UC San Diego

In this study, I argue that certain novels and archival sources of the eighteenth century depict deafness, disfigurement, and other forms of physical disability in unexpectedly empowering ways, and I demonstrate how these representations intersect with, and are informed by, unauthorized--or queer--genders and sexualities. Moreover, I show that the fiction of Eliza Haywood, Sarah Scott, and Frances Burney challenge ahistorical assumptions that disabled people have only been thought of as powerless, uneducated, and asexual in previous eras. My contention that eighteenth-century physical disability is constructed along a parallel cultural continuum to that of queerness engages with, and intervenes in, contemporary debates in queer theory and disability studies. The Introduction sets the theoretical terms of my project, exploring the etymology of commonly-used Georgian terms such as "deformity" and "defect," which connote corporeal variability and represent a nascent codification of bodily difference. Chapter One reveals that deafness, one kind of eighteenth-century 'defect,' was not always thought of as freakish or marginal. On the contrary, Eliza Haywood's A Spy upon the Conjurer (1724) portrays a deaf protagonist as strong, attractive, and sexual. In Chapter Two, I argue that Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall (1764) poses same-sex desire and communal families of choice as solutions to the abuses of patriarchy. The novel's alignment of disability with sexuality demonstrates that the British culture of spectacle impacts in violent ways women and the physically disabled. In Chapter Three, I argue that an earlier novel of Scott's, Agreeable Ugliness (1754) problematizes the kinds of common assumptions about deformity that can be found in a previously-neglected archival source The Ugly Club Manuscript (1743-54). Agreeable Ugliness depicts a young woman's coming-of-age and sexual agency in the context of her own deformity. In Chapter Four, I examine Frances Burney's novel Camilla (1796) alongside widely- read eighteenth-century biographies about Æsop, the Classical fabulist. I argue that Camilla extends the "monster-as-genius" trope found in Æsop's biographies to women through the heroine Camilla's younger, disfigured sister, Eugenia. In the conclusion, I pose some research questions that may guide my future work on this project as I develop it into a book