Authors:
- Demonstrates that recognisable, politicised, and self-aware disabled identities were possible one hundred years before the modern Disability Rights movement
- Argues that emerging biomedical model of tuberculosis began to undermine the dominance of sentimental, Romantic, and religious models of consumptive identity
- Argues that when the right social and cultural conditions aligned, these remarkable disabled identities could even be found in bestselling or canonical Victorian novels
Part of the book series: Literary Disability Studies (LIDIST)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
Until the nineteenth century, consumptives were depicted as sensitive, angelic beings whose purpose was to die beautifully and set an example of pious suffering – while, in reality, many people with tuberculosis faced unemployment, destitution, and an unlovely death in the workhouse. Focusing on the period 1821-1912, in which modern ideas about disease, disability, and eugenics emerged to challenge Romanticism and sentimentality, Invalid Lives examines representations of nineteenth-century consumptives as disabled people. Letters, self-help books, eugenic propaganda, and press interviews with consumptive artists suggest that people with tuberculosis were disabled as much by oppressive social structures and cultural stereotypes as by the illness itself. Invalid Lives asks whether disruptive consumptive characters in Wuthering Heights, Jude the Obscure, The Idiot, and Beatrice Harraden’s 1893 New Woman novel Ships That Pass in the Night represented critical, politicised models of disabled identity (and disabled masculinity) decades before the modern disability movement.
Reviews
“Tuberculosis and Disabled Identity in Nineteenth Century Literature is a spirited and rewarding study of that long and variegated process of ‘giving way,’ where change takes hold, if only temporarily.” (Maria Frawley, Nineteenth-Century Prose, Vol. 46 (2), 2019)
“The points in Tuberculosis and Disabled Identity are made elegantly and with convincing supporting examples. And the book’s organisation is logical, lending further satisfaction. ... There is much to be gained from this book, including the seemingly simple but actually far-reaching realisation that not all Victorian representations of ‘consumption’ should automatically be understood to represent ‘tuberculosis’.” (Heidi Logan, The Wilkie Collins Journal, October, 2019)
“Tuberculosis and DisabledIdentity is an intensely informative text, which puts forward challenging and nuanced theories and readings while still remaining accessible to the reader. It offers a new and exciting perspective on nineteenth century fiction which engages with the literary tradition of depicting the ‘consumptive’, and does so in a fascinating, thought-provoking, and enlightening way.” (Emily Jessica Turner, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, October 30, 2018)
Authors and Affiliations
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University of Chester, Chester, UK
Alex Tankard
About the author
Alex Tankard lectures in English Literature at the University of Chester, UK. She has published essays on Aubrey Beardsley and Doc Holliday and tuberculosis; this is her first book.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Tuberculosis and Disabled Identity in Nineteenth Century Literature
Book Subtitle: Invalid Lives
Authors: Alex Tankard
Series Title: Literary Disability Studies
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71446-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-71445-5Published: 15 February 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-89074-6Published: 04 June 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-71446-2Published: 05 February 2018
Series ISSN: 2947-7409
Series E-ISSN: 2947-7417
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 238
Topics: Nineteenth-Century Literature