Literature
Nineteenth-century literature offers a valuable window into historical perceptions of disability. Literature also helped shape how disability was seen in the nineteenth century. For example, novelists like Charlotte Yonge and Dinah Mulock Craik were key in promoting a vision of invalids as spiritual in their suffering. Others, such as William Wordsworth and Arthur Symons, wrote autobiographical poetry about their very different experiences meeting blind beggars in the streets of nineteenth-century London. In this section, you can discover both lesser known literary texts about disability, such as Martin Tupper's poem, "The Stammerer's Complaint", and how disability informs more well-known pieces of literature, such as Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
Charlotte Yonge's family drama, The Pillars of the House, explores both cognitive and physical disability.
Anthony Trollope's novel, Barchester Towers, features a femme fatale invalid, Signora Neroni.
Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol features one of the most famous invalids of the nineteenth-century novel, Tiny Tim.
Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend features Silas Wegg and his memorable wooden leg.
Martin Tupper's poem, "The Stammerer's Complaint", explores non-standard language.
In Dinah Craik's John Halifax, Gentleman, friendship transcends physical difference.
In Anthony Trollope's The Bertrams prosthetics are more stigmatizing for women.
The uncanny glass eye plays a key role in H.G. Wells's "The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth".
Wordsworth encounters a blind man in his autobiographical poem, The Prelude.
Wilkie Collins's Hide and Seek, was one of the only nineteenth-century novels to feature a deaf heroine.
Arthur Symons's sonnet about meeting a blind man on the streets of London.
Nineteenth-Century Disability: Cultures and Contexts, 2012-2015, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. The project, directed by Karen Bourrier, has been funded by SSHRC and launched with the help of the Research Group for Electronic Textuality and Theory at Western University.
