Reshaping Identity: Disfigurement, Women, and the Victorian Pursuit of Joy

Lisa Cunningham, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor and Chair
Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Saint John Fisher University

This presentation is about the ability of a severely disfigured Victorian woman, Harriet Langdon, to find happiness and self-acceptance despite her social construction as disabled, which made her socially undesirable in both the labor and marriage markets. In doing archival work in the journals of minor poet and amateur social scientist Arthur Munby, I discovered his relationship with Langdon, who suffered from lupus and was considered “too disfigured” by potential employers. The contrast between his and her version of reality reveals the difference between the paradigm body’s perception of the non-paradigm and the non-paradigm’s perception of herself.

Contact: Maura Brady, Ph.D., bradymt@lemoyne.edu