The Phantom Disaster: Spectacular Prosthetics in “The Jolly Corner”

“The Jolly Corner” provides a striking literary example of an image I call the “phantom disaster,” a technological catastrophe imagined but somehow—sometimes miraculously—averted. This image, which features so prominently in the conclusion of James’s 1908 story (one of his finest examples of urban American fiction) functioned in various forms of print culture during the early twentieth century to reassure consumers of the merits of new forms of technology despite their obvious potential to injure and disable bodies in unprecedented ways. Through this image, James interrogates the force of disability on cosmopolites who find themselves both aided and unsettled by their shifting environments.