Exhibit:

The Victorian Fascination with Disabled Bodies: The Captive, the Circulating, and the Creative

Preview of images

The nineteenth century saw a new age of public health. Britons experienced rapid shifts in the theory and practice of medicine as a result of the professionalization of science, the rise of teaching hospitals, the emergence of new and often controversial or conflicting medical diagnoses, and the desire to find cures for recurring pandemics. Factory work, railroads, and urban living conditions during the Industrial Revolution also brought their own forms of injury and chronic disability as well as a new emphasis on the importance of able bodies. Charitable efforts and institutions in support of those with disabilities boomed, but at the same time, people with disabilities were increasingly ushered into workhouses and asylums. 

This exhibit looks at the Victorians' facination with and making of the disabled identity. It homes in on three subject groups: those sequestered spatially, like the invalid in the sickroom or freak in the freakshow; those whose disability allowed them to circulate more readily in society but not without the perpetual tension of society's sympathy and society's repulsion; and those literary writers who experienced their own afflictions and carved a space out to comment on disability. 

The individual cases explore how the depiction of people with disfigurements evolved in media from the Victorian to the post-Victorian era; ask us to consider the myriad ways the shift to VIctorian sympathy (rather than humor) nonetheless sidelined those experiencing disability; and encourage us to appreciate how, when social critique and commentary was so rampant (whether productive or unproductive), certain authors who had ailments and illnesses prevailed in depicting disability and invalidism more realitically. 

 

Images in this Exhibit

The Captive: Evolution of Freakshows

Throughout history, freakshows have often been a staple of circuses and popular culture and have a rather fascinating history, despite the negative connotation to its name. First rising into popularity during the Victorian era, freakshows were created to, in a sense, make a spectacle of the disfigured. However, even though freakshows still exist in some form, like in Coney Island, the way society as a whole sees disabled people has evolved as time progressed.

But to understand how things have changed, we must first look at how they started. This is one of many advertisements for...
The Circulating: Social Acceptance of the Blind and Deaf

Introduction:

At the dawning of the Industrial Revolution and the beginning of the Victorian era, historical disability studies are often lacking. Questions such as “What is the amount of social acceptance that someone deaf or blind receives?” are most clearly observed through the literature of the time. Censuses and medical records can shine a light on the response of disabilities, but the artistic work is what depicts the social operations of the deaf or blind. On the basis of disability, those who are deaf and/ or blind often lead successful lives. Through Charles Dickens and...
The Creative: The Authors’ Disabilities

Introduction

    Two distinguished Victorian authors that wrote about characters with disability during their time, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) and Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), both had a friendship and mentorship with each other. Dickens--known for his portrayal of disabled children in A Christmas Carol--and Collins-- known for his different, yet accurate portrayal of blindness in Poor Miss Finch-- were both suffering from illnesses and ailments of their own. In a Victorian society where views on disability were either unknown or unaccepted, Collins ignores...