Thérèse-Adèle Husson

As part of my research project into Disability Studies and French Culture I have been reading the novels of nineteenth-century blind writer Thérèse-Adèle Husson (introduced to me by Zina Weygand). Next week I will present my first findings on Husson's work in a paper entitled 'Monstrous Messages: Representations of the Disabled Body in Nineteenth-Century French Literature' at the 53rd Annual Conference of the Society for French Studies at the University of Exeter. In my paper I use contemporary Disability Studies to look again at depictions of blindness in French. I use examples from Baudelaire, Flaubert and Hugo to argue that blindness is almost always used in literature as a metaphor for something other than itself. The experience of blindness, how it feels to be blind and how it changes the blind person's relationship with the world, is rarely, if ever, touched upon.

Not all Husson's novels are about blindness but in Les Deux Aveugles et leur Jeune Conducteur (The Two Blind Men and their Young Guide), published posthumously in 1838, she tells the poignant story of blind brothers who are disowned by their family and forced to wander France trying to make a living. The story is told from the first-person perspective of one of the brothers. Late on in the narrative, the brothers unexpectedly encounter their neglectful father. As they suddenly realise who they have in front of them, the blind narrator utters the seemingly incongruous line: 'Son regard a rencontré le mien' (his gaze met mine). When I first came across this line I thought it must be there by mistake. Clearly a blind narrator, imagined by a blind writer, could have no understanding of the notion of the 'gaze' or the importance the sighted attach to eye contact. Surely his must be an authorial slip, a careless addition which Husson must have heard read aloud and unthinkingly transported into her text.

Contemporary Disability Study's resistance to the metaphorization of disability made me think again about this sentence. What if Husson was well aware of the incongruity of the phrase as she wrote it? What if she was trying to make her readers, both sighted and blind, think again about the alleged supremacy of sight?  Might we read this reference to the blind gaze as an insight into the way the blind relate to others in the world? The shock of this sentence invites us to separate blindness from its metaphoric baggage and put ourselves in the place of the narrator. As we do so we realise that the blind are not cut off from the world, living tragically in a bubble of isolation and self-pity. They are fully engaged and involved citizens who use their other senses to achieve the same kind of contact with others as the sighted manage (or think they manage) with their over-determined gaze.

Shouting at the (Blind) Ref

I love watching football on TV even though I agree with Tim Unwin that sport can sometimes sound better on the radio. In the past I have watched matches in bars, cafes, student common rooms and hotels but this year I expect to be mostly watching from the comfort of my sofa.  My boys are now old enough to watch with me and are taking a keen interest in my wall chart. Yesterday I subjected them to my armchair commentary during the England-France game. After abandoning an attempt to explain to them why I was giggling every time the English player Wellbeck was mentioned (a joke only really suitable for fellow French literature enthusiasts....), I had to try and tell them why I thought that the referee was failing to properly acknowledge the fouls inflicted on the English by the French. In the heat of the moment my first response was "Because he's blind". Luckily, and much to my husand's amusement, I managed to stop myself just before these words left my mouth. Instead I explained that the referee cannot possibly spot every misdemeanour which takes place on the pitch: after all he only has one pair of eyes whereas we have the benefit of many TV cameras zooming in on the action.

Once the boys had accepted this explanation, I began to wonder at my original response. What does it mean when someone who identifies herself as 'blind', someone who is working hard to be proud of her blindness, uses this word as a term of abuse? I'd like to think that the years I've spent listening to football commentary have left me with a stock of easy and un-thought-through phrases to trot out on such occasions. Perhaps I also talk about 'games of two halves' and 'tired legs' without even noticing.

But I worry that my response reveals something more sinister. What if society is so ready to accept the negativity of blindness that even the blind find themselves using it as an insult? How can I hope to celebrate my blindness, let alone encourage others to do the same, when the emotion of a football match triggers this kind of mindless comment? Football fans are not known for the subtlety of their insults. Indeed this particular tournament has already been marred by accusations of racist language. I am delighted that racism at football matches has at last been identified as an issue and is being addressed. I wonder when (or rather, if) the misuse of the language of disability will be subjected to the same kind of scrutiny. I for one am now going to be paying a lot more attention to the kind of language I use when watching football.

Reading the White Cane

What does my white cane mean? I have enough sight to notice the sideways glances my cane attracts. (This post by another 'blind blogger' gives a great idea of what cane users can see). I don't use my cane all the time and quite often carry it neatly folded in my bag. So it must look odd when I unfold it and transform from sighted to blind.
So why do I only use it sometimes? And what does my using it signify?
After dark or around steps and other obstacles I use my cane to feel my way around. I sweep it in a wide arc in front of me to find kerbs, bollards, puddles and lamp posts. This is the kind of cane-use most readily associated with the blind but it is not the most important way I use my cane.
I have a long cane but mostly I use it as a symbol cane. (You know that a cane is being used in this way when it is carried so that it does not touch the ground). When held like this my cane has no practical function: it is purely symbolic, a sign saying "I don't see as well as you so you might like to move out of my way / use non-visual ways of communicating with me / expect me to step off the pavement in front of you if you are a car or bike / tell me who you are even if I know you really well or we had a conversation this morning." I tend to use my cane like this in busy or unfamiliar places and / or when I'm on my own. I'll always have it with me at conferences, in stations, airports, supermarkets and busy city streets. Once I took it with me to the library. This turned out to be pretty confusing for the librarian who couldn't quite grasp the fact that I needed help finding a book but that I was more than capable of reading it. I can see why my cane might cause a kind of interpretive panic: after all, I clearly have some sight (otherwise why bother with bifocals?) Stereotypical images of the blind always feature a white cane but actually only about 5% of cane-users have no sight at all. So a symbol cane says "I am happy to acknowledge my blindness to the world and in return you can feel free to talk to me about it."
It is a kind of visual shorthand which not only signals blindness, but also signals a willingness to talk about it. It is an offer of a conversation as well as permission to offer help. The problem is that the general public don't always know what my cane is trying to say. So every time I take my cane out and about I try and tell someone what it means. And now you know too.

Changing the Face of Disfigurement

Yesterday I saw a cinema advert that will stay with me longer than the film I watched afterwards. A man with a badly scarred face is sitting in a car. Outside it is dark and rainy. He is watching a house. A pretty woman enters the house. She is alone. She goes upstairs and starts cooking dinner. The man in the car can see her through the window. She doesn't know he is watching her. The music she is listening to on the radio is the same music that the man is listening to in the car. She pours herself a glass of red wine. The sound of the door knocker startles her. She goes downstairs and opens the door cautiously. She sees the man with the badly scarred face and stares at him in horror. If you want to see what happens next, watch the advert here.

What did you think was going to happen next? This ad is part of campaign for face equality on film. it is fighting against the ease with which the film industry uses facial disfigurement to represent evil. When a character with a disfigured face appears on screen, he or she is almost always a baddie. Cinema is incredibly lazy in the ways  it uses bodily appearance. Anything which departs from the perfect Hollywood body generally becomes part of the character's essence. But facial disfigurement is only skin deep: it doesn't change the way a person loves, laughs or thinks. How can the facially disfigured expect to be treated equally in the street, at school,  at work, or on the beach when there are no positive images of disfigurement at the cinema?

As the Face Equality on Film website points out: "these long-held and inaccurate beliefs are completely at odds with the reality for most people with disfigurements - who are lawyers, teachers, comedians, DIY lovers, parents, feisty teenagers, doting grandparents. They worry about their children, love cooking programmes, have affairs, worry about the rent, dye their hair, hate commuting - just as other characters do who are portrayed on the big screen."

This advert was shown at the cinema. But perhaps it should also be shown behind the scenes. For it is only when casting directors, producers and writers stop obsessing over stereotypical ideas of beauty that the cinema-going public will have the chance to see disfigurement presented in a more positive light.

The Paradox of Bravery

Yesterday I did something I have wanted to do for a long time: I went to tree-top adventure "Go-Ape". In Delamere Forest. This involves climbing 12 metres up a tree on a rope ladder and then crossing various bridges made of decidedly wobbly bits of rope and wood. My favourite crossing was the "stirrups", where you place one foot at a time in little rope loops: This was rated "extreme" and not everyone in my group was brave enough to try it.

I have always been a dare devil. As a child, my favourite things were gymnastics, trampolining and climbing trees. I still love roller and ice skating and at a recent children's party I might well have been the most confident mum on the ice.

I can't see well enough to see people's expressions but I expect they were looking at me with a mixture of alarm and astonishment. How can someone who uses a white cane to walk to school possibly manage to launch herself off a platform into a cargo net or go zooming round an ice-rink?

Conventional wisdom says that you need bravery to tackle adrenaline fuelled activities like "Go Ape". And we have all heard the myth that the blind who get on with life show courage in abundance. So does that mean I am doubly brave?

Actually it doesn't. I find activities like tree-top climbing and ice-skating easy precisely because I don't use my sight to do them. They are about balance, touch and instinct. Sight just doesn't come in to it.

Thirty years ago I went to a birthday party at Lightwater Valley. The main attraction at this theme park was the "death slide": a sheer and highly polished wooden drop which you had to launch yourself off. All my sighted friends were terrified of it and not many of them were brave enough to try it. But I happily flung myself off the edge over and over again. One friend was so cross with my annoyingly smug exuberance that she pointed out that it was easy for me because I couldn't see how high up we were. I remember that she got into a LOT of trouble for saying that. My eyes were a taboo subject back then and no one was allowed to mention them.

But it turns out that my friend was right. I am not scared of heights because I have absolutely no idea how high I am. As long as I have something to hold on to I really don't mind where I am. I love the sensation of falling, swinging or bouncing precisely because this is something I can do as well as -
If not better - than my sighted peers. It gives me a sense of power, confidence and liberation which I don't often experience in the sighted world.

Would you rather be blind or fat?

A recent US survey revealed that 1 in 6 women would rather be blind than fat. The more I think about this statistic, the more I wonder what it is actually saying.

At first I was outraged by the superficiality of these women: how dared they compare the massive hassle of blindness with the trivial issue of body shape? But of course it is much more complicated than that: obesity has health and well-being implications that blindness does not; but, on the other hand, obesity can often be treated where blindness usually can't. Because people think that obesity can be self-imposed, the obese are often labelled as greedy, compulsive, lacking in self-control, lazy. In contrast, because society sees blindness as a tragedy which happens to someone through no fault of her own, the blind are seen as victims and are pitied rather than criticised. None of these labels are accurate or helpful, but this is the way these conditions are usually seen.

As I thought more about this tricky statistic, I found myself agreeing with this blog which argues very convincingly that the assumption behind this response is that the women questioned see blindness as a condition which although tragic, would have a less negative impact on their body-image than obesity. Presumably these women are imagining themselves as one of those stunningly beautiful blind women you find in films. They probably don't know any actual blind people. If they did they would know that blindness doesn't necessarily lead to beauty: indeed being blind can cause feelings of self-hate very similar to those provoked by obesity. (Or maybe they were wrongly thinking that blind people doesn't care about their body-image because they can't see themselves, and are thus immune to low self-esteem issues...)

Of course there is a different way of reading these statistics. What if these women are right? What if being blind is preferable to being fat? Not because of something as superficial as appearance, but because blindness is an exciting and interesting way of being in the world. Without my blindness I would not have discovered erotic braille, experienced the kindness of strangers or embarked on my current research project.  Sure, blindness has its inconveniences, but it is certainly not a tragedy.

After much thought (and discussion with my statistic-cynic husband) I have decided that the biggest problem with this survey is that it happened in the first place. The very fact of asking such idiotic questions posits both blindness and obesity as negatives. This survey perpetuates the assumption that a woman's value comes from the way she is seen, and consequently the way she sees herself. What about paying a little less attention to appearance and a lot more to what is going on in the inside?

Tina Nash

Literature has taught us to think of intentional blinding as an atrocious  punishment, a fate worse than death. Samson had his eyes gouged out by the Philistines, Gloucester's eyes are removed in punishment in Shakespeare's King Lear and perhaps most famously of all, Oedipus scratches out his own eyes when he realises the extent of his guilt. In her wonderfully clever Sight Unseen (Yale University Press, 1999, pp. 68-73) Georgina Kleege lists more modern books, from Bronte's Jane Eyre to Shreve's Eden Close which associate blinding with punishment. Kleege argues that this persistent association contributes to the negativity still associated with blindness.

She might be right. Given the unremitting negativity associated with the always vindictive act of intentional blinding, it is not surprising that Tina Nash, who was blinded by her boyfriend last year, said she felt 'buried alive' and 'like a ghost' after the attack. Tina's choice of words is revealing. For her, as for the characters Kleege describes,  life without sight was a kind of living death.

But unlike the victims of blinding found in literature, Tina has not succumbed to these associations of blindness and death. This interview describes how Tina now feels. She describes herself as 'surviving' because she has decided to get on with her life, to not let her blindness stop her from bringing up her children. It is significant that Tina rejects the epithets of 'courageous' and 'amazing' that the interviewer dangles in front of her. By doing so, Tina does much to demonstrate that blindness in itself is not a tragedy: rather, it is the sighted world's view of blindness which might be described as 'disabling'. If I described Tina as 'an inspiration' I would be undermining my own argument by buying into the 'disability as tragedy to be overcome' mindset. So I'll just say that hearing her voice on radio 4 this morning made me glad to know that she is there.

UPDATE: August 28th 2012: Click here to read an angry response to this post and my response.