 1996. 11–26.Google Scholar
Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Vol. 3. London: Chapman and Hall, 1874.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Sheridan, Alan. New York: Vintage, 1995.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1. Trans. Hurley, Robert. New York: Pantheon, 1978.Google Scholar
Fraiman, Susan. “The Domestic Novel.” The Oxford History of the Novel in English. Vol. 3. Ed. Kucich, John and Taylor, Jenny Bourne. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. 169–86.Google Scholar
Fratz, Deborah Mae. Disabled Subjects: Disability, Gender, and Ethical Agency in Victorian Realism. Dissertation: University of Illinois, 2008.Google Scholar
Frawley, Maria. “‘A Prisoner to the Couch’: Harriet Martineau, Invalidism, and Self-Representation.” The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability. Ed. Mitchell, David T. and Snyder, Sharon L.. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997. 174–88.Google Scholar
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. “Introduction: From Wonder to Error — A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity.” Freakery: Cultural Aspects of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. New York: New York UP, 1996. 1–22.Google Scholar
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Staring: How We Look. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009.Google Scholar
Guevara, Luis Vélez de. El Diablo Coxuelo. Madrid: Benito Cano, 1812.Google Scholar
Hecimovich, Gregg A. “The Cup and the Lip and the Riddle of Our Mutual Friend .” ELH 62.4 (1995): 955–77.Google Scholar
Hillard, Molly Clark. “Dickens's Little Red Riding Hood and Other Waterside Characters.” SEL 49.4 (Autumn 2009): 945–73.Google Scholar
Holmes, Martha Stoddard, and Mossman, Mark. “Disability in Victorian Sensation Fiction.” A Companion to Sensation Fiction. Ed. Gilbert, Pamela K.. Malden: Blackwell, 2011. 493–506.Google Scholar
Holmes, Martha Stoddard. Fictions of Affliction: Physical Disability in Victorian Culture. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2004.Google Scholar
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. “Pied Beauty.” The Major Works. Ed. Phillips, Catherine. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 132.Google Scholar
Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Ed. Wren, Keith. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1993.Google Scholar
Jaffe, Audrey. Vanishing Points: Dickens, Narrative, and the Subject of Omniscience. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991.Google Scholar
James, Henry. “The Limitations of Dickens.” Views and Reviews by Henry James. Boston: Ball Publishing Company, 1908. 153–61.Google Scholar
James, Henry. Preface. The Portrait of a Lady. By Henry James. The Portable Henry James. Ed. Auchard, John. London: Penguin, 2004. 473–75.Google Scholar
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Ed. Johnson, Jeri. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.Google Scholar
LaCom, Cindy. “‘It Is More than Lame’: Female Disability, Sexuality, and the Maternal in the Nineteenth-Century Novel.” The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability. Ed. Mitchell, David T. and Snyder, Sharon L.. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1997. 189–201.Google Scholar
Lawson, Kate, and Shakinovsky, Lynn. The Marked Body: Domestic Violence in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Literature. Albany: State U of New York P, 2002.Google Scholar
Lesage, Alain René. The Devil upon Two Sticks. London: J. C. Nimmo and Bain, 1881.Google Scholar
Livi-Bacci, Massimo. The Population of Europe: A History. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.Google Scholar
Lynch, Eve M. “Spectral Politics: The Victorian Ghost Story and the Domestic Servant.” The Victorian Supernatural. Ed. Brown, Nicola, Burdett, Carolyn, and Thurschwell, Pamela. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. 67–86.Google Scholar
Malthus, Thomas. An Essay on the Principle of Population. New York: Dover, 2007.Google Scholar
Martineau, Harriet. Deerbrook. Ed. Sanders, Valerie. London: Penguin, 2004.Google Scholar
Martineau, Harriet. Harriet Martineau's Autobiography. Vol. 2. Ed. Chapman, Maria Weston. London: Smith, Elder, 1877.Google Scholar
Martineau, Harriet. “Letter to the Deaf.” Tait's Edinburgh Magazine 1 (1834): 174–79.Google Scholar
Martineau, Harriet. Life in the Sick-Room. London: Edward Moxon, 1844.Google Scholar
McKee, Patricia. Reading Constellations: Urban Modernity in Victorian Fiction. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014.Google Scholar
Mckinney, Kayla Kreuger. “‘In that Bony Light’: The Museum Economy of Our Mutual Friend .” Victorian Review 40.1 (Spring 2014): 177–96.Google Scholar
McMullin, Jeremy. Ex-Combatants and the Post-Conflict State: Challenges of Reintegration. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.Google Scholar
Miller, D. A. The Novel and the Police. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.Google Scholar
Michie, Helena. “‘Who Is This in Pain?’: Scarring, Disfigurement, and Female Identity in Bleak House and Our Mutual Friend .” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 22.2 (Winter 1989): 199–212.Google Scholar
Mitchell, David T., and Snyder, Sharon L.. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2000.Google Scholar
Montgomery, James. The Chimney-Sweeper's Friend. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824.Google Scholar
Moore, Thomas. The Life, Letters, and Journals of Lord Byron. London: John Murray, 1839.Google Scholar
Nordau, Max. Degeneration. New York: D. Appleton, 1895.Google Scholar
Norton, Caroline. “A Voice from the Factories.” The Dream, and Other Poems. London: Henry Colburn, 1841. 303–34.Google Scholar
Royle, Nicholas. “The ‘Telepathy Effect’: Notes toward a Reconsideration of Narrative Fiction.” Acts of Narrative. Ed. Jacobs, Carol and Sussman, Henry. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. 93–109.Google Scholar
Ruskin, John. “Fiction, Fair and Foul.” The Works of John Ruskin. Vol. 34. Ed. Cook, E. T. and Wedderburn, Alexander. London: George Allen, 1908. 265–302.Google Scholar
Sanders, Valerie. Introduction. Deerbrook. By Martineau, Harriet. London: Penguin, 2004. xi–xxxii.Google Scholar
Schor, Hilary M. Dickens and the Daughter of the House. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Scott, Walter. The Black Dwarf. Ed. Garside, Peter. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1993.Google Scholar
Siebers, Tobin. “Disability as Masquerade.” Literature and Medicine 23.1 (2004): 1–22.Google Scholar
“Simple Fracture, Result Imperfect.” Eclectic Medical Journal 1.2 (Feb. 1857): 88.Google Scholar
Stewart, Garrett. “The ‘Golden Bower’ of Our Mutual Friend .” ELH 40.1 (1973): 105–30.Google Scholar
Tremain, Shelley. “Foucault, Governmentality, and Critical Disability Theory.” Foucault and the Government of Disability. Ed. Tremain, Shelley. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2005. 1–26.Google Scholar
Trollope, Anthony. Barchester Towers. Ed. Sadleir, Michael and Page, Frederick. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994.Google Scholar
Wheaton, Nathaniel S. A Journal of a Residence during Several Months in London. Hartford: H. & F. J. Huntington, 1830.Google Scholar
Whitman, Walt. “The Wound-Dresser.” The Works of Walt Whitman. Ed. Rogers, David. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, 1995. 283–85.Google Scholar
Wood, Ellen. East Lynne. Ed. Jay, Elisabeth. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.Google Scholar