2016/01/01 by Alexandra Valint · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · #Short Stories in Global Literature #Literature: history, themes, analysis #Modernist Literature and Criticism #Disability studies #Cousin #Wheelchair #Negotiation #Perspective (graphical) #Narrative #Sociology #Class (philosophy) #Gender studies #Epistemology #Art #Law #Visual arts #Social science #Literature #Political science #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1353/chq.2016.0032
openalex publication_date 2016/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
This article approaches Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden from a disability studies perspective, with particular attention to how gender and class interact with (dis)ability, to reveal how traditional notions of class and gender underpin Colin Craven’s narrative of recovery. To become the able-bodied, masculine, upper-class “Master Colin” by the novel’s conclusion, Colin must both marginalize and differentiate himself from his female cousin, Mary Lennox, and the working-class Dickon Sowerby. Colin’s wheelchair is the primary locus for the text’s negotiations of gender, class, and (dis)ability. Ultimately, although much in its representation of disability is stereotypical, the novel usefully shows the ways in which disability is socially constructed.