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Disability and American Literary History, 1789-1889 W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects Spring 2017 Reading Bodies: Disability and American Literary History, 1789-1889 Amanda Stuckey College of William and Mary - Arts & Sciences, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Recommended Citation Stuckey, Amanda, "Reading Bodies: Disability and American Literary History, 1789-1889" (2017). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1499450073. http://doi.org/10.21220/S2436M This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Reading Bodies: Disability and American Literary History, 1789-1889 Amanda Stuckey Westover, MD M.A., University of Virginia, 2009 B.A., College of William & Mary, 2007 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of The College of William & Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy American Studies Program College of William & Mary May 2017 © Copyright by Amanda Stuckey 2017 ABSTRACT This dissertation brings the field of critical disability studies to bear on organizational paradigms of nineteenth-century American literature. “Reading Bodies” intervenes in these fields with the claim that the book in a variety of formats, publications, and circulations acts as a disciplinary tool that seeks to arrange physical and mental characteristics and capacities into the category of disability. This project moves beyond examining representations of disability to demonstrate that the same social, cultural, and political forces that generated literary movements and outpourings – such as nationalism, displacement of Native peoples, slavery, state-sanctioned violence, and education reform – also generated material conditions of impairment that formal literary conventions sought to consolidate as “disability.” Individuals and communities reading, writing, and responding to the genres of seduction, historical fiction, slave narrative, Civil War poetry, and children’s literature both deployed and challenged formal literary conventions to model or defy normative and deviant behaviors. The formal characteristics and aesthetic concerns of the field of American literature, I find, are products of larger social processes that both cause impairment and that communicate and mark constructions of disability into and onto reading and non-reading publics. As social and literary forces coalesced the category “disability,” often those populations most vulnerable to impairment responded by challenging, resisting, or completely renovating the conventions and categories of textual and bodily behavior. In a variety of interactions with the book, nineteenth- century women, Native Americans, African Americans, wounded soldiers, and children offer alternative intersectional perspectives and possibilities for what it means to produce literature and for what it means to inhabit a body. Those works considered literary outliers both in their day and in contemporary critical assessments, such as Leonora Sansay’s Secret History (1808), the Life of Black Hawk (1833), and midcentury children’s books printed for sight-impaired readers, reveal the normative underpinnings of literary and bodily taxonomies. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii Dedications iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1. “The womb of futurity”: Seduction and the Nature of Reproduction 7 Chapter 2. “Touching the goose quill”: Historical Fiction and the Matter of Composition 25 Chapter 3. “‘I was a sickly body’”: The Surface of the Slave Narrative 42 Chapter 4. “Perversions of feeling”: Sympathy and Substitution in Civil War Medicine and Poetry 61 Chapter 5. “Curiously raised letters”: Children’s Books for the Blind 85 Conclusion 104 Notes 108 Bibliography 121 i Acknowledgements Graduate work has given me the opportunity to spend time thinking about things that are important to me—a rare opportunity for which I have many people to thank. Ever since I wandered into her office as an undergraduate, Susan Donaldson has encouraged me make connections between the world of the text and the world beyond. Karin Wulf’s heartening words, though spoken years ago, stayed with me to see me through the final stages of writing. Jenny Putzi’s focused questions and detailed comments on this project, before and after it was finished, continue to push me further. Liz Barnes’s work influenced my thinking in so many ways, and her guidance helped me find a voice of my own. Cristobal Silva’s research showed me the reach and potential of literary criticism, and his generous comments on this project were a gift. All, in their own way, helped me commit to a project that I not only liked, but care deeply about. At times nothing has seemed more familiar than William & Mary’s brick paths, and they’ve led me to some remarkable places and people. Jody Allen is an example of everything good that academic work and service can accomplish. Melanie Dawson’s model of teaching, writing, and mentoring is one that I will only ever be able to try to replicate. Charlie McGovern has been a supportive force since I arrived (again) in Williamsburg in 2010, and he stepped up at the last minute to allow me to finish on time. So did Francesca Sawaya, and her detailed and generous critique has offered direction for my project beyond these pages. Since the first day of graduate school, in tasks both large and small Jean Brown has helped me keep it together. I’ve had the fortune of exploring places near and far in order to complete this dissertation. William & Mary’s American Studies Program and the Office of Graduate Studies and Research have supported research and travel throughout my time as a graduate student. At Penn State, Sandra Stelts was generous in her own findings and knowledge of Special Collections holdings. The Harrison Institute at the University of Virginia welcomed me back to Small Special Collections and helped me ponder over editions, marginalia, and a beautiful Civil War diary. I have always believed in details, but the American Antiquarian Society – in particular, the bountiful knowledge and curiosity of Paul Erickson and Laura Wasowicz – showed me that no detail is too small, and that no detail is unconnected from its larger context. A Provost’s Dissertation Completion Fellowship gave me the resources and time to finish. One of the best parts of this fellowship was Sarah Glosson; her constant encouragement was the gentle but necessary pressure I needed to get everything done. What would life be without Dissertation Bears, making writing bearable and puns possible. Meghan Holder Bryant, David Pratt, Helis Sikk, and Sarah Stanford continue to remind me that in the midst of frustration, laughter is never far behind. ii No thank-you note would be complete without Sheila Sheppard, my favorite writer and best friend. Of all the stories I know, ours are my favorite. Andrew Reese has steadied me with laughter, love, and patience that know no bounds. Wherever and however I go, you’re always with me. Babies and writing don’t usually go together. But in many ways this project happened because of – not despite – my sweet Owen, constant and determined companion long before he emerged from his (not quite) “ninth-month midnight.” My parents put the first books into my hands, and thanks to their support, hard work, and encouragement, I haven’t been without a book since. This project is dedicated to them, with love. iii This project is dedicated to my parents, Susan and Max Stuckey iv 1 Introduction In May of 2016, seven-year-old Anaya Ellick, a first grader at Greenbrier Christian Academy in Chesapeake, Virginia, won a penmanship contest. Part of a national educational initiative to promote legible handwriting, the competition required Anaya to print “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” on ruled paper. She also penciled an answer to the test question “What do you like about handwriting?” with the response “I get to write about my ideas.” Anaya was born with no hands. A photograph in The Virginian-Pilot shows her holding a mechanical pencil between both arms. In another photograph we see her proudly hugging a large trophy. The Virginian-Pilot and several other news outlets reported Anaya’s victory and praised her determination and her rejection of prosthetics, which, as she told reporters, only slowed her down.1 According to the newspaper account, Anaya surpassed the perceived limitation of her body to do something that seemed impossible without hands: write, and write perfectly. The newspaper reproduced her winning entry as evidence. Yet what made Anaya’s entry worthy of reprinting was not her precise handwriting, or even the award, but rather the precise handwriting executed without hands. The story makes penmanship and writing in general visible as a discipline, while also demonstrating the ways in which writing occurs because of – or, in Anaya’s case, despite – a certain configuration of the body. Penciling “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” would likely be less “remarkable” for a first grader writing with hands. Only with impairment do these letters become visible as productions of the body. Penmanship as a discipline and as a genre is revealed not as inherent, or “natural,” to the body’s posture but rather as a learned and practiced behavior. In this project, I examine the relationship between narrative and the body a relationship that, I argue, becomes most apparent when the body does not conform to the conventions of either. In particular, I examine the relationship between bodily non- conformity and literary narratives to understand how narrative seeks to discipline individuals into able-bodied behavior. I also examine the ways in which these individuals challenged, resisted, or transformed dominant narrative forms in response to these disciplinary attempts.
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