Supported Bodies: Prostheses, Disability, and Masculine Friendship in the Victorian Novel

Supported Bodies:Prostheses, Disability, and Masculine Friendship in the Victorian Novel Karen Bourrier (bio) The victorian body was bolstered, augmented, and supported by a variety of prostheses. In fact, Victorian literature and culture is populated with bodies supplemented by artifacts of material culture ranging from wheeled chairs to glass eyes, ear trumpets, and wooden legs. In Charles Dickens's work, middle-class invalids such as Mrs. Skewton are wheeled through the pages of Dombey and Son (1846–48) in Bath chairs, an early nineteenth-century improvement on the sedan chairs that were used primarily by the wealthy (Janechek 151–52). Prostheses to amplify hearing included not only the ear trumpet most famously used by Harriet Martineau (Esmail 170–72) but also patented innovations such as the otaphone, the audiphone, and the conversation tube (Virdi-Dhesi). Perhaps the most recognizable Victorian prosthesis is the wooden leg, borne by characters including Dickens's taxidermist Silas Wegg in Our Mutual Friend (1864–65). Wegg's peg leg marks him as both "morally dubious" and lower class (Sweet 16). Yet, prosthetic limbs were not solely the purview of a lower-class, damaged masculinity. As Vanessa Warne points out, the prosthesis could also signify wealth, a point that Thomas Hood makes in his satirical poem "Miss Kilmansegg and Her Precious Leg" (83–84). The prevalence of prosthetics to support the disabled Victorian body across boundaries of gender and class highlights the radical incompleteness of all bodies. As Kylee-Anne Hingston argues, when we define prosthetics as "technological extensions and enhancements and normalizing tools," the category expands to include not only mobility aids but also spectacles, suggesting the physical "limitations of all bodies" (371). Prostheses were one highly visual signifier of the ways in which Victorian bodies were physically supported. The illustration on the next page (fig. 1), from Dinah Craik's bestselling novel John Halifax, Gentleman (1856), shows the narrator, Phineas Fletcher, being supported not only by his crutches but also by his friend. Indeed, physical disability could lead to opportunities for emotional and physical support from others as the disabled body emphasized the need for interdependence (Stoddard Holmes 30). Craik's John Halifax, Gentleman and Charlotte Yonge's The Heir of Redclyffe (1853), two bestselling mid-Victorian novels, make the supported masculine body a central feature of their narratives.1 In fact, the narratives themselves are supported by disabled male characters, who act as stand-ins for the narrator or who narrate the novel itself. Yonge's Charles Edmonstone and Craik's Phineas Fletcher are both lifelong invalids who use the support not only of crutches but also of their friends and family to aid their mobility. In turn, because their powers of observation have been honed through years of physical suffering and social marginalization, and because as disabled men they are not subject to [End Page 34] the conventions of mid-Victorian masculinity, they are able to be effusive in their emotions and to narrate or focalize their strong friends' stories. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig 1. Illustration by Alice Barber Stephens from John Halifax, Gentleman (1897). Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Digital Library. Perhaps because there is greater tension between masculinity and disability than between femininity and disability, the figure of the disabled man licenses particularly emotionally and erotically charged scenes."I say there is no greater misery in this world than to have the spirit of a man and the limbs of a cripple," exclaims Charles Edmonstone when his disabilities hamper him from taking on the active role he craves (Yonge 239). Disability, and the physical support it requires, can also lead to moments of tenderness. In the fictional worlds of Craik and Yonge, masculine disability leads to homoerotically charged scenes as other men take care of Charles and Phineas. The guests gathered for the protagonist's wedding in The Heir of Redclyffe see not the bride and groom entering the house together but the groom and his disabled cousin, as the groom assists "Charles up the step, his brilliant hazel eyes and glowing healthy complexion contrasting with Charles's pale, fair, delicate face, and features sharpened and refined by suffering" (376). The bride follows the...

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