Date of Award
12-2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School
Humanities
Committee Chair
Dr. Alexandra Valint
Committee Chair School
Humanities
Committee Member 2
Dr. Eric Tribunella
Committee Member 2 School
Humanities
Committee Member 3
Dr. Emily Stanback
Committee Member 3 School
Humanities
Committee Member 4
Dr. Leah Parker
Committee Member 4 School
Humanities
Committee Member 5
Dr. Jameela Lares
Committee Member 5 School
Humanities
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes disabilities, both realistic and nonrealistic, in a variety of Victorian children’s fantasy texts to consider the ways that fantasy unsettles the concept of the norm and potentially shapes our understandings of bodies and minds, disability, and cure. In this dissertation, I analyze and interpret how Victorian children’s fantasy shapes disability alongside fantastical elements such as magic, spiritual forces, and transformation. Each fantasy text has its own rules of reality and therefore gives rise to differing commentary on embodiment. I begin with realistic disabilities in fantasy texts, building on existing disability studies scholarship and reframing interpretations of realistic disabilities in light of their proximity to fantastic elements. I then utilize and narrow Sami Schalk’s concept of nonrealist disability to theorize a spectrum of disabilities from realistic to what I term fantastic disabilities, or disabilities that are inherently fantastical or magical in some way. From there I pivot to questions of cure, a common motif in fantasy narratives, to discuss how fantasy genre conventions place emphasis on the journey to obtain a cure or the process of earning a cure, and finally to a discussion of magical prostheses. Throughout this study of disability in Victorian children’s fantasies, I explore how Victorian conceptions of the norm and normative bodies and minds intersect with contemporaneously emerging trends in fantasy. Ultimately, I argue that fantasy requires us to consider how norms shift and change from text to text, which in turn requires us to consider disability in relation to each text individually.
Copyright
Hannah Mummert, 2025
Recommended Citation
Mummert, Hannah, "Fantastic Disability: Disability in Victorian Children's Fantasy Fiction" (2025). Dissertations. 2437.
https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/2437