In/Visibility, Invalidism and Identity

This presentation was given on 04/10/2019 at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in London, as part of a Conference on Disability History and Heritage called, "Opening up the Archives"   When I was asked to present, I wasn’t too sure what to present, while my research is interesting, it still feels like it is in…

Harriet Martineau – Early Years to the publication of Illustrations of the Political Economy

When Harriet was 9 (1812) one of her first lemons was handed to her; the death of her Aunt Martineau.[1]  While Martineau wasn't unfamiliar with death having recollections of mournful feelings when Nelson died when she was four, this death was the first in her family, and her first real introduction to a chronic illness…

Harriet Martineau & Life in the Sick-Room

Following the publication of “Deerbrook,” in April, 1839, Harriet went abroad to transport an invalid cousin to Switzerland, while in Venice she was struck down by an illness and had to be brought back to England on a couch attached to the travelling carriage she and her friends were travelling in. She returned in such…

Harriet Martineau and Gender

In The Powers of Distance, Amanda Anderson identified the “prevalent Victorian preoccupation with distinctly modern practices of detachment, a preoccupation characterised by ambivalence and uncertainty about what the significance and consequences of such practices might be."[1] There is a central tension in the ambivalence, about achieving objectivity without losing sight of the subjects of observation,…

Harriet Martineau and Deafness

While her writing on issues of disability tends to seek the ‘truth’ that her utilitarianism inspires her to explore and to convey this to wider society, it must be read not only as educational and remote from the author and her lived experience, but influenced by it, in doing so she uses the lemons life…