Disability: The representation of a non- normative woman's body in wilkie collins's hide and seek

Abstract

This article explores how Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) portrays a woman with a non-normative body in his novel "Hide and Seek" (1854), from the perspective of critical disability studies. The concept of 'non-normate', which refers to the (non)standardized body, coined by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson in her work "Extraordinary Bodies" (1997), is used to examine Collins's work. The novel challenges the conventional Victorian views on disability by emphasizing the independence and freedom of women with disabilities. The protagonist, Madonna, who is deaf and mute, attempts to compensate for her disability through her beauty, sexuality, and intellect. She uses diverse methods of perception, such as intuition, comprehension, and inference to overcome her disability and, thus, attempts to claim an ontological site for her existence. This paper argues that a non-normative woman's body can embody alternative methods of perception to claim her existence, particularly when exposed to the cultural or corporeal inferiority of the hegemonic normative bodies. By challenging the dogmatic predictions that disability is synonymous with limitation and suffering, this paper offers a new perspective that views disability as a desirable state of mind and body and encourages us to appreciate the diversity and complexity of non-normative bodies.