"But these things are monsters" (The Etymologiae of St. Isidore)

Today is "Blogging Against Disablism Day" on the Internet, when bloggers all over the world unite in their efforts to speak out against bigotry against people with disabilities (A link to the growing archive is at the end of this post). In honor of this day, this entry will be a little bit different than most of the pieces I've posted here in the last year. Instead of examining a single story for the expression of individual experience, I'll try to examine one of the roots of the bigotry itself.

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When you grow up as a child with a disablity (even though no one ever tells you outright, in so many words), you grow up with the the feeling that when others look at you, they see some sort of monster -- a being somehow caught in a state between an actual person and an animal. You're shuffled off with other children into "special programs," and regardless of how different you are from each other, you're told by the well-meaning adults that you are all the same, and belong together.

Until just a few weeks ago, all I had to go on for this notion was a gut feeling, spurred by expressions of pity and fear that I've seen in mass media, old folktales, and the gaze of strangers when I go out in public. It was this gut feeling that prompted me to start writing this blog. And then, late last month, I learned the name "Isidore of Seville," and discovered that he had, in fact, put my gut feeling in precisely so many words.

Saint Isidore of Seville, Archbishop of Spain (d. 636), was considered one of the greatest thinkers and philosophers of his day. Shortly before his death, he compiled the Etymologiae, an attempt, in twenty books, to preserve the important Pagan learning of the late Roman and Greek civilizations, and link it with Christian theology. These books influenced philosophical and literary thought for nearly a thousand years onward. Book Eleven is dedicated to mankind, and concludes with a discussion of those humans who are born with marked differences, by God's Will, to be portents of the future.

Unfortunately, the only online version I could find is in the original Latin, so I've had to rely on Google Translate to make sense of it. Despite the mangled English Google presented to me in the translation, three passages hit me like punches:

First:

Quote: "A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature," unquote.

Ah! All the times, as a child, I'd been required to skip school, to go in for a doctor's appointment so my growth and development could be assessed against the "standard deviation --" so that my differences could be named and cataloged and written up in contrast to what is known to be "normal --" the modern, scientific word for "natural."

Second (the words in square brackets are rearranged from Google's translation):

Quote: "But these things are monsters, which are given in the signs and [do not live a long time, but they have been killed immediately as intended]" unquote.

And how many women have been counselled by their doctors, family, and "community support groups" to have an abortion if the results of an amniocentesis test comes back with unacceptable abnormalities?

And third (again, the words in square brackets are my own rearrangement):

Quote: "[However, there are things written on the transformation of men, and some monstrous beasts], just as that of the most famous sorceress Circe, who [is said to have] changed the companions of Ulysses, [into] wild beasts, and of the Arcadians, who, by lot, and [were thus] turned into wolves." Unquote.

And so was born the fairy tale motif of the enchanted human, turned into a monster by a wicked witch, waiting in lonely isolation for a prince or princess to break the spell with a kiss. This motif rears its sentimental head in every human interest story on the news, when reporters speak of "heroic efforts" to cure someone of their disability, whenever well-meaning aquaintances tell me that they "don't see [me] as disabled, but rather as a human being," -- a human form which is somehow hidden by the outer, "monstrous" shell of Disability, which hides my true nature, and separates me from God's Grace ("There, but for the Grace of God, go I").

In these fairy tales, the worthiness of the Hero, the purity of the Heroine, is judged by how much they are willing to sacrifice to rescue the enchanted victim, and return them to a fully human state. In real life, likewise, parents, siblings and spouses are judged on how much they are willing to sacrifice in order to cure the "afflicted patient." And if the "patients" themselves don't want to be cured, then they are accused, either directly or indirectly, of "giving up on life," as if life itself is only possible for those who are fully human.

But. ...Except: We are already fully human. If our form, if our way of being, falls outside what you understand is the True Order of Nature, then perhaps you need to expand your understanding, rather than try to narrow our existence.


Links:

Blogging Against Disablism Day at Diary of a Goldfish Blog -- a growing archive of all the posts: check it out.

Etymologiea of Isisdore, Book 11 (in Latin).

Isidore of Seville (Wikipedia Article)

Tiny Tim and the Role of Disabled as Object Lessons

A Brief Excerpt from
A Christmas Carol
IN PROSE
BEING
a Ghost Story of Christmas
By Charles Dickens (first published 1843)

[Quote]
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!

"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.

"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.

"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas Day!"

Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.

"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.

"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see."

Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
[Unquote]

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Let me just begin by saying that A Christmas Carol is one of my all time favorite stories. If you are not yet familiar with Dickens' original, I will be so bold as to recommend it; no movie adaptation, no matter how well done, can capture the skill of Dickens' wit and word-craft.

Part of the reason I love the book is, also, the story of its own creation. Dickens started out, in February of 1843, trying to write a political pamphlet describing the hardships of poor children working in the tin mines of Cornwall. But he came to realize that what he really needed, in order to motivate people to change their society for the better was art, and a well-told, emotional story, rather than logical arguments, facts, figures, and political slogans. Charles Dickens had such faith in his story that he paid for its publication himself, and while it didn't earn him the monetary income he was hoping for at the time, his story did work at least some magic on the culture, and has been credited with making people fall in love with the idea of Christmas all over again, when the traditions had been all but forgotten, except by a few cultural historians and "folklore geeks." What writer wouldn't dream of having such a legacy?

However, it is the story's very power and popularity that makes Tiny Tim such a problematic character. It's an odd thing about human beings, that, no matter how much true life experience we may have, we are unlikely to give it much credit, until we see it reflected back to us in the form of a story. Tiny Tim, having such a central, symbolic presence in a story that has been told over and over, for almost 170 years, is, arguably, the most consistent image of "What Disability Looks Like," how the Disabled should behave, and how Society, as a whole, should respond to the presence of Disability.

In many ways, Tiny Tim reflects the early origins of the word monster: as an omen or warning from the Divine to the citizens of the city. His frailty and disability, made visible by his crutch and iron brace, served as a "warning" that the industrial capitalism of England, at the time, was leading the society into social sin. And the vision of Tiny Tim's empty stool and abandoned crutch, as revealed by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Be, was a personal warning to Scrooge himself about his own death.

Inside that broad allegorical framework, Tiny Tim displays nearly all the beliefs about disability that are held by the able-bodied privileged, and are reiterated in nearly every 'human interest story' on the news. The message is, that as Disabled People, we need to be as "Good as gold, and better," and to do that, we should welcome the stares and pity of strangers, and accept that our primary role in life is to Inspire Others (especially the able-bodied), by being sweet and spiritual at all times, and, especially, in the end, to Overcome our Disability, in the end, by being cured, and leaving our crutches and our braces behind. I also note that, except for his one line: "God bless us-- every one!" we never actually hear Tiny Tim speak in his own voice, but that everything we know about him we learn through his parents' (primarily his father's) emotional response to his existence, and that, within his own family, Tiny Tim is depicted as a Beloved Burden.

This last facet of the Tiny Tim trope is reflected in our modern, public discussions of "Disability Policy" when the family members of the disabled are treated as the Ultimate authorities, but the experiences of the disabled, themselves, are ignored or discounted.

As wonderful a story as A Christmas Carol is, it's important to remember that it is fiction, and that Tiny Tim is an allegorical figure-- and does not reflect the actual lived experiences of people with disabilities.

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Links:

Wikipedia article: A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens at Project Gutenberg.org

Changelings: When parents fear the child they did not expect

This is a changeling legend I came across recently, from Verstermanland region of Sweden, collected in 1882:

Every intelligent grandmother knows that the fire must not be allowed to go out in a room, where there is a child not yet christened; that the water in which the new-born child is washed should not be thrown out; also, that a needle, or some other article of steel must be attatched to its bandages. If attention is not paid to these precautions it may happen that the child will be exchanged by the Trolls, as once occured in Bettna many years ago.

A young peasant's wife had given birth to her first child. Her mother, who lived some distance away, was on hand to officiate in the first duties attending its coming, but the evening before the day on which the child should be christened she was obliged to go home for a short time to attend to the wants of her own family, and during her absence the fire was allowed to go out.

No one would have noticed anything unusual, perhaps, if ithe child had not, during the baptism, cried like a fiend. After some weeks, however, the parents began to observe a change. It became ugly, cried continuously and was so greedy that it devoured everything that came its way. The people being poor, they were in great danger of being eaten out of house and home. There could no longer be any doubt that child was a "changeling." Whereupon the husband sought out a wise old woman, who, it was said, could instruct the parents what to do to get back their own child.

The mother was directed to build a fire in the bake oven three Thursdays evenings in succession, lay the young one upon the bake shovel, then pretend that she was about to throw it into the fire. The advice was followed, and when the young woman, the third evening, was in the act of throwing the changeling into the fire, it seemed, a little deformed, evil-eyed woman rushed up with the natural child, threw it in the crib and requested the return of her child. "For, said she, "I have never treated your child so badly and I have never thought to do such harm to it as you now propose doing mine," whereupon she took the unnatural child and vanished through the door.

The parents' distress, depicted in this and other changeling legends, is one that I've seen expressed many times in modern human interest stories on television and in magazines, when the rejoicing at the birth of a baby turns to fear and confusion when the child fails to grow or flourish as expected.

And, as in these changeling stories, the focus of these modern human interest tales is always on the parents, the horrible burden such their new baby turned out to be, and the tricks and procedures they undertake to bring normalcy back into their lives. Almost always, there's a sense of being tricked, somehow: the child (and the future) you expected was swapped for another when your back was turned -- when you blinked at the wrong time.

In 1987, Emily Perl Kingsley wrote a brief allegorical essay about what it's like to be the parent of a disabled child: Welcome to Holland:

(Quote) I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland." (Unquote)

The scariest thing about these changeling legends is that they are legends. Instead of beginning: "Once upon a time, when wishes made things true, in a land far, far away..." the setting is specific -- in this very village, or the in next county, and the time frame is always within living memory. Legends are all presented as evidence in support of beliefs, to reinforce a code of socially accepted behavior.

Each time I read one of these stories, I can't help wondering how many real infants were placed on baking stone by the oven, by desperate parents, or how many were left at the crossroads at midnight on Christmas Eve. When the trolls or fairies failed to bring back the "natural" child, how many parents progressed from pantomime to actually throwing their child on the fire?

When it was all over, did the parents feel remorse? Or did they feel relief from ridding the world of an "unnatural" creature, even if their own child is lost to them forever?

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Notes:

"The Changeling from Bettna." Excerpted from Swedish Fairy Tales, by Herman Hofberg (1882). Translated by W. H. Myers; W. B. Conkey Company, Chicago: 1895. Digitized by Google.

See Also:

Changelings: an essay by D.L. Ashliman