For my thesis, I intend to examine the treatment of disability in fin de siècle British and Irish Gothic literature. I aim to take an interdisciplinary approach, factoring in research in the fields of the Medical Humanities and Disability Studies to better understand the social and historical contexts which informed the stigmatisation of disabled individuals in the late 19th century. I will examine how attitudes surrounding disability and mental illness are reflected in my selected texts and how common 19th century Gothic tropes (including the double, the deformed villain and the corrupted body) can be interpreted as representations of these. I intend to focus on a variety of texts, primarily R.L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as all texts feature a figure whose body has been somehow deformed or corrupted.
I will draw upon definitions of disability and accounts of historical ableism in order to contextualise my writing. Texts including Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (NYU Press, 1996) by Rosemarie Garland Thomson, “The Victorian Freak Show: The Significance of Disability and Physical Differences in 19th-Century Fiction” (Indiana University Press, 2011) by Marlene Tromp, “Romantic Disease Discourse: Disability, Immunity, and Literature” (Nineteenth Century Contexts, 2011) by Fuson Wang, “”Foul Things of the Night”: Dread in the Victorian Body” (Modern Humanities Research Association, 1998) and Disability and the Victorians: Attitudes, interventions, legacies (Manchester University Press, 2022) by Martin Atherton, Iain Hutchison and Jaipreet Virdi will serve to assist in my investigation of historical treatment of disability.
I will refer to Julia Kristeva’s theories as expressed in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (Columbia University Press, 1982), to examine how the abject is presented in my chosen texts and how the figures in my chosen texts can fall into definitions of abjection. This idea is explored in Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York University Press, 2006) by Robert McRuer. I will draw upon his discussion of the intersections between Disability Studies and Queer Theory and the othering of marginalised individuals and ‘othered’ bodies. Deformity within Gothic texts tends to present in tandem with a disturbance of gender expectations, so I believe it will be valuable to examine my chosen texts through a Queer Theory lens also. Josh Dohman’s essay “Disability as Abject: Kristeva, Disability and Resistance” (Wiley,2016) expands upon Kristeva’s theories to examine how abjection relates to social models of disability, and the fears and prejudices surrounding disabled individuals. I will also refer to Freud’s “The Uncanny” (1919) in my analysis of deformity in Gothic texts.
When discussing the character of Mr. Hyde, I will refer to “Mysterious Bodies: Solving and De-Solving Disability in the Fin-de-Siècle Mystery” from Articulating Bodies: The Narrative Form of Disability and Illness in Victorian Fiction (Liverpool University Press, 2019) by Kylee-Anne Hingston. Hingston touches on various interpretations of Jekyll’s duality—as representing epilepsy, homosexuality and mental illness—and how these correlate with evolving theories around the human brain. She argues that Hyde is disabled not due to the nature of his body itself but because of the other characters’ reactions to him, fitting in with the Social Model of Disability in which scholars argue that disabilities are socially and culturally constructed.
When discussing disability within Frankenstein, I will refer to more specific writing, including “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Disability, and the Injustice of Misrecognition” (Disability Studies Quarterly, 2020) by Amber Knight and several chapters from the John Hopkins University Press vol. 36 from 2018 which covers different aspects of Frankenstein, particularly the chapters “Walk This Way: Frankenstein’s Monster, Disability Performance, and Zombie Ambulation” by Angela Smith and “Born This Way: Reading Frankenstein with Disability” by Martha Stoddard Holmes. I have also found some valuable texts examining disability and illness in Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, discussing the social construction of disability and the relationship between disability and moral deformity in these texts, including “Deadly Nausea and Monstrous Ingestion: Moral-Medical Fantasies in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Ohio State University Press, 2019) by Lin Young, “Carrying On Like a Madman: Insanity and Responsibility in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (University of California Press, 2015) by Melissa J. Ganz, “Hyding the Subject?: The Antinomies of Masculinity in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Duke University Press, 2004), “A Parasite for Sore Eyes: Re-reading Infection Metaphors in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (Cambridge University Press, 2016) by Robert G. Forman, “Bacillophobia: Man and Microbes in “Dracula, The War of the Worlds”, and “The N*gger of the “Narcissus”” (Critical Survey, 2015) by Jens Lohfert Jorgensen, “Purity and Danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis” (John Hopkins University Press, 1992) by Kathleen L. Spencer,“Vampires and Medical Science” (Wiley, 2015) by Mary Hallab, “The Invisible Giant, Dracula and Disease” (John Hopkins University Press, 2007) by Martin Willis.
I intend to look more closely at the contexts of industrialisation and scientific advancement and how they influence my selected texts. I am particularly interested in examining how increased fears around moral degeneracy and criminality could be linked to changes in perceptions of masculinity. As more individuals began to work in factories during the nineteenth century, individuals’ worth was increasingly tied to their ability to engage in physical labour, while public and private spaces became increasingly gendered. I will consider my chosen texts through the interdisciplinary lens of disability studies and queer theory, examining the relationships between disability and disturbances in gender roles in my selected texts and how they relate to nineteenth century scientific advancements.