Extraordinary bodies : figuring physical disability in American culture and literature /
Thomson, Rosemarie Garland.
New York : Columbia University Press,
c1997.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-189) and index.
The cultural work of American freak shows, 1835-1940. The spectacle of the extraordinary body -- Constituting the average man -- Identification and the longing for distinction -- From freak to specimen : "The Hottentot Venus" and "The Ugliest Woman in the World" -- The end of the prodigious body.
Benevolent maternalism and the disabled women in Stowe, Davis, and Phelps. The maternal benefactress and her disabled sisters -- The disabled figure as a call for justice : Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin -- Empowering the maternal benefactress -- Benevolent maternalism's flight from the body -- The female body as liability -- Two opposing scripts of female embodiment : Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the iron mills -- The triumph of the beautiful, disembodied heroine : Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The silent partner.
Disabled women as powerful women in Petry, Morrison, and Lorde. Revising Black female subjectivity -- The extraordinary woman as powerful woman : Ann Petry's The street -- From the grotesque to the cyborg -- The extraordinary body as the historicized body : Toni Morrison's disabled women -- The extraordinary subject : Audre Lorde's Zami : a new spelling of my name -- The poetics of particularity.
American fiction
American fiction
People with disabilities in literature.
Human body in literature.
Human body
People with disabilities
Women in literature.
Popular culture
Sideshows
Feminism and literature