Disability as Metaphor and Lived Experience in Samuel Richardson's Pamela and Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall

Disability studies scholars often champion the investigation of the lived experiences of disability over metaphor. In Disability Theory, for instance, Tobin Siebers historicizes disabled bodies in part because metaphor often converts disability into something else.¹ Given the exclusionary nature of ableist metaphors, Siebers adopts this approach for good reason. I would argue, however, that we are at a point now in eighteenth-century literary disability studies in which we can do both; that is, we can uncover lived experiences of disability in the eighteenth century and we can take metaphor seriously. By juxtaposing literary representations of ableist metaphor with dynamic, three-dimensional portrayals of disability, we may conceptualize how disability was often imagined as deprivation but also how it could serve personally and socially transformative ends in narrative. To show how such a method works, I examine Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) and Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall (1762): two novels that portray physical disability in starkly different terms. Pamela conceives of deformity as a plot device while Millenium Hall reveals how socially constructed bodily standards subjugate disabled people.² Despite their differences, these novels depict disability and queerness as transformative narrative devices for imagining social and sexual reform.

In Pamela, Richardson shores up the able-bodied, heterosexual romance between Pamela and Mr. B. through Mrs. Jewkes, who is portrayed as monstrous in her embodiment and queer desire. In its plot development, Pamela adheres to the tenets of what David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder call "narrative prosthesis," or a transhistorical representational model in which disability serves as a "crutch" for generating plot conflict and resolution.³ According to the tenets of narrative prosthesis, "the materiality of metaphor" is the tendency of narrative to make abstract concepts visible in the disabled body, which are first uncovered and then explained and justified. As a result, disability is brought from the margins to the heart of the narrative before it is finally rehabilitated, fixed, or eradicated.⁴ In Pamela, Mrs. Jewkes's disability and queerness work together as narrative prostheses to ground Richardson's conceptions of libertinism, female virtue, and sentiment. For example, upon first meeting Mrs. Jewkes, Pamela describes her in these terms: "She is a broad, squat, pursy, fat Thing, quite ugly. … She has a huge Hand, and an Arm as thick as my waist. … Her nose is flat and crooked, and her Brows grow over her Eyes; a dead, spiteful, grey, goggling Eye, to be sure, she has. And her Face is flat and broad."⁵ Mrs. Jewkes is also said "to waddle" when she walks, indicating a mobility impairment that would appear to supplement her monstrous body and intentions (PA, 114). Pamela's portrayal of Mrs. Jewkes reveals physiognomic thought, in which an unconventional appearance mirrors inward depravity. Pamela's caricature of Mrs. Jewkes's facial features—the sustained attention to her "flat and crooked" nose and eyebrows—is supposed to reveal her inner wickedness (114). Pamela construes Mrs. Jewkes's face as a metaphorical repository of uncouthness that threatens young women's virtue.

Mrs. Jewkes's character also symbolizes the libertine sexuality that Richardson hopes to expunge from British society. Mrs. Jewkes pursues Pamela aggressively, just as Mr. B. does. In these characters' alignment, Mrs. Jewkes's deformity becomes a metaphor for Mr. B.'s sexual excess. Pamela describes her first meeting with Mrs. Jewkes in these terms: "The naughty Woman came up to me with an Air of Confidence, and kiss'd me, See Sister, said she, here's a charming Creature! would not she tempt the best Lord in the Land to run away with her!" (PA, 107). Mrs. Jewkes justifies Mr. B.'s ignominious actions by calling attention to Pamela's desirability. Later, in the carriage ride to Lincolnshire, Pamela reports that Mrs. Jewkes sat next to her, "squeezing my Hand, and saying, Why you are very pretty, my silent Dear! and once she offer'd to kiss me. But I said, I don't like this Sort of Carriage, Mrs. Jewkes; it is not like two Persons...