Disbelief and Disability in Fantasy Literature
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This presentation was given as part of Dragons in the Metcalfe, and readers advisory seminar on fantasy 9 March 2011. This was in the 5 slides in 2 minutes section.
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Disbelief and Disability in Fantasy Literature
- 1. Dis/belief Disability and Fantasy Literature
- 2. Impairment vs Disability Body Mind Senses Environment Culture Technology
- 3. Disabled and Deformed Characters Pitiable and pathetic Object of violence Sinister and evil To enhance the mood Super cripple Object of ridicule Their own worst enemy Burden Sexually abnormal Incapable of participating fully in community life
- 4. Stephen Donaldson Chronicles of Thomas Covenant Thomas Covenant - Leprosy Linden Avery - a doctor, whose parents suffered illness Hile Troy - a blind military strategist Lena - who becomes insane after her rape by Covenant Hurtloam - a type of mud which has healing properties Pitchwife - a physically deformed giant Jeremiah - Linden’s intellectually impaired adopted son
Editor's Notes
- With the instigation of the Productivity Commission’s investigation into a national disability insurance scheme there is a renewed focus on the issue of disability in society. The interim report states that in 2009 approximately 680,000 Australians under the age of 65 live with an illness, impairment or injury which severely or profoundly limits their core activities. More broadly 4.5 million Australians live with some level of disability. This quick talk is not intended to spoil our reading or enjoyment of fantasy literature, but to start a conversation about how disability is represented. Notes: 550,000 primary carers 2.4 million other carers There is no single definition of disability. Modern definitions of disability, including those drawn from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (adopted by the UN in 2006 and ratified by Australia in 2008), define disability as the interaction of long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments, and attitudinal or environmental barriers that ‘hinder...full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others’. The World Health Organisation (2009) similarly characterises disability according to the interaction between a person’s body and features of the society in which they live. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and as also adopted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers , ‘disability’ is defined as a limitation, restriction or impairment that has lasted, or is likely to last, for at least six months and restricts everyday activities. According to this definition, in 2003, around one in five Australians had one or more disabilities. The severity of people’s disability varies significantly. At the more severe end of the spectrum people are classified by the ABS as having either: a profound core activity limitation, where an individual is unable to do, or always needs help with, a core activity task (core activity tasks are self-care, mobility and communication) or a severe core activity limitation, where an individual sometimes needs help with a core activity or task, and/or has difficulty understanding or being understood by family or friends and/or can communicate more easily using sign language or other non-spoken forms of communication.
- This provides a way of thinking about disability in terms of the individual and the wider society in which she lives. Whilst a body or mind or the senses may be impaired or injured through accident, birth or illness what disables a person is the environment, the cultural norms and technology which inhibit a persons capacity to fully participate in that society. So it is not being a paraplegic or wheel chair user that disables a person but the prevelance of stairs or rather the absence of ramps. In the jargon this is is termed the difference between the medical model and the social model of disability.
- Disabled characters have a long representational history, indeed there are hieroglyphic images of blind musicians that are over 3000 years old, and one of the oldest adages is from ancient Egypt which states “do not laugh at a blind man”. The history of the representation of disabled and deformed characters is characterised by an associated negativity. I think, contentiously, there is a such preponderance of deformed, injured, ill and impaired characters in fantasy literature that it is one of the hallmarks of that genre. Here is a list of some of the ways characters with a disability are represented. Capatain Hook Orcs I just want to turn to two fantasy series which are extended representations of disability. Notes: List adapted from Barnes, C. 1992. Disabling imagery and the media . Ryburn Publishing: Krumlin.
- Stephen Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, begun in 1977 and spanning 11 books, two trilogies, the last chronicles of 4 novels and a stand alone novella, are one of the toughest fantasy sequences ever written. At the heart of these novels are two characters Thomas Covenant, a man with leprosy, and introduced in the second trilogy, Linden Avery, a doctor. These novels are, I think, a deliberate attempt to grapple to with the glorification of violence, and the unthinking use of metaphors of violence, injury, impairment and illness in the new wave of fantasy writings after the publication of Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings . Donaldson’s series also offers a wider interest in the idea of health, and institutions of healing, and its relationship to disability. Notes: Covenant has leprosy, fingers on his left hand are amputated, his extremities are numb; Joan Covenant in the primary world and Lena and Pietten in the Secondary World become insane; the Giant Pitchwife has a severe spinal deformity; The Giant Cable Seadreamer is mute; Hile Tory is blind; when Covenant is given the knowledge of the whereabouts of the One Tree by the Elohim he is made mute so that he cannot reveal this knowledge; Foul perverts the Lands health through the use of the Sunbane; the long dead Lord Berek has amputated fingers; the Waynhim dukkha ( which means victim) is horribly disfigured. Even characters which at first seem to be centred on images of health have narrative arcs that involve them in scenes of physical and psychological impairment. Linden Avery is haunted by the memory of the suicide of her father and the death of her mother; the seemingly incorruptible haruchai are driven from their vow, which has bound them in an agelessness, and so experience the deleterious physical effects of aging. The titles of the novels also directly refer to injury, impairment and death: Lord Foul’s Bane ; The IllEarth War ; The Wounded Land and Donaldson has continued this pattern in the titles of his final series The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant with the homynimic slippage between “ruins” and “runes” in The Runes of the Earth, and the yet unpublished second volume Fatal Revenant .
- In Garth Nix’s series the Keys to the Kingdom, the main character Arthur is asthmatic. Here I speculate that asthma is used, consciously or otherwise, to link to a broader metaphor of the breath as a symbol of the spirit or otherworldly. Arthur can enter the other world of the house because he is asthmatic. The question here is whether this is a an enabling or disabling depiciton of person with a physical impairment? Notes: Image by practicalowl, flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/practicalowl/256628505/