present difference: the cultural production of disability was a conference held in Manchester this year from the 6th to the 8th of January. The full programme can be found here. Included in it was a session on "Genre Fiction" which featured the following papers:
Those links will take you to details about the speakers, and to synopses of their papers, but I've cut and pasted in the synopses here to try to preserve them for posterity, just in case the original webpages about the conference are taken down.
- Ria Cheyne Liverpool Hope University
‘We are both maimed’: Disability and Trauma in Historical Romance
This paper explores the relationship between disability representation and genre conventions in the historical romance subgenre, focusing on the work of bestselling author Mary Balogh. Balogh’s novels frequently feature disabled characters. I focus on two novels featuring disabled heroes, The Secret Pearl (2005) and Simply Love (2006). In these novels, the war-wounded hero’s physical trauma is equated with psychological trauma suffered by the heroine. ‘We are both maimed’, as the hero of Simply Love puts it. Yet this recognition of kinship is not enough to ensure the successful conclusion of the romance plot; before the hero and heroine can be permanently united, the hero has to confront his own internalisation of what Carol Thomas terms the psycho-emotional aspects of disability, and understand himself as worthy of the heroine’s love.
Balogh’s use of disability allows her to create a compelling romance narrative, a refreshing antidote to the blandly attractive couples who populate the genre. Equally, though, the conventions of historical romance – particularly its combination of a contemporary sensibility with a setting remote in time – allow her to do particular things with disability representation. Disability is frequently marginalised in romance narratives (rendered invisible by the eyes of love or even cured by love) but in Balogh’s work impairment is accepted as an integral part of the beloved, is a part of everyday life, and disability is located in society as well as in the individual body. Rather than enforcing normalcy, then, Balogh’s novels challenge it.- Kathleen A. Miller, University of Delaware
What’s At Stake?: Dis/Ability in Tanya Huff’s and Charlaine Harris’s Contemporary Vampire Romance Fiction
With the phenomenal commercial success of Stephenie Meyers’s Twilight series, vampires—and, more specifically, vampire-human romance narratives—have become big business. Reading Tanya Huff’s Blood Price and Charlaine Harris’s Dead Until Dark, as well as their television adaptations (respectively, Blood Ties and True Blood), through the conventions of romance and female gothic genre fiction, I suggest that these texts present readers with messages of female freedom and gender equality. But as scholarship by Rosemarie Garland Thomson and Martha Stoddard Holmes on the literature of disability helps us to see, these feminist statements also come filtered through the texts’ compelling narratives of disability. Each work advances a red-herring theory that vampirism is actually a disability, a form of chronic illness; nonetheless, despite their “disability,” the vampires prove to be “hyper-able” — destined to live eternally, impervious to most bodily threats, and uncannily gifted as lovers. Yet vampires are not the only ones to challenge categories of ability and normalcy in these texts, for the central human characters are disabled heroines, who also prove extraordinarily able. Huff’s female protagonist has a degenerative eye condition, while Harris’s protagonist identifies her telepathy as a “disability.” Through their status as heroines with seemingly disabling “differences,” they display their various abilities, including their strength, insight, and romantic desirability. Furthermore, negotiating and embracing their disabilities leads them to challenge existing notions of gender roles and to construct new alternatives for female accomplishment. Much like that of the supernatural vampire, the disabled female physical body becomes extraordinary, as it helps the protagonists to counter threats of violence and to protect themselves and those around them. In these works, as I will demonstrate in my paper, women authors are using the trope of disability to reclaim the female body in the popular imagination, even as they contribute to the reinvention of the vampire romance genre.- Sandra Martina Schwab, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany
"It is only with one's heart that one can see clearly": The Loss of Sight in Teresa Medeiros's The Bride and the Beast and Yours Until Dawn
The ability to see clearly and the loss of sight play an important role in the historical romances The Bride and the Beast (2001) and Yours Until Dawn (2004) by the American author Teresa Medeiros. While Yours Until Dawn features a blind hero, large parts of The Bride and the Beast are set during the night, and the darkness makes the heroine unable to see the face of the male protagonist. In both books the physical inability to see clearly is not only connected to a lack of recognition, but is also indicative of a lack of psychological insight. In Medeiros's two novels blindness thus functions as a symbol for internal problems the characters have to overcome in the course of the stories, namely their inability and unwillingness to face the truth about oneself and others. This psychological blindness also hinders the development of the love relationships. Therefore in both books the happy ending is dependant on the protagonists learning the same lesson the Fox teaches Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince: "It is only with one's heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
Perhaps a little off topic, but I find the Victorian representation of disability intriguing. Dinah Mulock Craik is particularly interested in male disability and married an amputee. I just came across a reference to her interest in men nursing one another on the Victorian Web - perhaps today she would be writing hurt/comfort slash!
ReplyDeleteSarah, even more off-topic, amputee fetishism is rampant - and there are fiction sites for 'devotees' (acrotomophiles - people who have a sexual interest in amputation)
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrotomophilia
(Not sure how this fits in with body dysmorphia.) Even when it's not overtly fetished, it's clear mutilation is a powerful emotional engine, certainly not reserved for women or women writers.
Vampirism as a form of disability sounds a bit of an offensive to me. I've always thought it was, like m/m fiction (of which paranormals are a fairly important subgenre), a way for women to deal with their sexuality at a safe distance. As well as being an AIDS/homophobia metaphor yadda yadda.
It's also a little disturbing that scars and mutilation are used as decoration a lot of the time. Not to show something profound about the character or those reacting to them, but simply as a way of spicing things up a little - indeed, to form "a refreshing antidote to the blandly attractive couples who populate the genre." What an insulting concept (and the idea that 'disabled' is the antonym to "attractive'? Yuck.)
How many actually disabled authors are using disbled protags, I wonder?
Thanks Ann - another important disabled hero is Miles Vorkosigan - in Lois McMaster Bujold's Heyeresque sf novels - but although his disability is of some plot significance it's not fetishized at all I don't think.
ReplyDeleteDinah Mulock Craik is particularly interested in male disability and married an amputee. I just came across a reference to her interest in men nursing one another on the Victorian Web
ReplyDeleteI duly followed your clue and went off to the Victorian Web, and I found a bit there about her marriage to George Lillie Craik
who was born in 1837 and was therefore eleven years younger than Dinah Mulock. [...] Sometime in the early 1860s he was badly injured in a railway accident in or near London. One version of the story has it that he was carried to Wildwood, which Dinah Mulock had thrown open to receive victims of the wreck at the bottom of her garden; another that the surgeons asked if he knew anyone in London who could be summoned and he managed to remember the name of his uncle's friend, who hurried to the hotel where he had been taken and held his hand while his leg was amputated. It does seem certain that he spent several weeks at Wildwood convalescing and that sometime, then or after he returned to Glasgow, someone proposed.
It is an extraordinary case of life imitating art that the features of this story should so closely coincide with the model of sexual relationships that is an almost archetypal feature of the women's novels of the 1860s. Dinah Mulock had written several versions of it herself. The implications of its literary use (the achievement of equality between the sexes by the illness or disability of the male, the expression of love as a function of the maternal instinct, the exercise of woman's power through the caritative womanly virtues) will be discussed in due course. Her later works suggest also one other value: the very fortuitousness of the circumstances confirmed her ideal that women must find love without seeking it.
A later chapter mentions that
The second crucial feature in Craik's map of interior territory is illness, disability, and the figure of the weak or damaged human. This characteristic is common to a great many women writers of the period, and it can be interpreted in several ways. Certainly the ill or disabled male is an inevitable persona for the woman who sees herself as being in every way like a man except that she has less muscular strength. Physical incapacity codifies the pain of helplessness, the lack of power and social position and financial ability and legal right to control the circumstances of one's own life.
and
Craik recognized that men had sexual drives. She seems to have felt that women did not; in "Concerning Men" she said that she doubted if any ordinary woman could even understand "that side of men's nature, in which the senses predominate over . .. the soul" (375). Yet Craik's novels reveal the emotional distress of the single woman, the feeling of incompleteness, the sense of dissatisfaction, the yearning for something more, the need to feel loved, the unidentifiable longings. The only term for these needs that was acceptable to Craik's own sense of woman's nature was the maternal instinct. [...]
A Craik heroine, therefore, can be attracted to a man when he needs her care — when she can feel toward him the tender protectiveness that expresses her sexual (i.e., maternal) instinct. The man's illness or disability or need to be rescued from a moral difficulty is also a route to feminine power. It allows women to exhibit their strength in socially acceptable ways. Furthermore, it subdues the aggressive male sexuality that threatens women's independence and self-preservation, making it safe to love.
and "In The Ogilvies, Cola Monti, John Halifax, and The Woman's Kingdom men nurse one another. These scenes also have, often, a suppressed but inescapable erotic content."
I'll post a proper summary soon (with pictures of snowy Manchester!). Sorry it's taking me so long; in the past few weeks my life has taken a bit of a nosedive, hence the prolonged silence.
ReplyDeleteThe Present Difference conference was one of the most fantastic conferences I've been to (even though it almost didn't happen because of the snow), and the romance panel was just lovely. Our papers complemented each other, and in the Q&A afterwards we happily bounced ideas off each other.
"These scenes also have, often, a suppressed but inescapable erotic content."
ReplyDeleteSarah referenced hurt/comfort (often abbreviated to 'h/c') slash in her comment, and the similarities with what Craik wrote are inescapable.
This links may be of interest:
http://www.trickster.org/symposium/symp55.html
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HurtComfortFic
I wonder if h/c, like m/m romance, are products of strongly gendered/patriarchal societies, so women are desperate to exert control over and express sexual attraction towards men in a form where they are unthreatening. Rochesterising them, in fact :) The socially acceptable aspects of caring for the man are, I think, less important than the rendering of the man as harmless.
In 'Hang 'em High' where Inger Stevens's character cares for a badly injured Clint Eastwood (and is fairly obvious attracted to him in that wounded state), she receives an explicit warning from another female character that she should be careful because when the cowboy recovers, he'll be dangerous again. I guess if you're talking about permanently disabled and mutilated male characters, the attraction is that they never *do* became threatening again - i.e. highly sexualised and powerful
I've always thought it was, like m/m fiction (of which paranormals are a fairly important subgenre), a way for women to deal with their sexuality at a safe distance. As well as being an AIDS/homophobia metaphor yadda yadda.
ReplyDeleteAgain, since I know next to nothing about vampires, I had to go off and do some research. My impression is that the early vampire novels were written by men, so I wonder if they tie in with the Victorian (male, sexual) interest in dead and/or victimised women (there's a bit at the Victorian web about women in chains and women destroyed by love). Polidori's (1819) story about a male vampire isn't Victorian, of course, but he sounds to me like a version of the rake/seducer figure.
There was also a Victorian (male, sexual) interest in the femme fatale. There's a female vampire in "George Whyte-Melville's, A Vampire; a story which appears in a series of quasi-philosophical discussions called, "Bones and I" or, The Skeleton at Home (1869)" and a lesbian vampire in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872).
"It's also a little disturbing that scars and mutilation are used as decoration a lot of the time."
I wonder if that's partly the result of a feeling that "I need a hero [...] fresh from the fight." A lot of the heroes I've read about in romance got their scars as a result of fighting. Do you think that the scars are maybe being used as the visual, physical equivalent of war medals?
"a refreshing antidote to the blandly attractive couples who populate the genre." What an insulting concept (and the idea that 'disabled' is the antonym to "attractive'? Yuck.)
ReplyDeleteI read that a bit differently: I thought it meant that the disabled were attractive, but in a non-bland way. And for some reason that sentence about "disability allows her to create a compelling romance narrative, a refreshing antidote to the blandly attractive couples who populate the genre" is making me think of The Velveteen Rabbit. The rabbit begins his story looking
really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.
In other words, you could think of him as "blandly attractive." But the Skin Horse is "so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces" and he tells the Rabbit something very important:
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
I'm really rather ambivalent about the implications of that, as applied to people. I mean, the idea that suffering makes people more spiritual/better/more real/more beautiful sounds positive about disability, but at the same time it feeds into a stereotype which suggests that disabled people should be more saintly (like Tiny Tim) than non-disabled people, and that nobody should be angry about any aspect of having a disability, because it's a character-improving thing. And there are probably more problems with it that I haven't thought through yet.
All the same, I wonder if the Skin Horse's explanation does have something to tell us about at least some of the depictions of disability in romance.
I was really talking about the modern vampire stories, a la Anne Rice, which, I guess turn the tables on the Victorian male-dominated mythology. Rice's book predates the AIDS epidemic by a little way, but the few vampire books I've read - which are all m/m romances (particularly those by Jordan Castillo Price) - very clearly draw parallels between vampirism and HIV infection.
ReplyDeleteBoth Victorian fetishisation of dead women and modern female fetishisation of injured or disabled males seem to derive from fear of the Other, especially the sexualised Other, and the threat to personal integrity either from a mythical hypersexualised woman/woman figure, or from the domination of male desires to the exclusion of feminine needs.
I think it's a huge stretch, as I said, to see vampirism as a form of disability. Othering, yes - like any superpower or special ability.
"Do you think that the scars are maybe being used as the visual, physical equivalent of war medals?"
War medals is overstating it. Hypermasculinising the character in a superficial way, is more like it. See the man, he is so macho! But also, vulnerable and needy in a way that only my magic hoohoo can cure :) The hero is made dangerous but deballed at the same time.
Sandra, when you've got time I'd love to hear more about the conference!
ReplyDelete"I wonder if h/c, like m/m romance, are products of strongly gendered/patriarchal societies, so women are desperate to exert control over and express sexual attraction towards men in a form where they are unthreatening. Rochesterising them, in fact :)"
Ann, that sounds plausible to me because what happened to Rochester certainly made him less powerful, and therefore less threatening. He's also allowed to get less blind, which perhaps adds in the element of disability being used in fiction as a (sometimes temporary) personality-improving technique (although in fiction it's not uncommon to see it used in the opposite way, because there do seem to be quite a few mutilated or otherwise disabled villains).
On the topic of women writing m/m, when I read that bit about Dinah Mulock Craig where it said that
"Certainly the ill or disabled male is an inevitable persona for the woman who sees herself as being in every way like a man except that she has less muscular strength. Physical incapacity codifies the pain of helplessness, the lack of power and social position and financial ability and legal right to control the circumstances of one's own life"
that really reminded me of what you've written about how writing about gay male characters
"rejects the limitations of biology – no fears about pregnancy, no need to worry about menstrual cycles, and testosterone-derived strength disparity – and of male privilege. If I write about men, I can shed the disprivilege that burdens me, at least fictionally.
If I write in a male voice for a gay character, certainly I am re-applying a layer of disprivilege to that character akin to but not the same as my own.
Point taken about the later uses of vampires by female writers. I know even less about them than I do about the earlier vampires.
"War medals is overstating it. Hypermasculinising the character in a superficial way, is more like it. See the man, he is so macho! But also, vulnerable and needy in a way that only my magic hoohoo can cure :) The hero is made dangerous but deballed at the same time.
I wonder if it depends on the extent of the injury. I mean, I think when an author gives the hero a limp, blindness, or a missing limb or two, that could easily be interpreted as a "deballing" but facial scars which show that the hero has been in contact with a sabre but which don't affect him in any other way don't necessarily seem to me to be used to "deball" a hero. They're the kind I was thinking of when I made the comparison with war medals. The phrase "badge of honour" came to mind, so I did a bit of Googling, and here's an example of the kind of attitude I was referring to:
"these particular scars were received in a way most of us wouldn’t dream of facing — while serving his country. So in that case I would have to say that chicks would most certainly dig those scars!
Scars can represent many different things. For some they are a badge of honour. A perminent medal etched on the body, showcasing true bravery."
Ah - the velveteen rabbit - it's a long time since I read that!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Craik material Laura-I couldn't remember if she married *before* representing several disabled characters or afterwards. Afterwards is more interesting somehow!
I've been fascinated by the comments here, especially the relationship established between Dinah Craik's fiction and vampire narratives.
ReplyDeleteI would mention that for those interested in similarities between Jane Eyre (the comment on "Rochestering," particularly) and Craik's fiction, that they read Craik's novel Olive (1850).
The text features a disabled heroine (she has a curved spine) and is clearly a rewriting of the Jane Eyre narrative. The novel was written some years before Dinah Maria Mulock's relationship with George Craik began, and offers a twist on the popular disability plot you've noted, where the woman rehabilitates the disabled man.
"a refreshing antidote to the blandly attractive couples who populate the genre."
ReplyDeleteI'm disturbed by this in another way. I don't find romance to be blandly populated by attractive couples, especially historical romance, in which Mary Balogh fits.
In my experience, especially with heroes, it's more likely to be overpopulated by the damaged and angst-ridden to the extent they become cliche.
This leads to an aspect I don't see addressed above. One could argue that women, in reading at least, are drawn toward nursing the injured hero. I remember being told, long before I was published, that the surest way to make a book work is to injure the hero and let the heroine nurse him, perhaps because she is then dominant.
Something, therefore, that I tend to avoid, being a contrarian.
So does the injured, maimed hero allow the heroine 1) the opportunity to nurse, and 2) dominance over the stronger male?
Jo Beverley
I would mention that for those interested in similarities between Jane Eyre (the comment on "Rochestering," particularly) and Craik's fiction, that they read Craik's novel Olive (1850).
ReplyDeleteI was in a rush, so I cheated by reading most of the first volume of Olive, skipping the second volume, and going straight to the last section of the third volume. There's also a synopsis here for anyone who's in even more of a rush, though it doesn't mention what happens to threaten Harold's health. From a modern perspective, it reads to me like an inspirational romance, because religious faith seems to be very important, both in the characterisation of Olive herself and in the plot.
"Scars can represent many different things. For some they are a badge of honour. A perminent medal etched on the body, showcasing true bravery"
ReplyDeleteYes. But fighting scars - you reference dueling scars, and I'm also thinking the kind you get in brawls - aren't attractive to women so much as they are to other men. They are indeed a sign of hypermasculinity, more than bravery. I think it's insulting to compare those kinds of injuries to medals. They function as codpieces.
An amputation or disability gained in combat would be much more analogous to war medals in that they are physical evidence of real bravery, to put oneself in harm's way not in defence of one's (masculine) pride, but of other, weaker individuals.
I think it depends on what message the author is trying to give - is her character a 'bad boy' we're supposed to love because of his flaws, or is he the 'wounded hero' we're supposed to admire and pity?
Back to hurt/comfort, if I may - one of the interesting things about it is that it's often a feature of 'genfic' - i.e. fanfiction with no romantic pairing (and sometimes written with an anti-slash bias). The h/c provides the emotional intensity that in romance, would come from the relationhip itself.
A kind of genfic which emphasises nonphysical intimacy - "smarm" - is also notorious for its heavy use of hurt/comfort:
http://home.netcom.com/~nobleone/smarmdef.htm
http://fanlore.org/wiki/Smarm
This kind of fiction, like slash, is written for source material which is heavily male-centric/heteronormative - no coincidence if you ask me :)
"I'm disturbed by this in another way. I don't find romance to be blandly populated by attractive couples, especially historical romance, in which Mary Balogh fits.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, especially with heroes, it's more likely to be overpopulated by the damaged and angst-ridden to the extent they become cliche"
Yes, I see what you mean. I also have the perception that in historicals there are quite a lot of heroes with scars, other war wounds and also some with PTSD.
"So does the injured, maimed hero allow the heroine 1) the opportunity to nurse, and 2) dominance over the stronger male?"
I think that's what Ann was thinking when she mentioned the process of "Rochesterising them." Here's what Tania Modleski wrote about Rochester:
Brontë has been blamed for "castrating" Rochester at the end when she has him maimed in a fire. But "castration" generally plays no part in typical female revenge fantasies, which depend upon the man's retaining all his potency while loving and suffering desperately. He must need her in spite of all his strength, rather than because of his weakness. At most, Rochester's sad state reflects the sad - not triumphant - admission that a woman only achieves equality with - not dominance over - men who are crippled in some way. (46)
I suppose the "grovel" scenes in some romances are probably what Modleski is thinking of when she refers to "revenge fantasies" but I'm not absolutely sure.
---
Modleski, Tania. Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-produced Fantasies for Women. 1982. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Yes. But fighting scars - you reference dueling scars, and I'm also thinking the kind you get in brawls - aren't attractive to women so much as they are to other men. They are indeed a sign of hypermasculinity, more than bravery. I think it's insulting to compare those kinds of injuries to medals. They function as codpieces.
ReplyDeleteOh, OK. Either the nuances of this went completely past me as I was reading or I haven't come across heroes with scars due to brawling. I have the impression that most of the heroes with scars that I've read about in historical romances got their scars as a result of fighting in battles. There have maybe been a few whose scars were caused by cruel parents/wicked guardians/evil siblings/childhood accidents.
"Back to hurt/comfort, if I may"
Yes, of course. Go ahead! I can't think of anything to say in reply, since I know nothing about it, but I feel like my horizons are being expanded.
I should also point out that mangling the hero isn't purely a female obsession - the genre writers Dick Francis and Desmond Bagley were also fond of doing so. (There are others of course, just pulling those off the top of my head. I recall Alastair MacLean liked his scarred warriors as well.)
ReplyDeleteWhat the payoff is for male writers, I have no idea. It doesn't seem to affect their male readership's enjoyment.
"What the payoff is for male writers, I have no idea."
ReplyDeleteIn the case of Dick Francis, I think this is something completely different. He makes a point of having heroes who, for a variety of reasons, are severely underestimated and despised by the other characters in the books, especially, of course, the villain(s). The pay-off comes when the hero demonstrates his courage and competence. Physical damage is only one of the devices he uses. In the early book Flying Finish, for example, the hero was treated with contempt by other characters because of his upper-class breeding and education. They assumed he was 'soft' and effete, but of course, they could not have been more mistaken.
I don't think this element in Dick Francis's work has any connection with what is being discussed here.
Laura Vivanco wrote: "I'm really rather ambivalent about the implications of that, as applied to people. I mean, the idea that suffering makes people more spiritual/better/more real/more beautiful sounds positive about disability, but at the same time it feeds into a stereotype which suggests that disabled people should be more saintly (like Tiny Tim) than non-disabled people, and that nobody should be angry about any aspect of having a disability, because it's a character-improving thing."
ReplyDeleteThank you for that, Laura. I agonized over whether to comment here, because it's really too painful and personal a topic for me.
As some of you may know (people who met me at the conference at Princeton last April, for example) I am a woman writer with a disability of both hands that I also consider to be a deformity. It has had a devastating effect on me, not only the physical frustration of being unable to do so many mundane daily tasks easily or at all; but also in my sense of myself as a sexual being. I feel the female equivalent of being castrated: desexed, made impotent.
This "Tiny Tim" idea really exists, and has caused me great anger, and I appreciate your mentioning it. Because yes, it's profoundly dehumanizing to me. Having to be a saint because of my imperfect body is every bit as dehumanizing as having to be a villain, perhaps more so. Having a disability does not make me a "better" person, and I resent the idea that I am obligated to find something "good" in it. The first step in my therapy that has helped me is acknowledging that feeling angry is a logical and valid reaction. Only then can I work on managing the anger so that it doesn't consume me or ruin my life; but I will never lose the anger completely. I embrace it as my most honest and valid response to an "unacceptable" situation.
So much of the portrayal of disability in romance fiction is about the man, the hero. But I see it as a very different issue for women. It's only recently, in my lifetime (I'm 55) that a woman with a disability that affects her appearance has been permitted to have sexual desires for men. And it still makes many people uncomfortable, to the point that I hear a lot of (perhaps wishful) denial from others when I recount my own feelings.
Women who are not beautiful, however society defines it, or sexually desirable, are still fighting Jane Eyre's battle, so perfectly expressed in chapter 23:
"Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!--I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you."
My writing so far has not addressed this issue of my feelings as a woman with a disability/deformity directly. I don't know if I will ever be able to do that. But I have addressed it indirectly in my writing of the bisexual man as the most desirable hero. As a "castrated" or "undesirable" woman, I want to write about winning the most desirable man of all, one that even many physically "perfect" women can't get: the "slightly bisexual" hero of Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander.
I think some scholars on the RomanceScholar listserv have made queries about whether there are any authors with disabilities writing about characters with disabilities. I am not one of them, but the issue is there, hidden in my work. It's a start, and I invite these scholars to email me privately if they'd like to discuss this further.
I am already thinking about not posting this comment. But I felt the need to speak up, as I felt that people needed to hear from a woman with a disability. I also don't claim to speak for anyone other than myself.
"But I felt the need to speak up, as I felt that people needed to hear from a woman with a disability"
ReplyDeleteYes we really do. Thank you so much for doing so, Ann.
Ann (H), I'd like to echo Ann (S) and say thank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings about this. I really appreciate your honesty and courage.
ReplyDelete"Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!--I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart!
That quote from Jane Eyre, together with what you wrote about anger, made me think of part of what Shylock has to say in The Merchant of Venice:
He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?
Of course, he's (a) not disabled, at least not as far as I can remember and (b) he's cast as the villain (although as we've been discussing, individuals from marginalised groups are often depicted as being either at one extreme or another of the moral spectrum) but I've always felt a lot of sympathy for his anger (although I nonetheless wouldn't condone his proposed form of repayment). He was being wronged, and, like Jane Eyre, he felt impelled to do something to assert his humanity, his status as something more than an object of mockery or compassion.
Thanks, Laura and Ann S., for your acknowledgment. Yes, I've always found Shylock's anger to be sympathetic.
ReplyDeleteBut I think what I find most problematic in today's culture of acceptance (and don't misunderstand--I am very glad to be living in it as opposed to, say, Jane Austen's time and world) is the way that the disabled are seen as just another group that has suffered from society's prejudice, like gay people or black people or Jews.
This approach overlooks the fact that all these other groups are not disabilities. Whether or not society accepts me, I still cannot put my hair in a ponytail, play the piano or enjoy any of the manual tasks that other people find pleasurable, like cooking or knitting. And legislation cannot change the fact that some men recoil on meeting me, however they try to hide it. It's not prejudice or deliberate cruelty; it's a physiological reaction that they can't completely control, just as I can't prevent that reaction from wounding me emotionally, however much I try to understand it.
In an ideal world, free of prejudice, being gay or bisexual would be equally desirable as being heterosexual; being Jewish should be as a valid a choice as being Christian or Buddhist or atheist; being African-American as much something to celebrate as being Polish or Chinese or Irish.
But no one would choose this disability, whether or not the rest of the world accepts it. Again, I speak only for myself. I know there are many people with disabilities who feel very differently on this subject.
As to courage: what worries me most about "coming out" like this is the thought that my writing will now be seen as being only about this one theme. Yes, I do address my feelings about being a woman with a disability through my writing; but I have tried to discuss many different ideas in my novels, not just this one. This concern is what has held me back from discussing my disability openly as a writer, but with this particular subject being featured this time here on TMT, I had to take the chance.
Ann, I can honestly say that to me, you're nothing more or less than someone who wrote a ground-breaking book about bisexuality and polyamory - and I hope like hell you keep writing :)
ReplyDeleteA lot of us write with disabilities, mental and physical. The only way your writing will become all about that one issue is you make it so. You don't.
I salute your courage and your conscience, but I won't buy your books because of them. I'll buy them because every person I know who's read them tells me how goddamn brilliant they are :)
"I think what I find most problematic in today's culture of acceptance [...] is the way that the disabled are seen as just another group that has suffered from society's prejudice"
ReplyDeletePoint taken. Another thing that I thought of is that the term "the disabled" covers a very large number of individuals who have a very wide range of disabilities, and those differences are also likely to lead to some significant differences in lived experience.
I wonder though, if, when many people think about discrimination and prejudice in general, they try to find common ground and shared experiences/emotions. That's what I was trying to do when I thought of the anger in Shylock's speech and his desire to be seen as human, and I think it's why you identified with what Jane Eyre said (she didn't have a disability either). Invariably, though, that will mean paying less attention to the very significant differences in individual people's lived experiences.
At the same time, the fact that many people do seem to automatically try to find shared ground means that some aspects of your experience, at an emotional level, may not be seen as unique, and so there's no reason why people should think of your writing as being solely about disability, particularly given that, as Ann S says, your writing is not "all about that one issue." Even if it were, though, I still think many people would find aspects of it which they could relate to, just as you can relate to Jane Eyre even though your experience is different from hers.
Oh, and one last thing about themes. I don't write fiction, so I've no personal experience of this, but I do recall that Jennifer Crusie thinks every author has a "core story, the thing you return to obsessively even though you write it differently each time. That’s who you are as a writer."
As a reader, it seems to me that it would be the writing it differently each time which would keep things fresh, but it may well be the emotions you tap into when you write about that core issue which attracted those readers in the first place.
Many thanks to Laura and Ann S. for the thoughtful continuing dialog. Laura, I must disagree, at least partially, in your assessment of Jane Eyre as not having a disability. Charlotte Bronte wrote of her fictional character that she was creating a heroine "as small and plain as myself." While being "small" is not exactly a disability, Bronte, like all her siblings, was not strong or healthy; she died shortly after giving birth. I think "small," in the case of Jane Eyre, was meant to imply childlike in form, not womanly or sexually desirable. There are aspects in this character, if not complete one-to-one correlation, with my own feelings about myself, as having both a disability and a deformity that affects my sexual relationships with men, and the story resonates deeply with me. That Bronte, writing more than 150 years ago, dared to make such a character the heroine of a romance still amazes me. I can see why it caused such controversy at the time, and I am in awe at her bravery and honesty as a writer.
ReplyDeleteAs to finding experiences in common with other victims of societal prejudice: Oh yes, I am sorry to have sounded so angry or disaffected that I fail to see the value in this. What I have seen in conversations with gay and bisexual people, and people of color, is that many have been made to feel as if their sexual orientation or ethnicity is a disability. They have had to work very hard to realize that being gay or being black is not an inferior condition.
For me, my journey has been an opposite one. Because my disability did not seriously affect my quality of life in obvious ways--I went to college, have held jobs, etc.--it has often seemed to me as if people were oblivious to the many real difficulties I have faced. Many people with more serious disabilities have had to fight to be recognized as capable of leading meaningful, even happy lives; I have had to fight to have my hardships acknowledged. It has meant that I have had to approach my own process of emotional healing from the opposite direction as many of my natural allies. They must fight to say: Yes, I have a disability, but I am still a complete human being, worthy of life. I have had to fight to say: I am an attractive, intelligent woman and I have a disability. It has affected me physically and emotionally, and I can't become a complete human being until all aspects of me are recognized.
But the ending place is the same for all of us.
As to Jennifer Crusie and her "theme" idea: Oh, I think of that all the time. My core story is the bisexual husband, one involved with a partner of each sex. There are of course many personal reasons that I return to this theme, but I identified it long ago. As a writer of fiction I can say that it's comforting to have found my theme but rather odd, too, to see how consistent I am in always wanting to write it.
Ann S.: Thank you for your encouraging words. I never feared that my work would "be" or "become" about one thing--only that, the more people know of me the individual, the more they would (falsely) perceive my work as being about one particular "fact."
Intelligent readers don't make that mistake. But it can be frustrating when some of the other type make these assumptions, for example, the sort of people who, guessing (correctly) from my female first name that I am a woman, assume that what I always called a bisexual m/m/f story was about female bisexuality. You know the unimaginative sort of people I mean.
Thanks to both of you for your understanding.
While being "small" is not exactly a disability, Bronte, like all her siblings, was not strong or healthy; she died shortly after giving birth.
ReplyDeleteI suppose I've always thought of Jane as small but very physically resilient, or she wouldn't have survived her early months at Lowood when so many of the other girls died. And she later survives childbirth, because she's writing the novel after ten years of marriage and in the last chapter we're told that "When his [Rochester and Jane's] first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were — large, brilliant, and black."
Still, that doesn't have a great deal to do with her desirability, and it's mentioned from very early on in the book that she isn't seen as a beautiful or attractive child. That's one reason why her aunt, her cousins and their servants treat Jane so badly:
Bessie, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, "Poor Miss Jane is to be pitied, too, Abbot."
"Yes," responded Abbot; "if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that."
"Not a great deal, to be sure," agreed Bessie: "at any rate, a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition."
"Yes, I doat on Miss Georgiana!" cried the fervent Abbot. "Little darling! — with her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet colour as she has; just as if she were painted! (Chapter 3)
And yet, Jane very much wants and needs to love and be loved, for "human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow" (Chapter 4).
I suspect that as readers we are each drawn to aspects of books which most resonate with us, and different people will interpret them a little differently because of their own experiences, preferences, etc.
As to finding experiences in common with other victims of societal prejudice: Oh yes, I am sorry to have sounded so angry or disaffected that I fail to see the value in this.
I certainly didn't think you were saying you didn't find you had any "experiences in common with other victims of societal prejudice"!
Well, of course Charlotte Bronte didn't know how things were going to turn out for her...
ReplyDeleteBut in comparing her to her character of Jane Eyre, and thinking of her smallness as a "disability," I really meant only a partial, imperfect correlation. I do agree that Jane is physically strong and resilient. In fact, I think the Bronte sisters all prided themselves on their strength in surviving the deprivations of childhood. That's one of the many pleasures of writing fiction: authors can give their characters the happy endings they do not always live to enjoy themselves. In real life, these deprivations take a physical toll; in fiction, the characters can endure.
That is, I think Bronte created in Jane Eyre a character who physically and emotionally resembled herself. The fact that Bronte died young and Jane survived means only that good writing and a great fictional character can live forever.
There is currently a huge controversy about a performance artist, Amanda Palmer, creating with another singer, a persona of sexually abused cojoined twins, complete with fake biography and offensive stereotyping. I thought about this post and it occurs to me that in this discussion we've only lightly touched on the important issue of appropriation, which is fundamental to Ann H's explanation of how the reality of life with disabilities is far from romantic idealisation, and even my remarks about scarring being used as decoration/Laura talking about them as 'war medals'.
ReplyDeleteAuthors frequently use injury and disability as a plot or character device, without thinking of the wider implications or the impact on those with disabilities. This may not be the best post or forum to discuss this in depth, but since the question of appropriation and gay sexuality was so recently on the boil, people may be interested to explore the Amanda Palmer thing a bit further and look at why disabled people are so upset.
There are many links here:
http://linkspam.dreamwidth.org/tag/evelyn+evelyn
But these two are probably the most useful starting places, with the second particularly pertinent to fictional uses of disabilty:
http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/02/17/saying-conjoined-twins-are-disabled-is-insulting-evelyn-evelyn-redux/
http://disabledfeminists.com/2010/02/18/why-i-am-not-riled-about-every-instance-of-crip-drag/
I am coming to this discussion late, so apologies in advance. This topic was recently discussed on SMTB and I think the notion of appropriation came through clearly when people listed the books that featured disability in the lives of the hero/heroines. The disabilty was a vehicle for the author to demonstrate something.... often (I think) that the disabled h/h is an outsider who is brought into society through their love relationship. this often then involves the amazing disappearance of the disability - someone can see again or have the magic all- healing operation. I really object to the people with disability being shown as isolated and needing fixing. I'm with AH, I don't want this body I've been given but it is who I am and I have come to terms with this. I also think the tendency is to see disability as fixed where my experience of chronic illness is that it changes over time and has different meanings over time. Illness & disabilty create an embodied identity, people experience us through their notion and understanding of the body and what it represents. We know ourselves through the lens of our illness/disability. I also think in historicals, particularly but in general you can't examine the representaiton of disability/chronic illness without understanding how pain was perceived in that time or what the role of suffering was. I think many of the disability tropes we use today are based in 19th century concepts but filtered through our in-spoken 21st century lens. So if we live in a society that is strongly based in the lotion that there should be no limits or that individualisim is extremely important, what diability/chronic illness represents and means is constructed in a certain way. In a world with limited pain relief or medical care that could only treat sypmtoms and not causes then suffering is to be nobly borne because what else is the choice... (just think about the red squares of soldiers at Waterloo sustaining barrage after barrage of shot. Suffering in this sense is about still being able to go on, to stand back up again and wait the hours out until the charge is called). Are we allowed to suffer in our current culture or is that seen as too challenging? I think disabilty/chronic illness hooks into a lot of cultural fears in western societies about not being able to take action on one's on behalf... Anyway that's a clumsy arrangement of my thoughts. thanks for the chance to share.
ReplyDelete"I am coming to this discussion late, so apologies in advance."
ReplyDeleteNo need for apologies! Given the way blogs work, one can't keep all the posts at the top, but interesting comments are always welcome.
This topic was recently discussed on SMTB and I think the notion of appropriation came through clearly when people listed the books that featured disability in the lives of the hero/heroines.
The only thread I've seen recently on this topic was this one at Smart Bitches Trashy Books. Was that the one you were thinking of?
The disabilty was a vehicle for the author to demonstrate something.... often (I think) that the disabled h/h is an outsider who is brought into society through their love relationship. this often then involves the amazing disappearance of the disability - someone can see again or have the magic all- healing operation.
I wonder if this happens more often with blindness because sight and seeing are used so often in daily speech to refer to knowing/understanding: "I see what you mean," "how short-sighted of her not to plan for the long-term," and, as in the song "Amazing Grace," "I once was blind but now I see." Using disability as a metaphor makes it, as you say, "a vehicle for the author to demonstrate something..."
"Are we allowed to suffer in our current culture or is that seen as too challenging? I think disabilty/chronic illness hooks into a lot of cultural fears in western societies about not being able to take action on one's on behalf..."
This reminded me of a post at Monkey Bear Reviews in which Sarah wrote about the striking absence of depressed protagonists in romances, despite the abundance of characters with PTSD:
In the romance novel interpretation of PTSD, it has an identifiable cause (i.e.: a traumatic event) and this cause is wholly external (i.e.: the character is not “abnormal” or a “freak”). PTSD permits a military hero to show some vulnerability without appearing weak. A heroine with PTSD is allowed to be nervy and anxious without running the risk of being considered pathetic.
For some bizarre reason, the PTSD sufferers in these stories seem to undergo a full recovery by the end of the book.
Sarah also commented that
"If we assume it is something we are all likely to experience at some point in our lives, to one extreme or another, it surprises me that it is not an issue which romance authors are prepared to tackle"
but perhaps because depression is so common it's particularly likely that, to quote you, it "hooks into a lot of cultural fears in western societies about not being able to take action on one's on behalf"?
I also wonder if there's more stigma attached to depression than to many physical disabilities because many people still believe at some level that depression is something one can just "snap out of" whereas they accept physical disabilities as being real. So they might not accept a protagonist with depression as being admirable, whereas the "Tiny Tim" stereotype about many kinds of physical disability might make characters with some kinds of physical disability more acceptable to readers/authors.
Yes, that is the thread on SBTB, I made a comment as Mezza down the long stream of comments. I also agree with what you have to say about invisible illness, eg. depression. It is also why I talk about chronic illness and disability, because CI often has an invisiblity and because it is episodic and changes over time, the issues people with CI face may be similar to those people with disabilities face but also unique to CI.
ReplyDeleteJessica in RRReviews reviewed a novel which had everyone go blind and linked to the response from the blind/vision impaired people to the novel and the representation of blindness.
It is interesting that you have used the word stigma because I think that is the elephant in the room in the way in which disability is represented in romance; only illnesses or disabilities that can't be stigmatised are shown, eg. no one has syphilis in an historical novel.
"It is interesting that you have used the word stigma because I think that is the elephant in the room in the way in which disability is represented in romance; only illnesses or disabilities that can't be stigmatised are shown, eg. no one has syphilis in an historical novel."
ReplyDeleteAs far as the protagonists are concerned, isn't it more a question of whether they can be cured?
The key to a romance is the triumph with which in ends, and the prize for victory is a good future together. A protagonist with syphilis would not fit into that.
However, syphilis and other such diseases are sometimes mentioned in the society. It's stigmatized as it's often attached to a villainous character.(In my Tempting Fortune, for example.)
It's a disease, not a physical disability, though it leads to physical and mental disability.
Do we class all diseases as disabilities, or only when they're incurable? Consumption/TB is another in that case, and again it's not going to work in a romance because the reality of the disease in the past means the future prize lacks substance.
Historical romances have used alcoholism and drug addiction, both stigmatized in contemporary society but presented as curable. (My To Rescue A Rogue -- opium addiction.) Whether we believe the cure is up to us as readers. If we don't, again the future is cast into doubt.
As for depression, it would be problematical in a hero or heroine as it does tend to literally depress action and initiative. A book full of one side saying, "buck up and do something" to the other would be pretty boring.
But I think one can see a lot of depressive tendencies, particularly in those broody, withdrawn heroes, who are often dealing with past abandonment or betrayal.
Jo
It is interesting that you have used the word stigma because I think that is the elephant in the room in the way in which disability is represented in romance; only illnesses or disabilities that can't be stigmatised are shown, eg. no one has syphilis in an historical novel.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your general point, but syphilis, at least in a historical context, was often a fatal disease. Over at the Word Wenches' blog Dr Josh King pointed out
Another note on syphilis - as far as the Great Pox (or, as the medical profession occasionally calls syphilis, the Great Imitator - so-called because its manifestations may be more protean than any other disease), there were quite a few treatments. Many of them were used for other sexually transmitted infections 'cause they couldn't tell which one was bothering them. Mercury was often used to treat venereal disease, as was guaiacum, the prepared sap of the guaiacum tree, since as early as the 15th-16th c. The final stage of syphilis is neurological involvement leading to madness; mercury toxicity can result in, you guessed it, madness (mercury also being the cause of 18th-19th c. mad hatter's disease, or erethism, as mercury was used in the preparation of felt).... So a lot of people went crazy for one of the two reasons.
In addition, if the rakish hero infected the virgin heroine and she then quickly became pregnant,
To use the vernacular medicalese, vertically translated (meaning from mother to child at birth) syphilis is associated with significant badness. The symptoms can be severe enough to cause stillbirth and early infant death. At first, the new baby has a runny nose, which is often followed by a severe, peeling rash over the entire body. If you cultured these lesions, you'd find them teeming with the bacterium that causes syphilis. The infection can then involve any organ in the body, including liver, kidneys, and lungs. If the infant survives without treatment, they then enter a latent period, where they may slowly develop bony and tooth deformities, eye problems, and neurosyphilis leading to psychiatric problems including psychosis and dementia. Not so good. Usually, mothers who acquire the disease during pregnancy are at greater risk to transmit it to their baby, as the organism is more active early on.
My feeling is that the prospect of these kinds of outcomes really wouldn't fit with the genre requirement for an "optimistic ending" (RWA). I think that would rule out any other disease, illness or disability which was likely to lead to death very soon after the end of the novel. In a modern romance I think it would be possible to have two protagonists living with HIV controlled by medication, but even so I think readers might worry about their longevity.
But that's a different matter from illnesses/diseases/disabilities which, while not fatal, nonetheless still have a lot of stigma attached to them and/or are somehow thought of as making a person "unsexy."
As for depression, it would be problematical in a hero or heroine as it does tend to literally depress action and initiative. A book full of one side saying, "buck up and do something" to the other would be pretty boring.
ReplyDeleteDifferent people experience depression in different ways, though, and it also depends on how severe the depression is. Some people can appear vivacious and active, but nonetheless feel an underlying despair. Many people with depression do plod on through their days, and other people might not realise they're struggling with depression.
I think one can see a lot of depressive tendencies, particularly in those broody, withdrawn heroes, who are often dealing with past abandonment or betrayal.
Why don't we see more heroines with these sorts of tendencies? It seems as though in romances with heterosexual protagonists it's generally the role of the heroine to be the one who cures/heals/tames the hero.
I wonder if the ways in which disability are represented in romance may tend to be gendered, at least with respect to certain kinds of disability. Facial scars, for instance, which are often described as being "sexy" on a hero, are not nearly so common among heroines, and I can't remember any hero telling a heroine that her huge facial scar is really sexy. On the other hand, there's an old Spanish proverb, "La mujer honrada, la pierna quebrada y en casa" (the honourable woman has a broken leg and stays at home) which makes me think that disabilities which would limit a heroine's mobility might not affect how feminine she seems, whereas mobility is more central to understandings of masculinity. I'm speculating again...
I can see that this is an area which really needs more research done on it and I'm glad the Manchester conference has begun to open up discussion of this aspect of the genre.
I said: I think one can see a lot of depressive tendencies, particularly in those broody, withdrawn heroes, who are often dealing with past abandonment or betrayal.
ReplyDeleteLaura said:"Why don't we see more heroines with these sorts of tendencies? It seems as though in romances with heterosexual protagonists it's generally the role of the heroine to be the one who cures/heals/tames the hero."
There are powerful elements to any genre, and the heroine who heals is one in romance. It's interesting to discuss why many women readers are so strongly drawn to this, but not directly the subject.
Very interesting to ask why heroines can have physical disabilties such as lameness, deafness, blindness etc etc, but not depression.
If true. I'm blanking on examples, but I've read heroines who are hostile, withdrawn, detached etc because of past wounds, if we call that depression.
If we're talking about seratonin imbalance chronic depression, that's a bit different, isn't it, as it can arise without obvious cause and tends to generate irritation in those around. Especially in the past when there'd seem no reason. Also, depending on one's beliefs about this, it could be seen as incurable in the past.
I don't think anyone's mentioned chronic anemia (a subject I find particularly interesting) which can produce many mental states including forms of depression, panic attacks, and agoraphobia.
Savvy women had ways of boosting their iron. Nails into apples and then eat the apples. Black pudding, liver, and other such foods. Even drinking the blood of slaughtered animals.
And, of course, many didn't menstruate that often, given pregnancy plus breastfeeding.
Jo
Yes, I agree that in a romance novel the heroine and hero have to have the power to act in order to change their lives and achieve the HEA, so the disabilities have to be kept simple. There is a Pre-Raphelitie painting called 'too late' where the fit young man returns to his love with his fortune made only to find her dying probably of consumption; they each can barely look at the other. Though I am thinking we would end up with a chick-lit story and not a romance with this sort of disease. If it was a Victorian romance her sister who has nobly nursed her would become the young man's true love...
ReplyDeleteI used syphilis as an example from my family history at the turn of 20the century and how it shaped the lives and marriages of the two daughters responsbile for caring for their parents who both died of the diease.
Re the depression being hard to do. ZA Maxfield's novel 'e-pistols at dawn' is an M/M where the Hero has PTSD resulting in panic attacks and OCD. The author does this really well. The Hero's new love doesn't cure him but together they work out how to be in a relationship along with the health issues. I think that is what I am after when I read a romance about people with disabilities.
"The author does this really well."
ReplyDeleteI have to respectfully disagree. Maxfield doesn't show the realities of agoraphobia at all, and the difficulties are swept aside as the romance progresses. I think that book, for all its virtues, is an example of how not to deal with mental illness in a character.
I don't think anyone's mentioned chronic anemia (a subject I find particularly interesting) which can produce many mental states including forms of depression, panic attacks, and agoraphobia.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know anything about the side effects of anemia, so it didn't occur to me to mention it. Some of the sources of iron you mention, though, would not be halal or kosher, so I wonder what anemic Muslim and Jewish women did. Although if your research has been mainly for English-based historicals, I don't suppose you'd have done research into that?
No, I haven't researched anemia in non-Christian communities. In fact, I haven't used it in a book.
ReplyDeleteIt's more of a personal interest. All menstruating women should have their ferritin levels checked. (Iron stores.) Low stores can lead to depression, panic attacks, various phobias, and possibly other chronic diseases.
Public service announcement over. :)
But I suspect that many women in the past who took to their beds without obvious disease, or showed odd behaviours, were in fact anemic.Low stores don't even necessarily show in pallor etc.
Jo
Jo
Low stores can lead to depression, panic attacks, various phobias, and possibly other chronic diseases.
ReplyDeletePublic service announcement over. :)
Thanks! Have now rediscovered my supply of iron tablets...