Anna Talarantas

Alright, it’s a joke…but do you get it? You probably laughed without knowing exactly why–today, most of us have a pretty loose idea of what gout actually is. We often understand it to be linked to the gluttonous intake of rich food and alcohol. According to RxWiki, “gout was once called the ‘disease of kings’ because some people assumed that it was related to the types of food and drink that only the wealthy could buy.” The belief still exists today, grounded in historical understanding and beliefs. 

The eighteenth century is one of the eras linked to the concerns of understanding and dealing with gout. In Tobias Smollett’s  1771 novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, we follow patriarch Matthew Bramble and his family’s expedition towards order and health. Bramble professes to suffer from gout, and in a letter to his doctor he explains that the attacks result from external happenstances rather than internal influences: “A ridiculous incident that happened yesterday to my niece Liddy, has disordered me in such a manner, that I expect to be laid up with another fit of the gout” (5). For Bramble, his niece’s actions are to blame for yet another burst of gout, unlike society’s belief that an excess of food and drink are the underlying cause. 

The difference may explain the statement that, according to Porter and Rosseau’s Gout: The Patrician Malady, “gout was the great enabler, and illness implied creativity about all” (94). Gout, often linked with wealthier (and therefore more educated) gentlemen, could certainly be seen as a boost to creativity.

Matthew Bramble’s journey to order results in his final letter admitting that perhaps if he had spent less time composing long creative drafts and more time actively engaged in activities such as hunting in the fresh air outside he might have prevented or better suffered his gout. As Bramble reduces the amount of time devotes to creative pursuits, he becomes healthier overall. 

-Nicole Rothenay

@jasonsfarr

Work Cited

Smollet, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Porter, Roy and and G.S. Rousseau. Gout: The Patrician Malady. Yale University Press.

When it comes to the way that gout was involved in the book, it also shows what gout can cause. Gout was known to only be a man’s disease. Gout is known to cause a burning pain, usually on the big toe that can cause pains in the joints. Many of the men who did not get it treated can cause death if it was left untreated.

In this image, you can see how the man is in pain due to having gout. You have his lover holding his hand while he is in pain, but if you look in the back you can kind of see a man who looks like him, and this can mean that his time is coming for him to die. While in the second picture you can see a man that has gout who is visited by a demon stabbing the man with gout. The reason that gout is seen as an evil and sinful thing due to only men getting. In both cases, you can see that both men were wealthy and had a high name, but what also shows is that both of them got the same disease and can die from it due to not having a cure for gout. Many of the people believed that it was only a man’s disease, but it can also happen to women. It happened to many unwealthy people also got gout, but there was a famous women who got gout-like symptoms.

Georgina Cavendish was the duchess of Devonshire, who at the age of forthy-eight, died to abscess on her liver. This can also be a disease close to gout due to it causing many pains in the person’s body. The duchess was seizing almost everyday, and was also given treatments that were thought to help her. She had all of her hair shaved and had a lot of blisters on her body. This could be seen as a very painful way of dying as gout was as well. Both of these diseases similar in many ways caused a lot of pain and both were both known to cause puse. They both cause redness of body parts and even some could cause blisters, and if they were both left untreated then it would lead to a painful death.

-Gia Cavazos

In The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, the characters embark on the journey to Bath where Matthew Bramble hopes to find health. The waters of Bath are believed to have healing properties making this a popular destination for the wealthy. The epistles that make up this novel detail the events surrounding this journey. Through his letters to Dr. Lewis, Matthew Bramble reveals his resentment for the very place he seeks out as remedy for his gout. Bath becomes less of a destination for wellness, but a representation of the very life Bramble wishes to leave behind. Bramble follows the orders of Dr. Lewis and sets forth to Bath. Upon his arrival, he describes how Bath has changed for the worse. Overcrowding, poverty, and uncleanliness have destroyed the perfect picture of health, “I find nothing but disappointment at Bath” (Smollett 34). The place that was once an oasis for health has become the opposite to Bramble. 

One of the major themes of the letters is disorder and chaos. Bath symbolizes the characteristics of disorder in chaos to Bramble. It represents the life of overindulgence and excess that he has lived until that point. Needless to say, Bramble doesn’t find health at Bath, but the opposite, “But, I believe you will not deny, that this place, which Nature and Providence seem to have intended as a resource from distemper and disquiet is become the very center of racket and dissipation” (Smollett 34). However, he does find a valuable life lesson on his journey there. The disillusioned penman discovers that the life he was living was the culprit for his poor health. He destroyed his own health just like man destroyed Bath. To regain his health Bramble seeks out the tranquility of the country. Here he will live a more organic and natural life and the stresses of the city he left behind will be no more, “Shall I state the difference between my town grievances, and my country comforts” (Smollett 118). As he settles in the country and writes his final letter to Dr. Lewis, he vows never to return to Bath and/or his old ways of living. He trades in writing long letters for a more active lifestyle. This final event represents the order and tranquility that have been reintroduced to his life, “That this scheme of life may be prosecuted the more effectually” (Smollett 351).

-Gloria Rojas

The eighteenth century was not kind to women by any means and was kind to aging women even less. The imbrication of femininity and aging is somehow insoluble, and, as Aileen Douglas asserts, “the threat [of women] can be neutralized in two ways: sex and death” (Douglas 174). Through a series of epistles, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker depicts women as disordered beings that require marriage in order to be organized and neatly fit into society.

Matthew Bramble’s sister, Tabitha, “has left no stone unturned to avoid the reproachful epithet of old maid” and is denigrated for this desire for a husband throughout the text. She is animalized consistently as “a cat,” and even in her relationships with other older men, she is the “carrion” to his “hound” (Smollett 60). Although women throughout the novel are expected to repair the disarray they cause through marriage, Tabitha’s “reputation was a little singed” from flirting and acting upon her desire for a husband (Smollett 60). Tabitha’s paradox is one that will never allow her to be anyone other than a “disorderly creature[] who ruin[s] estates and endanger[s] health” while expecting her always to organize her disarray (Douglas 176).

“That wild-cat…Tabby” is consistently dehumanized for her “natural austerity” while her brother, Matthew, is free from critiques against his brusque personality (Smollett 14, 60). Although Matthew Bramble is also aging, gouty, and temperamental, he is perceived as strong-willed enough to deal with the “domestic plague” that is Tabitha (Smollett 61). She is compared to an ulcerous facial skin disease when Jery asks Matthew how he tolerates her, even though Jery questions Matthew’s own “disposition” toward handling a woman such as Tabitha (Smollett 61).

It is only at the end of the novel that Tabitha’s disarray is reconciled through her marriage to Lismahago. Matthew, Baynard, Tabitha, Lismahago “make the best of [their] way to Brambleton hall” and Matthew “enjoy[s] the exquisite pleasure” of their company only when Tabitha has a partner (Smollett 351). Matthew is also at ease with “nothing further to do” now that Lydia Melford and Winifred Jenkins are married as well and this further indicates the messiness of unmarried women who are regulated by men throughout the novel (350).

Tobias Smollett consistently writes women in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker as unregulated and requiring a male figure in order to clean up the messes they make socially. It is only through men that women are able to neatly fit into society, but aging women are distinct from this diagnosis. Women like Tabitha in the novel are not allowed to desire companionship, leaving the only alternative to be, as Douglas asserts, “death.” (174). Tabitha is prescribed a life without a husband because of her age, and therefore must perpetually be labeled as a disorderly character who causes Matthew’s condition to worsen. Though Tabitha defies the expectations of her age and marries Lismahago, it is an act done in defiance of censure and reinforces the patriarchal values of maleness regulating femininity.

-Anna Talarantas 

@jasonsfarr

Works Cited

Smollet, Tobias. The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s mega-hit musical, the Phantom of the Opera has just reached its thirty-year anniversary. For thirty years, people have fallen in love with the story of the Phantom, the deformed musical genius who falls in love with a beautiful, talented, yet naïve opera singer Christine Daae. Now while Phantom isn’t the only media with a deformed protagonist, (The Hunchback of Notre Dame anyone?) it’s certainly one of the most popular. When the musical ends every night, there’s no doubt the sound of more than a few crying females as the Phantom learns to put someone else’s needs above his own and let his love go. But with the Phantom now celebrating thirty years, it’s actually reminded me of another individual. William Hay was an eighteenth-century gentleman who lived with a severe curvature of the spine in England. Despite this, he didn’t have to live in isolation under the London Opera house. Instead, he was actually a representative, and because of his upper-class upbringing, he was able to get a fantastic education. Since Phantom is now thirty, and since William Hay is a fascinating figure that is often forgotten, today on the blog, we are going to discuss William Hay in conjunction with the Phantom.

As stated above, Hay was given a great education. We don’t know about the Phantom’s life prior to the stint of the opera, however, but from what we can gather, he didn’t have a happy upbringing. Interestingly, in Susan Kay’s reimaging of the Phantom’s story, (Whose real name is actually Erik.) she goes into great detail about Erik’s early life. Though his mother cannot bring herself to fully love him because of his deformity, she notes of his genius, particularly in music, and hires a teacher for him. Kay’s Erik, like Hay then, received an education. A great one in fact. In Hay’s article, he notes that men who are deformed often cannot work in the fields or as a sailor, and instead must use their mind to get ahead (31). Since Erik cannot work without wearing a mask in the Kay novel, (and wearing a mask in public is just plain weird and draws attention to itself.) Erik does indeed use his mind to get ahead.

Hay differs from Erik in the sense that he has a crooked back, while Erik’s face is described as looking like a corpse. “For men despise what appears less beautiful” Hay writes (33) of himself, and sadly we can see the same things happen to Erik. Bad things happen to him in the musical, and in the Kay novel. In the musical, once Christine sees who he is behind the mask, she cries out in horror, and later tells her suitor Raul about how horrible he looks. However, Christine also talks about his voice and his music, and how they transformed her into another plain of existence. His mind overcomes his face in a way, much like how Hay was able to be respected in England for his mind.

Of course, Phantom is a love story, and though Hay goes into the pros and cons of being deformed in his essay, he very briefly speaks of what it is like to be with a woman. “I am in Purgatory in the confines of Paradise” he sadly writes (47). He can be in the presence of a lady but he cannot fully be with her, and that is what happens to the Phantom in the show, particularly in the “Music of the Night” scene. He is with Christine, but he is not “fully” with her. His music is, but not his full self. His full-self has been torn down by other people believing he is disgusting and worthy of hating because of his deformity. We sadly don’t see a catharsis for Hay in the essay, but at the end of Phantom, the Phantom gets his catharsis through Christine’s redemptive kiss. Even though he lets her go, he knows he is worthy of redemption. His deformity does not define him, just as Hay notes his deformity does not either. From both Hay and the Phantom, we should learn that as cheesy as it sounds, true beauty lies in the soul and mind.

-Cheyenne Kauha

Works Cited Hay, William. Deformity: An Essay. Ed. Kathleen James Cavan, University of Victoria Press, 2004. Kay, Susan. Phantom. Llumina Stars, 2011. Print.

Sapphism, a classist term used in the mid-to-late 18th century to describe women whose primary inclination is to be with other women. The term was used to “reinforce class hierarchies and externalize privilege of their class”. Much like the women of Millenium Hall who surrounded themselves with other women of the same social class with relationships “so strongly united”, The Real Housewives franchise displays similar relationships of close friendships and insight to the American bourgeoisie. Sapphism created a platform for the ever-popular “Girl Gang” made popular by celebrities like Taylor Swift, where a group of other celebrity friends relationship are constantly on display for the public as an example for feminism and independence. The four women of Millenium Hall create a utopian existence, not accessible to lower class, where they were able to spend their time and personal wealth as they deem fit with women like them socially. The same can be said for women apart of The Real Housewives; these women are apart of a higher class where, more often then not, they use their own personal wealth to support extravagant lifestyles with their “Girl Gang” from the show. The reason the franchise has gained notoriety, apart from the occasional girl on girl drama, is the insight on how the other half lives. The women of the show answer to no one but themselves, they are able to dance on bar tops to the beat of their own drums. The involvement of men in the show often complicate the friendship and become a strain, Lanser said it best when she described marriage as “the tomb of friendship” for women in the eighteenth century and the same can be said for The Real Housewives in 2016 (Lanser 189). The financial independence granted by their class allows the women in Millenium Hall and The Real Housewives to “establish their own value and a certain degree of psychic independence from men while at the same time helping to consolidate the privileges of their class” (Lanser 186). The show includes “girls trips” where the women flock together and vacation to new and exotic places where the world in their oyster and free from male involvement, parallel to the women in Millenium Hall where due to their wealth they are able to create a world of their own and “separate” from a male dominant world Lamont references (Scott 76).

-Desiree Garcia

Works Cited Scott, Sarah. “Millenium Hall”. Ontario: Broadview, n.d. Print. Lanser, Susan. “Befriending the Body: Female Intimacies as Class Acts.” Eighteenth-Century Studies. 32.2. 1998-99.

Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall depicts Sapphism and deformity as relational. Sapphism is a term inherently linked to class which describes women who prefer an association with other women while deformity describes disfigurement or a deviance from normality in terms of embodiment. Millenium Hall represents a utopic estate in which the women running the estate are enabled through their wealth, entitlement, and privilege to maintain their queerness through their lack of relationships with men. The same utopic state is endeavoring to be realized by the women depicted in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, who escape from a compound in which they are all being used as “breeders” for Immortan Joe. The search and establishment of utopia in both of these sources is the determining factor in the women’s lack of relationships with men. 

William Hay’s Deformity: An Essay discusses the virtues of deformity while Susan Lanser’s Befriending the Body asserts the nature of Sapphism as one that must exclude relationships with men in order to uphold the primacy of relationships with women. Mad Max: Fury Road, however parallel to Millenium Hall, redefines these perspectives through Furiosa, a woman who is impaired (she has lost an arm) and through her ability to create a comradery with Max Rockatansky. While Furiosa, Cheeto, Toast, Dag, and Angharad exemplify “female bonding against and away from men” they are also able to establish a structural similarity of friendship with Max while continuing to “promote female excellence” (Lanser 182). Furiosa’s embodiment, however, does not reflect the “public representations” of female friendship that were established in the 18th century nor does it “draw [her] eyes away from the world” because Furiosa’s impairment neither inhibits her from pursuing “the Green Place” nor does it represent a “normal” female body (Lanser 182-3; Hay 27; Miller).

Mad Max: Fury Road and Millenium Hall share integral plot features such as female primacy, acceptance of queerness, and a lack of utopia where the dream of one persists. The ladies of Millenium Hall are able to accommodate the queerness of Sapphism through an upper-class status that provides a veil for their lack of relationships with men, but the women in Mad Max: Fury Road are objectified and used to procreate, denigrated beyond a lower class. The female primacy is obviously paralleled in Miller’s film, but the acceptance of oddity and impairment is evident as well. The housekeeper’s loss “of the use of a hand” as a “stronger recommendation than [her] good character” is similar to Furiosa’s ability to lead her group while being the only impaired woman. Here, Hay’s assertion that people with impairments should “not be marveled if they sometimes prove excellent persons” and neither the housekeeper’s nor Furiosa’s disability portray the character as more than what they are: women with impairments who find agency in their relationships with women (Hay 32).

-Anna Talarantas

Works Cited Hay, William. Deformity: An Essay. Ed. Kathleen James Cavan, University of Victoria Press, 2004. Scott, Sarah. “Millenium Hall”. Ontario: Broadview, n.d. Print. Lanser, Susan. “Befriending the Body: Female Intimacies as Class Acts.” Eighteenth-Century Studies. 32.2. 1998-99.

WEEK 4

Robert McRuer’s “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence” emphasizes the dependency of compulsory heteronormativity and able-bodiedness on homosexuality and/or queerness and disability in order to maintain its primacy in society. It’s an election year, and we often see great outreach toward minorities by candidates for support at the ballot box. In the context of disability, Secretary Clinton has made great strides toward including people with impairments in her speeches and her outreach (and has done so before this election cycle as well). What I find most compelling about the narratives surrounding Clinton’s campaign, however, is that she was recently bombarded by controversy surrounding her own able-bodiedness. 

Googling “Hillary Clinton health” will bring up numerous articles (like this one from the NYT) in relation to this month’s obsession over whether she is able-bodied or “healthy” enough to be the president of the United States. And while the first article in this post does a great job of discussing Clinton’s initiative and support for people with impairments, compulsory able-bodiedness is still visible in the need for Clinton to defend herself against accusations of poor health all while reaching for the disabled vote which would bring her that much closer to being president. This is the “covering over, with the appearance of choice, a system in which there is no choice” that McRuer discusses, as Clinton and Trump may reach out to minorities but are not allowed to enter those spaces and maintain power (371). 

This is not an attack on Hillary Clinton, nor is it a political discussion. Rather, I believe, this proves McRuer’s assertion that while able-bodiedness holds a primacy in our society, it is mounted on the back of disability and impairment. The necessity for the disabled vote coupled with the opposition toward a presidential candidate with (temporary) illness exemplifies the dependency of able-bodiedness upon the impaired. 

-Anna Talarantas

That’s a point I definitely should have made in my post. Clinton’s stumble makes me think of David Turner’s historical context of disability where women were often seen as inherently impaired just by being female. Clinton seems to have to work harder to bridge the gap from where she has been placed on the spectrum of impairment while men, like you mentioned, have not had to account for their lack of able-bodiedness. 

WEEK 4

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/cara-delevingne-says-her-sexuality-is-not-a-phase-2015167 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cara-delevingne-supermodel-sexuality_us_579fa6b4e4b0693164c227e5 Throughout class this last week, we have been discussing compulsory heterosexuality in regards to compulsory able-bodiedness.  In class we came up with arguments that McRuer is trying to make in his chapter, “Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence”.  According to McRuer, compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness rely heavily on homosexuality and disability by enforcing that there is a norm and an opposite to that norm.  McRuer defines heterosexuality according to the Oxford dictionary as “pertaining to or characterized by the normal relations of the sexes; opp. to homosexual” (370).  This demonstrates that heterosexuality is defined as the opposite of homosexuality.  And therefore, to create a norm, there must be a reliance on a deviation of the norm.   Cara Delevingne is a 22 year-old model who is an ideal character of a white able-bodied norm, someone who [according to society] young girls should desire to look like, however, she has been telling interviewers that she is in love with her girlfriend.  Her parents try to understand her relationship by stating that they think that girls are just a phase for Cara, while Cara replies “My sexuality is not a phase, I am who I am” (Marquina 2015).  Cara also states, “I’m obviously in love, so if people want to say I’m gay, that’s great.  But we’re all liquid – we change, we grow” (Nichols 2016).  I love this last part, about being liquid, changing, and growing.  This is the concept with identities.  We all change; we aren’t solid fixtures that remain constant throughout our existence.  The point is that society has the incessant need to label people as gay or straight, white or colored, able or disabled.  Cara is an example of someone who is assumed to fit in all “normal” categories, but proudly does not.