What's on archive 2011

Seminar: Orthopaedic Deformity in the Nineteenth-Century Novel

30 May 2012-30 May 2012, 18:00-19:00, K3.11, King's, Strand Campus

Event series: CHH seminar series
School / area: Arts & Humanities
Department: Centre for the Humanities and Health
Location: Strand Campus
Speaker: Dr Karen Bourrier
Speaker institution: University of Western Ontario

‘Without exaggeration, it may be stated, that at the present moment many of the most unsightly deformities can be cured with less inconvenience than any other class of afflictions at all comparable with deformities in the bodily and mental suffering they occasion.’ So wrote the orthopaedic surgeon William John Little in 1853. What is surprising here is not Little's bold claim that all types of deformity—defined in the mid nineteenth-century as “any and every deviation from the recognised symmetrical proportions of the human frame,” including conditions such as hunchback, club foot, contracted fingers and wry neck—would soon be eradicated from the human race. What is surprising is his notion that deformities cause as much “mental” suffering as they do “bodily.”

Throughout the nineteenth century, deformities were increasingly and problematically seen as a deeply individual markings that could cause as much psychological suffering as they did physical. Working through a disability studies perspective, I argue that two potential plots related to deformity shaped nineteenth-century fiction: on the one hand, having a deformity could isolate a man by making him feel set apart from his fellow human beings, or, it could bring him into closer communion with his fellow men through identification with the suffering of all men. I examine iterations of this plot in three key novels that intersect with the history of orthopaedic surgery: Madame Bovary, The Mill on the Floss, and The History of Sir Richard Calmady. These texts highlight the emotional effects of deformity even as they detail new-fangled surgical techniques or employ medical language, underscoring a shift from viewing deformity as a god-given burden to seeing it as a correctable emotional and medical problem. It has come to seem natural today that a person would experience mental anguish in proportion to the visibility and severity of his or her deformity, regardless of whether the deformity causes any physical pain or impairment. These novels suggest instead that the emotional history of deformity developed in conjunction with the medicalization of disability, which often pathologized both the physical deformity itself and the affect associated with it.



Contact name: Julia Howse
Email: julia.howse@kcl.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7848 1405

 

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