UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Talking Back: Disabled Women’s Autobiography 1850-1950 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Bailee Daniele Chandler Committee in charge: Professor Michael Davidson, Co-Chair Professor Rosaura Sanchez, Co-Chair Professor Gloria Chacon Professor Meg Wesling Professor Daniel Widener 2017 Copyright Bailee Daniele Chandler, 2017 All rights reserved The Dissertation of Bailee Daniele Chandler is approved, and is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Co-Chair University of California, San Diego 2017 iii Dedication I dedicate my dissertation to my family, friends, and colleagues that supported me throughout this journey. A special thanks to my partner, Ryan O’Connell, whose words of encouragement motivated me right up to the end. My appreciation goes out to my family, especially my parents for giving me the confidence and tenacity to be successful and my brother, Zachary, for his help formatting. I wish to thank my committee members for the generous support and expertise. A special thanks to my committee Co- Chairs, Dr. Rosaura Sanchez and Dr. Michael Davidson, for their encouragement and numerous hours spent proofreading, reflecting, and advising. Thank you Dr. Gloria Chacon, Dr. Meg Wesling, and Dr. Daniel Widener for agreeing to serve on my committee and for their expertise and guidance. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page…………………………………………………………………… iii Dedication………………………………………………………………………... iv Table of Contents……………………………………………………….………… v Vita………………………………………………………………………………. vi Abstract of the Dissertation………….………………………………………….. vii Introduction……………………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter One: Backbreaking Work: Race, Disability and Dependency in the Antebellum United States……………………………..………………………..... 15 Chapter Two: You Scratch My Back and I’ll Scratch Yours: Gender, Disability and Interdependency in the Progressive Era..…………….………………………….... 62 Chapter Three: Back-to-Back: Conjoined Twins and the Single Autobiographer………….………………………………………………………. 113 Bibliography.……………………..……………………………………………… 156 v VITA 2006 Bachelor of Arts, University of San Diego 2006-2007 High School English Teacher, Fusion Learning Center, San Diego, CA 2007-2010 Teaching Assistant, Miramar Community College, San Diego CA 2009 Master of Arts, San Diego State University 2012-2017 Teaching Assistant, Warren College Writing Program, University of California, San Diego 2017 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS “Intersections of Identity: Lesbian Autobiography in the United States.” San Diego State University Press, 2009. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Literature with an emphasis in Cultural Studies Studies in Disability Studies Professor Michael Davidson Studies in Chicana Literature Professor Rosaura Sanchez Studies in American Literature Professor Meg Wesling vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Talking Back: Disabled Women’s Autobiography 1850-1950 by Bailee Daniele Chandler Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2017 Professor Michael Davidson, Co-Chair Professor Rosaura Sanchez, Co-Chair Talking Back: Disabled Women’s Autobiography examines the life and writing of four disabled women in the United States from the antebellum period through the end of the Progressive Era. I examine how these women use autobiography to represent the intersections of disability with other identities such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and social positions such as enslavement and enfreakment. My methodology involves close readings of various genres of life writing including autobiographies, memoirs, dairies, vii letters, and filmic representations that are juxtaposed with popular representations of disabled people within historical contexts such as slavery, early medicine, and freak shows. From my investigation I have found that these women use autobiography to call into question the values of individualism that influence popular representations of disabled people as helpless, dependent, and pitiable. I argue these women challenge cultural conventions of independence and autonomy, including those that undergird the genre of autobiography. In doing so, these women offer important alternatives of disabled women as powerful and disruptive of traditional conventions. Chapter One examines issues of race and disability in Our Nig by Harriet Wilson, a black indentured servant in the antebellum north. I argue that Wilson challenges dominate proslavery and antislavery representations of disabled blacks and repositions dependency as a means to negotiate economic and social agency. Chapter Two investigates The Little Locksmith by Katherine Butler Hathaway, an upper class white woman that is bedridden with spinal tuberculosis. I argue Katherine complicates conceptions of dependent disabled women through interdependent relationships and offers an alternate model of reciprocity that challenges ideals of individualism and self- determinism. Chapter Three looks at the context of the early twentieth century freak show through The Loves and Lives of the Hilton Sisters, about conjoined twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton. The narrative points to the linguistic and generic attempts that are meant to norm and contain bodies within conventions of individualism. As conjoined twins, their embodiment challenges ideals of singular self-reliant individuals just as their narrative viii disrupts the linguistic and generic conventions meant to contain and explain their anomalous embodiment. ix Introduction Ah me! How long I have lain! Will Dawn never come o’er the hill? So shall I be lying again While drowsily beats the rain -Katherine Butler Hathaway “Villanelle” She has never enjoyed any degree of comfortable health since she was eighteen years of age, and a great deal of the time has been confined to her room and bed. She is now trying to write a book; and I hope the public will look favorably on it, and patronize the same. – Margaretta Thorn in Our Nig Disability narratives from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries give important insight into experiences of living with impairment and the issues of dependency that often characterize disabled people’s existence. As the above two epigraphs demonstrate, disability and attendant medical treatments often require long periods of bed rest. For example, the above stanza from Katherine Butler Hathaway’s poem, “Villanelle,” gives a glimpse into her ongoing periods of bed rest. The line, “So shall I by lying again,” is the continued refrain throughout Katherine’s 1 poem, emphasizing the frequent returns she made to bed rest. As a young child during the late nineteenth century, Katherine contracted spinal tuberculosis, a disease that infects joints and bones and often causes curvature of the spinal vertebrae. In an attempt to prevent spinal curvature, Progressive Era doctors used manual techniques such as strapping Katharine to a device known as a stretcher for over ten years. Treatments of this sort 1 Throughout this project I will refer to Katherine by her first name for clarity and consistency. The first person reference will be especially helpful in my third chapter, which follows Katherine throughout her life when she had “Butler” and “Hathaway” as surnames at different times. 1 2 continued throughout all of Katharine’s life and required that she frequently be bedridden and dependent upon caregivers to meet her needs. In American culture where values of individualism and self-reliance are operative, people with disabilities are often positioned as dependent and a burden to their families and the larger society. As such, disabled people are often precluded from roles of independence and autonomy that undergird American values of citizenship and popular notions of the self-determined man. Concepts of self-reliance and autonomy are perhaps most obviously seen in American work ethics. Ideals of hard work and the ability to “pull oneself up by the bootstraps” are common ideologies that permeate American culture and help make it the proverbial “land of opportunity.” Disability narratives reveal how impairment and illness often prevent disabled people from fulfilling typical work roles for a variety of reasons including bed rest. Yet as Margaretta Thorn’s above quote about Harriet Wilson shows, this does not mean that disabled people are completely unproductive. The autobiographies examined within this project, including Wilson’s Our Nig, complicate common conceptions of disability and dependency. Specifically, disability narratives call into question the values of individualism that influence popular representations of disabled people, including the singularity of life writing itself. Narrative is central to the cultural construction of disability and it also provides the means for disabled people to respond to such constructions. To begin, narrative is fundamental to how normates 2 make sense of disability. Lennard Davis notes the 2 “Normate” a term coined by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is the figure through which able-bodied people are defined. Disability acts as the ideological antithesis to normates and thus shore up the able-bodied person’s normalcy. Ideals of individualism such as self-reliance and autonomy inform conceptions of the normate. In cultures where 3 importance of narrative to the construction of disability: “When one speaks of disability, one always associates it with a story, places it in a narrative. A person became