Attending the School of Pain: Disabled Children in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction

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Childhood Studies
Children's Literature
Disabled Children
Nineteenth-Century Literature

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with looking at several common character archetypes of disabled children in mid-nineteenth-century American fiction, exploring an intersection between childhood and disability studies that previously has not been given significant attention. To fill this gap, this study offers a reading of some of the many nineteenth-century disabled child characters that filled both popular children?s literature and domestic literature of the period. As these genres of literature are concerned with the bildungsroman, the presence of disability complicates our expectations and understanding of childhood growth. Through this research, the archetypes of the sickly Angel in the House, the disabled child whose body is leveraged as an object lesson, and the child chastened by pain are explored, turning to disabled literary children both to bring their disabled bodies out of the shadows and to critique the moral, educational, societal, and representational work that these characters perform in nineteenth-century American fiction.

Attending the School of Pain: Disabled Children in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction

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