American Literature and Physical Disabilities

[stlukesguild]

A friend has asked me to post this question to the LitNet community:

I'm currently a grad student working on my thesis. I'm working on looking at disability/disfigurement in 19th century American lit, and right now I'm just trying to find as much literature from that period as possible that deals with disability/disfigurement in some way. When I say "disability/disfigurement," I mean physical disabilities, not mental, though the two often intersect. So far, I'm working with the texts Moby Dick, Scarlet Letter, Portrait of a Lady, and Poe's short story "Hop-Frog." And even if there is something from the same time period that isn't American but deals with disability, I'd still be interested (Jane Eyre comes to mind).

Thanks for any suggestions!

[R.F. Schiller]

Check out Ambrose Bierce's short story "Chickamauga" which involves a disabled child. I don't know if this counts (because the headless horseman is implied to be fake), but Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"? Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark" does not involve physical disabilities but does involve physical imperfections, so I don't know if you'd be interested there. Outside of these, I can't really think of many 19th Century American Lit examples. Shame, because almost every one of Flannery O'Connor's stories involves a physically disabled character.

[JBI]

Ahab comes to mind. Though I confess I don't read much early American fiction, or fiction in general for that matter.

[mortalterror]

About a dozen twentieth century characters popped into my mind as I read that, but very few 19th century ones. I guess you could go with Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs has a character who's face is disfigured into a clown's mask, and was the inspiration for The Joker. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde had that character transforming into a monster of a man. There's a hunchback in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, another in his play Le Roi S'Amuse (although the jester may only be a hunchback in the operatic adaptation Rigoletto). There's a hunchback in Life In the Iron Mills by Rebecca Harding Davis. In H.G. Wells' Island of Dr. Moreau you have half beast half man creatures. The Morlocks in The Time Machine might be misfigured men who've undergone de-evolution. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein might be disfigured as he was put together out of various parts. Wasn't Tiny Tim on crutches in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol? In Gogol's The Nose you have a guy without a nose, and a nose without a man. It's non-fiction, but in Dana's Two Years Before the Mast the author enlists as a seaman after an attack of measles affects his vision, because he thinks it will help his sight. Didn't the Old Man in Poe's Telltale Heart have different colored eyes?

[qimissung]

The Scarlet Ibis, a short story by James Hurst.

[RetsixArp]

Laura in T. Williams's The Glass Menagerie has a limp, which is why mom Amanda Wingfield is so desperate to marry her off.

[Scheherazade]

John Singer from Heart is a Lonely Hunter is deaf and mute.

Cousin Lymon from The Bad of the Sad Cafe is a dwarf.

The main character from The Tin Drum never grows up.

Many characters from Blindness are, well, blind... So are many characters in The Day of the Triffids.