By Laine A. Wood
The April meeting for the JASNA North Carolina region concerned an issue that has been gaining traction in recent years, especially since the onset of the pandemic: disability and bodily diversity. English professor Kathleen James-Cavan was the presenter for the meeting.
James-Cavan endorsed four reasons for recent articles on the subject of disability in that she has inspired by a special online issue of Persuasions that spoke on the subject, she has been working on disability studies in Jane Austen’s works for over a decade, the recent COVID-19 pandemic and the long shadow that has cast on society as there are record numbers of people living with disability as a result of the virus, and that notion of normal was criticized, observed, and changed during the pandemic with disabled not having an identity. Lastly, James-Cavan herself is disabled.
Like many subjects in Austen’s works, we read about such things based on her lived experiences and knowledge of how she, her family, and society as a whole were impacted. Austen had an uncle, brother, and cousin who were disabled. Unlike now where science and medicine have done much to enable families and those with a disability to have relative comfort and care, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it was not unheard of for families to “boarded out” or segregate family members with disabilities, and just such was the case with Austen’s brother, George. No one is certain of his specific disability. Austen addresses disability in writings with levity and uses invalid characters to critique the characters of privilege.
The conversation digressed from obvious, physical disability and illness to that of the mental and emotional kind. For example, was Fanny Price a disabled heroine? Discussed at length was the apparent debility seen in not only Fanny’s physical weakness but also the inferred psychosomatization of her love sickness for Edmund. Those with an eye for trauma may even consider Fanny’s background – being taken from her family of origin to reside with her maternal aunt only to be derided and condescended to by her Aunt Norris and other members of the Bertram family. These events almost certainly account for other moments of both physical and mental distress that we see in Fanny, and how getting air daily is a balm to her ails.
Of particular note was Emma‘s Mr. Woodhouse. Unlike Fanny Price, Mr. Woodhouse is privileged and has an apparent disability that, though it is hypochondria, is more mental than physical and the result of the trauma of losing his wife. The curiosity is that instead of being disparaged like Fanny Price, Mr. Woodhouse’s family and friends attend to his anxieties. This begs the question that James-Cavan posits about the juxtaposition of disability between the privileged and those of a lower social class, and how it was viewed and thusly handled.
The meeting concluded with a solemn awareness of disability – whether seen or unseen – and the use of such in Austen’s works through characterization, conversation, and inference. The subject of disability adds a whole new dimension to Austen’s writings and gives readers a new perspective on which to view the stories.
Next Up
JASNA-NC will be reading John Mullan’s What Matters in Jane Austen? for our May 21, 2023 Virtual Book Club. We also have an outing to Fuquay-Varina planned for May 19, 2023 to see Kate Hamill’s Sense & Sensibility.