Alice the Excrescence: Disability Aesthetics and Sympathetic Form in The Diary of Alice James

This essay focuses on the subject of disability in The Diary of Alice James. While multiple critics have discussed James's invalidism, this essay is the first to suggest that James conceives of disability in relation to her aesthetics. I argue that James represents sympathetic discord by thematizing "excrescence," a term she initially uses to disparage a child with a disability but then repurposes to describe her own experiences. By analyzing her imaginative rendering of excrescence, I argue that James's views on disability enable her to craft a unique model of sympathetic form, one worthy of further study in Jamesian scholarship.