Disability and Deformity in Victorian Literature
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ก.ค. 2024
- In which I talk about disability and deformity in Victorian literature...
--Videos Mentioned--
Jen Campbell, Let’s Talk - Villains and Deformity: • Let's Talk | Villains ...
My LGBTQ+ themes in Victorian literature video: • LGBTQ+ themes in Victo...
--Books Mentioned--
A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens: / 5326.a_christmas_carol
Poor Miss Finch, Wilkie Collins: / 1293687.poor_miss_finch
Olive, Dinah Mulock Craik: / 898983.olive
Bleak House, Charles Dickens: / 31242.bleak_house
Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens: / 31244.our_mutual_friend
Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell: / 54620.mary_barton
My Lady Ludlow, Elizabeth Gaskell: / 1227202.my_lady_ludlow
Drama in Muslin, George Moore: / 361275.a_drama_in_muslin
Salem Chapel, Margaret Oliphant: / 882167.salem_chapel
Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope: / 125321.barchester_towers
--General links--
My website: www.katielumsden.co.uk
Facebook: / justbooksandthings
Twitter: / katiejlumsden
Instragram: / katiejlumsden
Goodreads: / katie-lumsden
NaNoWriMo: nanowrimo.org/participants/kat...
Foyles Affiliate link: www.awin1.com/cread.php?awinmi...
Email: katie.booksandthings@gmail.com
I am covering this for my Masters. Thank you for this video, you have really helped me!
I love how passionate you are about victorian lit. It makes me so happy.
Thank you :)
Instablaster...
Fascinating about blindness.
I've seen case studies that show that when people who have been blind all their lives get their sight restored, they don't recognize people or things as they thought they would, just as you describe. Jenny Wren is a wonderful character - she talks about her pain vividly and I love it that when he is injured, Eugene wants her to nurse him, and that she is a wonderfully sensitive nurse. Her father's alcoholism has given her responsibilities that, with her deformity and pain, have taken her childhood away but she has remarkable inner strength, and keen insight into character.
Jenny Wren is absolutely one of my favourite characters - such a strong and interesting character.
Barchester Towers, TBR next Victober . . . Thx, Katie!!!
Definitely a PhD thesis in the making there - and fascinating too.
Ah, it would be fascinating! Such an interesting topic.
There is definitely something there. When I did my masters I wrote an essay on disability in early gothic literature. There's so, so much and it's such a fascinating topic!
Loved hearing you talk about such an important perspective as this to look at the Victorian literature! Keep making such awesome videos!! 😁
Thanks :)
I'm arriving late to the party on this one Katie but want to say I found this a fascinating piece. It is something I have noticed and reflected on too and I loved the way you unpick the topic.
Thanks very much :)
These videos have the effect of making me look deeper and sometimes differently at Victorian novels I’ve already read and eager to read those you mentioned that I haven’t, this one in particular was a tour de force Katie!
Thanks Jo :)
hearing you say the words "Tiny Tim" suddenly reminded me Christmas is coming! Closer to God and more angelic. I wouldn't be able to pinpoint that. Every time I watch your videos I always find that you put into words things that I always thought about or considered but was never able to articulate it or actually be able to pinpoint, and then I watch your videos and go: "Yes! THAT!" So much research went into this video. It's interesting to consider in the connection to LGBT that the same thing can both be a "closer to God" portrayal and simultaneously exist as "this is a form of sin, and it is manifesting externally." Or that there seems to be a "hierarchy" of disabilities. I've added Olive, A Drama in Muslin, and Salem Chapel to my TBR. Thank you so much for giving us so much of your time. This was so illuminating.
It's such an interesting topic - and those three are very interesting novels, especially Olive, that I'd highly recommend!
Absolutely brilliant!! Thank you so much for this video (and the so many others like it, as well)!
Thanks :)
Wow this is very interesting 😀 Two of my favorite topics: disability and literature 💛
Thanks!
Such an interesting video (and topic). Do you have a video about mental illness in Victorian novels as well? I'd love to see your treatment of that topic.
I'm afraid I don't have a video on that currently, but I'll have to think about making one!
Not Victorian era, "the secret garden" was written in 1911, but on the topic of disabilities, Lord Craven had a curved spine and the locals believed him cursed and indirectly his son would naturally be also. But Lord Craven had a wife, so apparently he wasn't cursed enough to be affected romantically.
Yes, I was kind of wishing I could talk about the Secret Garden here! I really must reread it some time; I read it over and over as a child but it's been a while.
@@katiejlumsden
I'd love you too make a video about that
I remember loving that book as a child
I had difficulty thinking of any other Victorian examples of disability. Captain Ahab is from an American book. Quasimodo is from a French book. Captain Hook is Edwardian. The Elephant Man was real. There's Winnie Verloc's poor brother in The Secret Agent, but you said you weren't discussing mental disability.
I wasn't discussing it here, but I am interested in it as a theme, so perhaps I ought to read The Secret Agent.
@@katiejlumsden It's an interesting book, a bit miserable like all Joseph Conrad books, but interesting.
Thank you for taking so much time to make this thoughtful and intelligent video. The preparation must have been a ton of work! I want to read The Warden this year for Victober, so hopefully I will get to Barchester Towers next year, especially since the character you mentioned has my name (though with a different spelling). :)
Thank you! I'd definitely recommend Barchester Towers :)
Thank you for your video... I find myself more intelligent at the end ;).... And being apart of the world when living with disability is still something true , I live it. I live with MS and my life is apart from the world very much lonely. I lost my friends as soon as I told them what I'm living with. It's hard. At the start of Jane Eyre... her face is described as such ugly that she is sure to have a black soul....
Thanks so much for your appreciation of my video; it really means a lot.
thank you very much for this recommendations didn't know the topic was so common in victorian
literature it's very interesting
Thanks :)
I have been reading _Treasure Island_ and it didnt occur to me that two of the most evil characters in the book both have physical deformities. Also reading, _Bleak House_ and I'm wondering if you think that the change in the physical appearance of the character you allude to after her illness is done simply to make her seem more selfless than she already seemed or for some other purpose?
I think maybe it is? I'll have a think when I reach that bit in the book :)
I finally got a chance to finish watching this delightful video - thanks so much for taking the time to put it together! I thought about the portrayal of Charles Edmondstone in Charlotte Yonge’s ‘The Heir of Redclyffe’ as I watched this, and also my review of that novel; I would refine some of the comments I made in my review, but I still think Charles’s depiction in the novel is really quite fascinating and I’m dying to discuss it with you after you have read it! And I will be returning to this video essay again and again, especially when it’s time to make my 2019 Victober TBR!
Thanks very much Shawn! The Heir of Redclyffe is firmly on my TBR after hearing you talk about it. I definitely want to read it.
This was such a great video Katie.
Thanks Lara :)
Thank you so much for sharing this. I do find this topic equally fascinating as you do. Due to family circumstances, I'm very close to the subject matter, and I can often find it very challenging to read- I am frequently horrified in today's society at the lack of awareness on certain disabilities, so god only knows how I would have felt in the Victorian period! I think it's interesting that Queen Victoria herself, kept her disabled child virtually in secret. I've also just read Barchester Towers and I did find Signora Vicinironi such an interesting character, and the fact that she has men literally falling at her feet and kissing her hands was such a refreshingly different concept from many other Victorian literature I've read. I found Trollope treated her character very respectfully, and didn't make her just one dimensional- she wasn't in the story to just fulfil the role of 'cripple' xx
Thanks :) I really enjoyed doing the research and making this video. Signora Vicinironi is such an interesting character, and very well done.
Another wonderful, informative video. Among Dickens's characters, I am also thinking of Miss Mowcher in "David Copperfield." When she first appears she seems to have a sinister purpose,but he later shows her in a sympathetic light. As I understand, a real-life woman on whom she was based wrote to Dickens and upbraided him for portraying "personal deformities with insinuations that by the purest of my sex may be construed to the worst of purposes." He apparently altered the character in response to that critique. More broadly, it seems to me that the pseudo science of phrenology must have helped shape depictions of deformities in Victorian times. Phrenology, as I understand, focused attention on the head rather than the rest of the body, so that, whereas a limp or a bad spine was not seen as a reflection of a person's character, a disfiguration of the face was.
Yes that's true, I'd forgotten about her. I find it very interesting - one of the most interesting things about serialisation is when authors changed intentions on the basis of people's reactions. I do think it's a bit to do with faces - I can see that in the exploration of some of the characters I mentioned in this video.
I love your channel, greetings from Mexico!
Thanks :)
I adored this video - new subscriber here! x
Thanks :)
Is Our Mutual Friend a mystery? Is it worth reading if the identity storyline has been spoiled?
the identity storyline is revealed fairly early into the book so it isn't really crucial
'Tis her fav Dickens novel!
Thanks. I saw it spoiled in a review and hoped it wasn't the ending of the book.
Nah, it's a half-way spoiler at most (I've seen a lot of copies that spoil that bit on the back of the book), and there's a lot else going on in that book to enjoy.
Hmmm.... Interesting you mention deformity displaying someone's inner evil....
Something Oscar Wilde used in The Picture of Dorian Gray.... his own face and body should have been changed by his behaviour throughout the novel but instead it's etched into the picture in the attic, thereby fooling everyone he met into thinking he was a good person because he looked beautiful and youthful, they would trust him, fall in love with, get taken in by him and be used and abused by him.
He was able to get away with so much because he looked so "angelic"
dolls dressmaker :)
Slow down when speaking
She does talk very quickly!
Sometimes I select a slower playback speed.
Pause the video and on that screen look for the three dots on the top right hand corner.
You can change the playback speed by clicking on those dots then select playback speed. You can slow it down to 0.75 speed which I find the easiest to listen at but it's possible to slow it down even more if need be 👍
I hope this helps 🙏