Masculinity, disability, and the literature of bodies on display.

摘要

By analyzing Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850), George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss (1860), Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises (1926), my project attempts to further define the unique status of disabled males within the field of disability studies and the realm of English literature. Analyses of masculinity and disability have increased significantly since the late 1980s, when critics like Paul Longmore and Leonard Kriegel first identified (typically masculine) stereotypes of the "demonic cripple" and the over-achieving "supercrip" within canonical literature. However, despite the continually strong relationship between fictional portrayals of disability and real-world assumptions about disabled men, recent scholarship by Lennard J. Davis and Tobin Siebers creates the impression that the field of sociology would be the best venue for examinations of the masculine experience, given that even "realistic" and politically sensitive autobiographical works follow older literary conventions and resurrect stereotypes from the "inspirational" or "gothic horror" genres. Davis and Siebers argue, in turn, that this failure to break away from literary stereotypes undermines the credibility of disability activism by creating discourses that seem (to a larger, able-bodied audience) "narcissistic" and obsessed with victimization narratives.; To re-affirm that fictional literature can facilitate a greater understanding of the disability experience without simply reproducing "narcissistic" narratives, I follow the lead of sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva: my project looks beyond the language of "blatant" bigotry and examines more closely language that makes prejudice "invisible" by blending it into apparently "objective" discourses.; To uncover these powerful narratives of "invisibility," I examine American and British novels covering the period from 1850-1926. This time span encompasses the rise of medical "experts" in America and Britain who became medical and social critics while struggling to dissociate new eugenic theories from the "low" mythologies of the freak show. The contradictory discourse produced during this struggle is recognized as such by major authors of the period, whose own experiences with disability prevent them from "naturalizing" disability stereotypes in their works.