Subtitled "Death, Disability and Cure in Classic Fiction for Girls" this is, for me, an unusual book, since I have at some point in my teens read (or seen a dramatisation of) all bar one of the books examined in detail. Lois Keith sets out to examine the portrayal of non able-bodied/healthy characters in what she terms "Classic Fiction for Girls". This comprises the following titles: Jane Eyre, Little Women (including Part 2, Good Wives), What Katy Did, Heidi, The Secret Garden, Pollyanna (plus Pollyanna Grows Up) and Seven Little Australians. There are just 66 years between the first publication date of Jane Eyre and that of Pollyanna Grows Up. Ms Keith also defines "Classic Fiction for Girls" as being centred exclusively on the home (and garden) but never further afield. Although technically Jane Eyre is not a children's book, it is included because so many young female readers read it, even as an abridged version.
Her premise is that characters between 12-16 who are not healthy able-bodied people are portrayed in one of three ways. Either they are "too good to live" and are used to 'improve' those around them prior to their death, or they need to be taught, through losing the ability to walk, to conform to society's expectations of young women, or they have a nebulous disability which prevents them from walking until they learn not to be entirely self-focused. So Helen and Beth die after teaching Jane and Jo how to begin to control their 'un-ladylike' passions; Katy and Pollyanna learn how to grow into more sedate women than their childhoods would suggest; Clara and Colin walk after learning to look outwards and not be totally introverted, while Colin's cousin is emotionally healed of her self-loathing.
Two characters buck these trends, Jamie in Pollyanna Grows Up and Judy Woolcot in Seven Little Australians. Judy is too rebellious and too independent for Ethel Turner to bring her to maturity, so she is killed. Jamie is the dark side of disability, an incurable person, and, according to Ms Keith, is always described in terms of his lack of mobility.
Although he is allowed to live, Jamie is never a manly figure because of his disability. The ability - or otherwise - to walk epitomises both the authors' opinion that anyone unable to walk is automatically rendered 'in-valid' as a part of society, and that of society-at-large, then and now. I also find it interesting that their creators initially provide neither Jamie or Cousin Helen with a surname, thus perhaps reinforcing their in-valid-ness within society.
Ms Keith has approached most of the books from a dual standpoint; that of having been first read (and re-read) as an able-bodied child and re-visited as a disabled mother; only Seven Little Australians has been read solely as a disabled person.
Reading her analysis as a person who has always had "four wheels" to get about with, I found that although I appreciated and agreed with much of what she says, she does focus slightly more on the concept of a "cure" being desired by everyone with a disability. In many ways she is reflecting society's fixation with it but also, perhaps, subconsciously she is more interested in this since she can remember a life without wheels for mobility. This duality may also account for our different responses to some characters. While I have always regarded Beth as being 'within' the March family, and have thought of Heidi and Clara almost simultaneously while Ms Keith does not; she puts Beth on the edge of the family and seems to regard Clara as being of less interest than Heidi.
The book is a study in attitudes and approaches to illness and disability and so must be read without applying present-day attitudes to books over a century old. Ms Keith manages to do this by firmly placing each book in the period-context to which it belongs. She has a damning comment about the late 1990s TV-movie of What Katy Did, broadcast on British TV in January 2000 in Chapter 7, "What Writers Did Next: Representations of Disability in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century". In this dramatisation, Cousin Helen's disability is completely altered and a fictitious episode is used to enable a lecture on late-20th century disability rights!
I found I had to read Chapter 7 and the Conclusion separately from the preceding chapters as they cover a far greater selection of books. When I read them as one with the rest of the book, it left me feeling disappointed - as if they had 'let down' the preceding chapters. Read separately, I found them very informative, even though I felt the quantity of references a little overwhelming and not-altogether helpful. For example, she refers to Izzy Willy Nilly, by Cynthia Voight, extensively in part of Chapter 7 - yet when I asked about it in my local library in 2001 it was described to me as an "oldish book" which might be in the Schools Library system. This despite the fact that it was first published in 1986!
Ms Keith tries to find examples of where current social attitudes towards disabled adults - the fact that we can have fulfilling adulthoods - are reproduced in fiction of the present day, but sadly she is obliged to observe that death or a miracle cure are still the norm: "Yet surprisingly, death still remains a popular option. Sweet Frannie and No Time At All, both by Susan Sallis, and See Ya Simon by David Hill are all examples of stories where a character who uses a wheelchair is dead by the end of the book. All of these titles use the technique of either the whole or part of the story being 'dictated' by a friend of the disabled character, reflecting on their life and the good times they had together. It is interesting to think about whether these stories reflect reality - some disabled children do, of course, have life-threatening conditions - or are a result of the writer's inability to imagine a happy, full life as a grown-up disabled person." (Take Up Thy Bed and Walk, p.207)
Details:
Published by The Women's Press, 2001.
ISBN 0704346516. £11.99, 274 pages, paperback.
Review published in FOLLY, February 2001