UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA

SISTEMA DE ESTUDIOS DE POSGRADO

THE AESTHETICS OF DISABILITY IN LITERATURE: THE SOUND AND THE FURY BY 

WILLIAM FAULKNER AND THE SECRET GARDEN BY FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

Tesis sometida a la consideración de la Comisión del Programa de Posgrado en Literatura para optar al 

grado y título de Maestría Académica en Literatura Inglesa

MAGALY LÓPEZ BARRANTES

Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, Costa Rica

2024



For my mom, who taught me all.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my professor and thesis director M.L. Juan Carlos 

Saravia Vargas for all his guidance, support, and patience throughout this process. I am also extremely 

grateful to my thesis committee Dra. Ilse Bussing Lopez and MSc. Monica Bradley, who generously 

provided their advice and knowledge. 

I am thankful to all my teachers during the Master’s program who impacted and inspired me with their 

passion and knowledge. I am also grateful to God for giving me the strength and courage to not give 

up.

Lastly, I would like to mention my family, especially my husband Mauricio and my daughter Amanda. 

Their faith in me and their understanding have kept my motivation and positivism during this process. 

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Table of Contents

Dedication……………………………………………………………………………….………..ii

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………….…….iii

Approval page………………………………………………………………………….…………iv

Table of contents………………………………………………………………………..…………2

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………..…………….4

Topic.…………………………………………………………………………………..………….4

Justification………………………………………………………………………..………………5

Methodology…………………………………………………………………………….….……..7

General Objective………………………………………………………………………….….…..9

Specific Objectives……………………………………………………………………….……….9

CHAPTER I………………………………….…………………………………………………..10

About the Authors………………………………………………………………………………..10

Review of Literature……………………………………………………………………………..13

Conceptual Framework.……………………………………………………………………….…22

CHAPTER II The Construction of Mental Disability...…………………………………………46

Mental Disability in the Novel…………………………………………………………………...46

The Portrayal of Mental Disability by Other Characters………………………………………...55

Benjy’s Point of View……………………………………………………………………………73

CHAPTER III The Construction of Physical Disability…………………………………………75

Physical Disability in the Novel…………………………………………………………………77

The Portrayal of Physical Disability by Other Characters……………………………………….88

Colin’s Point of View……………………………………………………………………………93

CHAPTER IV The Construction of Beauty, Ugliness and Social Stereotypes……….…………97



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The Ambivalence of Beauty and Ugliness in the Disabled Body……………………………….99

The Reinforcement of Social Stereotypes in the Disabled…………………………….…….…102

CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………………………….132

BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………142



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INTRODUCTION

Topic

The following study analyzes disability as a writing technique to produce an aesthetic 

effect in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929) and Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911). 

Disability is a condition that has always been present in human history and multiple records 

show how societies dealt with people with disabilities in the past. For instance, some disabled 

subjects were confined to a domestic space while others were abandoned or killed. The ideology 

of the hegemonic group, the cultural individualism, and the principles of autonomy during the 

nineteenth century in the United States were elements that created a negative social 

representation of disability based on ideas of personal inadequacy and limitation. The disabled 

were seen as incomplete people who were incapable of reaching the social conventions of 

behavior and productivity. As a consequence, the ideas cultivated throughout the nineteenth 

century contributed to the limits imposed: “disabled people are often imagined as unable to be 

productive, direct their own lives, participate in community, or establish meaningful personal 

relations” (Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies 46). Thus, the stereotypes have made 

society diminish the importance of their accomplishments and emphasize their limitations.

Garland-Thomson states that people with disabilities appeared in oral traditions and, 

afterwards, they became part of several literary texts over the years; for example, Tiny Tim in “A 

Christmas Carol,” Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Lenny Small in Of Mice and 

Men, and Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie are literary characters that portray common 

forms of disability in the world. Mental and physical disability have played many roles in 

literature; for instance, some characters were portrayed as freaks, monsters, non-humans, 

ignoramuses, and fools. However, that is an inaccurate representation of disabled individuals 

who possess many positive qualities that unfortunate stereotypes hide. 



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The aim of this work is to show how disability has also been used in literature as a means 

to engage readers in the plot of the texts. Disabled characters have the capability of causing 

rejection and contempt from the audience but, at the same time, they can create a desire and a 

need to discover more about their life, spirit, and fate. Hence, this work analyzes the paradox of 

disability, how it produces an ambivalent reaction that oscillates between rejection and 

attraction. In addition, this work explores how disability challenges conceptions of normality to 

stand as a powerful literary element that captivates the attention and fascinates readers. However, 

this stylistic use of disability contributes to stereotype these characters in literature and in real 

life, and strengthens the dominant ideology that defines which ones are supposedly normal 

bodies. 

Hence, the topic was chosen in an attempt to expose the negative effects that disability 

used as a reader-engaging literary device generates in real life by perpetuating misconceptions 

and stereotypes about the disabled. One must not simple assume that this literary construction of 

disability limits its impact to the novels, but one must also consider the implications that it could 

have in the social inclusion and acceptance of the mentally and physically disabled person. 

Therefore, the study raises awareness about the social repercussions that this insensitive 

portrayal of disability has on the fight of disabled people for equality and for their right to be 

valued as productive members of society. 

Justification

Disability studies is an academic discipline that analyzes the life and the impact that the 

disabled have had in literature over the years. Several types of characters have embodied 

disability in literature; for instance, Captain Hook, in J. M. Berry’s classic children’s book Peter 

Pan, was a popular representation of a person missing a limb. Additionally, John Merrick, in 



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Spark’s novel based on a movie about the life of Joseph Carey Merrick (The Elephant Man), or 

Quasimodo, in Victor Hugo’s classic novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, were characters 

mocked by people in the circus, the town, or in their own family because they looked different 

from others. Benjy Compson, in Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury, or Lenny Small, in 

Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Man, were characters labeled as stupid and incapable to have a normal 

life. In addition, Colin Craven, in Burnett’s children’s book The Secret Garden, or Clara 

Sesemann, in Spyri’s novel Heidi, were the unfortunate ones restrained to a wheelchair or to 

another device in order to have mobility.

On the other hand, disability in literature has been associated with plainness, otherness, 

and anxiety: “disabled literary characters usually remain on the margins of fiction as 

uncomplicated figures or exotic aliens” (Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies 9). They are 

disregarded and underestimated; consequently, there is a devaluation of their actions and 

suffering. Literature has reinforced all the misconceptions and stereotypes that society has 

created. Readers react in a negative way when they encounter a character that is not presented as 

normal; as Garland-Thomson mentions in her book Extraordinary Bodies, some people see the 

disabled as a deviance, as unimportant and almost invisible, or as a figure of otherness. In 

addition, disability evokes ambivalent feelings of rejection and attraction. According to Schiller, 

bodies that stand out from societies’ standards of beauty and normality tend to be fascinating: 

“Schiller observed that ‘it is a general phenomenon of our nature that sad, terrible, even horrific 

things are irresistibly attractive to us’” (qtd. in Eco 282). Therefore, disability can be 

simultaneously regarded as horrendous and captivating. Moreover, the presence of disabled 

characters in literature creates verisimilitude because it establishes a parallelism with the reality 

outside of the text. Consequently, the presence of disability in literary texts contributes to create 

a sense of plausibility. 



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In The Sound and the Fury (1929), Faulkner intentionally develops a character with a 

mental disability whose everyday activities depend on other family members. The rest of the 

characters in the novel consider him an idiot, an incomplete man whose mind does not fit his 

body and, consequently, an abomination. On the other hand, in The Secret Garden (1911), Colin 

is a boy with a physical disability, a child that is unable to walk or live without the assistance of 

others, and who does not meet the social expectations of a man. Both characters, despite their 

differences, evoke the same feelings in the reader: pity and social rejection. They show no traits 

of beauty whatsoever; nevertheless, those characters elicit attraction through the appeal of 

ugliness. Hence, the author retains the reader’s attention and increases the stereotypes on 

disability by resorting to the appeal of ugliness in the context of the disabled body. 

This study examines these two texts because they manifest the construction, implications, 

and stereotypes of both mental and physical disability through the lives of the man-child Benjy 

Compson and the coming-of-age boy Colin Craven. In addition, they also allow the comparison 

of male roles and family relations in the presence of a disability, and both texts portray most of 

the demeaning ideas that have been associated to the disabled for a long time and try to 

normalize them. This project contributes to the literary analysis of disability studies because it 

interprets negative notions and stereotypes about disability and establishes the consequences for 

the construction of disability in the readers and how this overlaps with their beliefs in real life.

Methodology

The following work will be a qualitative analysis of the literary texts previously 

mentioned. Therefore, it analyzes a series of concepts, applies them to the texts and weighs the 

arguments given by literary critics and other scholars. The elements examined are the social 

construction of aesthetics, the concept of identity, the stigmatized subject, the abnormal, the 



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disabled subject, the freak show, the concept of otherness and anomaly, notions of beauty and 

ugliness, and the constructions of disability. This study will explore the theory about the topics 

and establish their relationship with the characters in the texts and the implications that they have 

for the reader’s feelings about the novels and stereotypes.

The study will also examine the perspective of different characters such as family 

members, servants, and neighbors, and how they help to construct physical and mental disability 

in the novels. Likewise, it will analyze the point of view and narration of the disabled characters 

Benjy Compson and Colin Craven, and the impact of their perspective in the construction of 

ideas about disability. Additionally, it will describe the rhetorical use of disability and the 

feelings of attraction and rejection that both texts evoke in the readers, and its impact in real 

notions about disabled bodies. In the same line, it will describe social stereotypes that are 

considered normal and expected in both novels; for instance, how the disabled character can be 

labeled as a stigma, an other, an abnormal, an inhuman, a punishment for evil or an eternal child, 

a symbol of aspiration or a supercrip, and a danger. Then, the study will interpret the impact that 

the use of those stereotypes in the literary works have in real life, and how they affect the way in 

which non-disabled people create relationships and respond toe the presence of a disabled person 

in their life.



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General Objective

To analyze how The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner, and The Secret Garden, by 

Frances Hodgson Burnett, produce paradoxical feelings about disability engaging readers and 

their impact on the stereotype of disabled bodies.

Specific Objectives

1. To identify the different types of disability and their aesthetic characteristics

2. To characterize mental disability in the novel The Sound and the Fury

3. To characterize physical disability in The Secret Garden

4. To describe the ambivalent beauty of ugliness in disability through its simultaneous 

production of rejection and attraction

5. To interpret how the authors use disability in The Sound and the Fury and The Secret 

Garden to engage the reader’s attention and reinforce the social stereotype of the disabled 

body



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CHAPTER I

About the authors

William Faulkner (1897-1962)

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American novelist and short-story writer from 

Mississippi. He was awarded the Novel Prize for literature in 1949. Faulkner is recognized as the 

major American novelist of his generation and possessor of an exceptional writing ability: 

“unmatched for his extraordinary structural and stylistic resourcefulness, for the range and depth 

of his characterization and social notation, and for his persistence and success in exploring 

fundamental human issues in intensely localized terms” (Millgate). In brief, he was a notorious 

and refined writer with unique abilities.

William Faulkner is most known as a Southern modernist writer, but his writing career 

evolved from that of a poet to a novelist: “An avid poet in his youth, Faulkner was drawn both to 

Victorian and modernist writing as he matured” (Koch 55). According to Benjamin Koch, 

Faulkner spent a long period of his life living in Oxford, Mississippi; however, later on he 

searched for a more cosmopolitan city that could change his view of the world. Hence, he moved 

to New Orleans, a Deep South exotic destination and the point of encounter of many artists and 

writers. Faulkner became a published author and improved his writing techniques in this city: 

“Twenty-seven-year-old Faulkner passed the first half of 1925 in New Orleans, where he 

published his earliest fiction and laid the groundwork for his transformation from Victorian 

dilettante to modernist genius” (Koch 55). The author states that the modernist ideology that 

Faulkner sought to promote through his fiction had not fixed trust and did not hide truths behind 

illusions of refinement. Koch mentions that other hints of Faulkner's turn into Modernism are the 

profusion of interior monologues, the extended ironies, his use of multiple speakers, and the 

sense of stories within stories. In addition, Faulkner believed that, only by moving to Europe, he 



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would become a real writer: “Like many American writers of the time, he believed that he would 

become a serious writer in Europe. He intended to stay in New Orleans only until he could book 

passage on a transatlantic steamer” (Koch 56). In July 1925, he finally embarked on his trip to 

Europe, where he wrote a novel based on his previous years in New Orleans. After some time, 

Faulkner returned to Oxford and worked on some of his most famous works: “(Faulkner) began 

to write the Yoknapatawpha stories and novels that would make him internationally famous. In 

the next few years he would crystallize the complex modernist style for which he is known, in 

such books as The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying” (Koch 67). Hence, in this period of 

time, he was able to develop his unique writing style.

Moreover, Faulkner was also believed to be an alcoholic: “Alcohol fueled many of 

Faulkner's bohemian shenanigans. To the end of his life, he claimed to have worked as a 

rumrunner for a New Orleans bootlegger… Sometimes he would get drunk and run across 

rooftops at night” (Koch 60). Additionally, Faulkner was said to have a long rivalry with 

Hemingway and to have copied his style and ideas in some of his works: “His earliest work 

appropriates Hemingway's style, characters, and attitudes” (McKay 120). According to McKay, 

Faulkner also tied his early writings to the Gothic tradition, F. Scott, Thomas Hardy, and the 

British Romantics, among others. However, his literary importance did not grow until he stopped 

imitating the style of others to perfect his own style and focused his work on deeper issues: 

“Faulkner's literary importance swelled only when he became comfortable wrangling with larger 

issues of humankind in the world and in time, issues he only began to address when he 

discovered his own stylistic and substantive independence” (McKay 121). According to the 

author, Faulkner shifted from emulating trends to setting trends, and this established the base for 

works of greater scope that created his reputation as one of the most important American writers. 



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Some of his most notable novels are Soldiers Pay (1926), Mosquitoes (1927), The Sound and the 

Fury (1929), and As I Lay Dying (1930). 

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924)

Frances Hodgson Burnett was an American author born in England; however, due to the 

death of her father, her family emigrated to the United States in 1865. According to the 

Encyclopedia Britannica, she had to work from a young age to help her family, and in 1868 she 

was first published in the Goedy’s Lady’s Book (an American magazine devoted to women 

issues of the time). Her most successful book was Little Lord Fauntleroy, published in 1886. 

Additionally, she also wrote several children’s books, such as Sara Crewe in1888 and The Secret 

Garden in 1909. 

According to Robin Berstein, in 1855 when Frances Hodgson Burnett was a child, she 

read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and found the novel unsatisfactory and with poor form: “The form the 

girl craved– that is, the material she believed she needed to complete the narrative– was a black 

doll” (Bernstein 160). When Burnett found the doll she was looking for, she was able to act out 

most of the scenes from the novel, not only because the toy was an important part for her play, 

but also because race and the correct representation of characters where key elements for her. 

Bernstein states that experiences such as this drove Burnett to write stories with dolls and toys as 

essential objects in her narrations because she believed that otherwise the stories would be 

imperfect. Bernstein also remarks that Burnett believed that the presence of these elements gave 

literature assisted imagination and character. Moreover, Francis Molson affirms that Burnett was 

always very serious and focused in her writing; there were periods of time in which she did not 

stop her creative process and produced several works in a row: “In early 1883 Frances Burnett 



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climaxed a seven-year period of intense writing that had already produced four novels. 

Dramatizations of these, and a collection of short stories” (Molson 35). According to Molson, 

Burnett’s first serious works were: The Lass O’Lowrie’s, Surly Tim and Other Stories, and 

Haworth’s in the eighteen seventies. These books received an enthusiastic welcome in her 

society especially in the working class. In addition, Burnett’s novels Louisiana and A Fair 

Barbarian showed her capacity for an engaging narrative, and reviewers compared her with 

other prominent authors such as Mrs. Gaskell and Dickens: “For instance, R.H. Stoddar in an 

essay on Burnett… said that she reminded him of Dickens because of the ‘profound sympathy’ 

she had for the lower classes; further, she understood her ‘suffering and sinning characters as 

fully as Dickens ever understood his’” (Molson 36). Also, her work A Lady of Quality became a 

bestseller in the United States in 1986, but received some backlash from the reviewers because 

of its feminist stance and its Romantic characteristics. Molson states that Burnett achieved great 

success with her novels and stories and that she was able to earn a higher income than other 

contemporary authors did. 

Review of Literature

Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Burnett’s The Secret Garden are two novels that 

explore disability and its social implications. The Sound and the Fury was published in 1929 and 

takes place in Jefferson, Mississippi. It tells the story of the decay of the Compson’s family, a 

traditional and aristocratic Southern family that is living the descent of their reputation and 

existence. The novel is divided into four sections and an appendix that was published years after 

the first edition. The first section is dated April 7, 1928. This segment of the novel is the most 

relevant for this analysis because Benjy Compson, who is a mentally-disabled 33-year-old man, 



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is the main narrator. The novel uses a non-chronological order, a disconnected narrative, and the 

stream of consciousness technique.  The second section takes place in June 2, 1910, and tells the 

story of Quentin Compson (Benjy’s older brother). This part of the novel does not contribute 

much to the analysis, but two of its main characteristics are the use of the stream of 

consciousness and time overlaps, which describe the events that lead to Quentin’s suicide. The 

third section takes place in April 6, 1928, and is narrated from the perspective of Jason Compson 

(Benjy’s younger brother). Jason becomes the economic support of the family after their father’s 

death, but he is also an arrogant person and makes notorious financial mistakes. The fourth 

segment takes place on April 8, 1928 and it is told by a third person omniscient narrator. The 

main characters in this last part are Delsey (a black servant of the family), Candace “Caddy” 

Compson’s daughter (also named Quentin), and Jason Compson. Quentin runs away one night 

with all of Jason’s money, and the family is left in bankruptcy. These last two sections of the 

novel provide a description of the feelings, opinions, and prejudices from the characters towards 

Benjy. In addition, it shows how the domestic life of the family and the servants includes the 

care of Benjy and the fear for his future if they are not there for him. 

The following part of this review of literature presents a brief analysis of different authors 

that are noteworthy for the investigation. Regarding The Sound and the Fury, this text explores 

the research done by Michael Bérubé, Robert A. Martin, William E. Grant, Jacqui Griffiths, and 

Stacy Burton. Researchers that have worked in disability studies for a long period of time and 

have several publication related to the topic. These academic articles develop topics such as 

Benjy Compson’s role as a mentally-disabled character, the importance of the use of keywords 

and their relation to the complexity of the characters in the novel, Benjy’s perspective and how it 

is closely related to religious imagery, Benjy’s role and similarity to an animal, and a review of 

the techniques, style, and sections that Faulkner decided to use in the novel. For example, in the 



15

article “Almost Human: Indeterminate Children and Dogs in Flush and The Sound and the 

Fury,” the discussion on disability is centered on Benjy’s comparison to a pet because of its 

inferior intellectual capability and dependence on a caretaker. The themes in the other articles are 

mentioned because those are the most common topics that have been explored regarding the 

novel. 

In the case of The Secret Garden, Alexandra Valint, Melanie Eckford-Prossor, and 

Sandra Dinter, academics that have published different works in disability studies and other 

fields, wrote the articles analyzed in this review. The main topics are disability and its relation 

with gender and social class, the child as a colonized subject, and the garden as a means of 

transformation. The Secret Garden was published as a novel in 1911 (it was first a magazine 

series in 1910) and takes place in Yorkshire, England. It tells the story of Mary Lenox, a sick 

ten-year-old child born in India who is sent to live with her unknown uncle in England after both 

of her parents died. In this new place, she meets her cousin Colin Craven, a sick child who is a 

wheelchair user and who believes that he is going to die at any moment. Both of them take care 

of the “secret garden” Mary finds, and with the help of other secondary characters, restore it to 

its former beauty. 

The Sound and the Fury

Michael Bérubé’s The Secret Life of Stories: From Don Quixote to Harry Potter, How 

Understanding Intellectual Disability Transforms the Way We Read analyzes Benjy’s role as a 

disabled character and the implications of his narrative. The author states that Benjy’s narrative 

is disabled in the sense that some of the ordinary functions of narrative are inoperative; for 

instance, the timeline of the events is not developed in a chronological order: “The real problem, 

as is evident to everyone who picks up the book, is that Benjy Compson has a sense of time that 



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does not make sense to us. His narrative thus lacks some of the necessary connective tissue that 

makes narrative intelligible as narrative” (Bérubé, The Secret Life of Stories). However, the 

author argues that the narrative is not incoherent or unintelligible because the reader can 

understand that Benjy is describing a sequence of events about his life. In addition, Bérubé 

asserts that the level and capacity of understanding that Benjy has about the narrative that he 

inhabits has to be determined: “We know, for example, that Benjy does not understand why he 

has been “gelded,” and that he knows nothing about the administration of disability in his world, 

in the era of institutionalization and involuntary sterilization” (Bérubé, The Secret Life of 

Stories). According to Bérubé, this is the reason why Benjy is usually considered a passive 

recorder of scenes and not as a conscious narrator. However, the author argues that Benjy may 

be inventing the temporal comparisons he narrates, which implies that he might have a conscious 

control over the sequence of events: 

It allows us not only to entertain the possibility that Benjy has some kind of sifting 

and sorting mechanism that explains his temporal leaps as involving something 

more complicated than mere sensory associations, but also to suggest that Benjy’s 

relation to time opens out onto questions that go well beyond our determination of 

the limits of his subjectivity. (Bérubé, The Secret Life of Stories) 

The author concludes that Benjy has a complex and rich interior life which is “full of acute 

sensations, vivid associations, and inchoate emotions that are revealed in subtle and 

achronological ways” (Bérubé, The Secret Life of Stories). Benjy’s emotions may not be 

completely rudimentary, but rather different in degree compared to the rest of the characters. The 

author states that the question left is whether Benjy has the capacity of self-reflection, a 

capability that is not only questioned in regards to intellectually disabled characters, but it is also 

the foundation of irony in narrative.



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Robert A. Martin’s “The Words of The Sound and the Fury” focuses on the importance 

of word choice in the novel: “key words that will advise the reader of character’s movements 

(both psychological and physical)” (47). These movements, either conscious or unconscious, 

show the way of the events presented in the life of the characters. Martin states that the keyword 

fire is mentioned around forty-three times in Benjy’s section. For Benjy, fire represents a 

concrete element that he can see and, the absence of it, signifies darkness and uneasiness. 

Faulkner makes his characters struggle to move in and out from light which, at the same time, 

represents the knowledge or discovery of hidden events: “The light and dark come to represent 

the larger movements and forces that tear apart a society or transform it” (47). According to 

Martin, Benjy begins and ends the novel as a static character; he does not change, and he is 

unable to have a coherent place in his society or family. Other keywords in the novel are mirror 

and shadow. For instance, Benjy is only supposed to be able to assimilate objects and ideas: “For 

Benjy, the mirror does truly represent an entire frame of reference. People come in or out of the 

mirror and are comprehensible to him” (48). As noted, these words represent concrete objects, 

the flow of events, and the existence of time. 

In the second section of the novel, the most important keyword is shadow, which is 

mentioned forty-nine times. The metaphor of the shadow relates to the idea of the presence of 

something obscure in a person which cannot be escaped: “Quentin is constantly noticing his 

shadow and is usually bent on trying to elude it” (50). The word represents the conflict that 

Quentin is constantly facing, and its repetition emphasizes his fears and insecure personality. On 

the other hand, Martin states that, in the third section of the novel, the emphasis of the story 

changes. Jason’s viewpoint is different from the others and he has no words to be entangled with. 

Finally, in the fourth section, there are some keywords again; for instance, door and window are 



18

repeated several times. According to the critic, the window is outdone and replaced by the door 

to indicate a transition between a time of pride when the family was prosperous and the present 

time when they are falling apart: “The movement from a sort of grandeur to decay corresponds 

to the shift from windows and glass to doors” (Martin, 53). Dilsey is the one who uses these 

words the most because she is the only character who is able to see the decay of the Compson 

family. Martin concludes that Faulkner’s word choice signals cohesion between characters that 

seem different. According to him, all these symbols and images were only the result of 

Faulkner’s instincts and not a deliberate action. 

Grant’s “Benjy’s Branch: Symbolic Method in Part I of The Sound and The Fury” 

discusses the symbolism of Benjy’s behavior and existence related to religion: “Benjy’s section 

contains a level of Christian symbolism that closely relates it to other parts of the novel” (705). 

For instance, Benjy cries and protests every time an action in the novel relates to Caddy 

exploring her sexuality. Then he calms down when she gets “cleaned” by water and smells again 

like trees and rain; she is symbolically restored and is still pure before his eyes. Grant mentions 

that Faulkner makes Benjy an “idiot” in order to say that Caddy’s honor can be reestablished 

because the loss of her integrity happens only in Benjy’s eyes. He concludes that Faulkner has to 

use these “Easter myths” in order to give unity and coherence to the plot, and only by doing this 

is he able to show the decay of the Compson’s family. 

Jacqui Griffiths’ “Almost Human: Indeterminate Children and Dogs in Flush and The 

Sound and the Fury” compares Benjy to a dog, an animal that has to be confined behind a fence 

or inside the house. In addition, Benjy was “castrated” after the attack on a schoolgirl; he cannot 

take responsibility for his action because he lacks the mental ability to do it: “The Sound and the 

Fury emphasizes Benjy’s hybridity; as an eternal child, he is also an eternal animal” (172). He 

also has no sense of time; his narration is full of past memories mixed with his present life: “he 



19

seems to have remained the same young age for many years” (174). The author states that these 

characteristics make him similar to dogs: pets that are always present and do not pay attention to 

nor are affected by time. Griffiths concludes that Benjy’s imbecility creates his eternal childhood 

and makes him deny the existence of original, unique, and fundamental ideas. 

Burton’s “Rereading Faulkner: Authority, Criticism, and The Sound and The Fury” 

analyzes Faulkner’s style and the techniques that he uses when developing the plot and the 

characters. It discusses the necessity (if there was or not) and the relevance of the Appendix that 

was added to the novel in 1946. The Appendix presents the history of the lineage of the 

Compson family, but also gives a resolution of the fate of the characters and determines the 

reasons for all of their actions. Burton disagrees with the necessity of this last part in the novel. 

For instance, he mentions Faulkner’s superfluous description of Benjy: “an ‘idiot’ who ‘himself 

didn’t know what he was seeing’ and as an ‘animal’ who ‘doesn’t feel anything’” (Burton 619). 

This characterization has been criticized in several literary analyses because Faulkner is not 

respecting the freedom of interpretations of a text and therefore is trespassing the line between 

authority and interpretative tyranny. Burton argues that, according to Mikhail Bakhtin, a text can 

have many interpretations because the written text is not static. When an author writes a novel, 

he or she is waiving the right to possess the only truth about that novel. Burton resolves that 

different literary approaches have analyzed The Sound and the Fury, corroborating that the 

literary work is a continual creative engagement.

The Secret Garden

Alexandra Valint’s “Wheel Me Over There!: Disability and Colin’s Wheelchair in The 

Secret Garden” explores topics such as the social constructions of disability, class, and gender 



20

(specifically masculinity) in Victorian times. According to the text, disability is highly connected 

to gender and class: “the wheelchair is the primary locus for the text’s negotiations of gender, 

class, and (dis) ability” (264). In the beginning, it is true that Colin is tied to the wheelchair and 

that his body does not reach the expectation of a master or the masculine stereotype. Moreover, 

the fact that Colin’s wheelchair has to be pushed by a manservant calls into question his 

masculinity, reveals his social class and, at the same time, puts women below because they are 

not “strong enough” for this type of duty. However, by overcoming his disability, Colin has the 

opportunity to be transformed into the ideal upper-class man. The characteristics that Colin’s 

body has before overcoming his disability are rather feminine: “the novel treats Colin’s disabled 

body as weak, excessively emotional, and feminine” (268). Here, Valint’s article highlights how 

disability is directly connected with inferiority, gender stereotypes, and how the novel shows that 

society treats disability with exclusions and discrimination. The common factor is that all these 

conceptions come from a social construction of normality that rejects what is different. Valint 

concludes that there is a relation between disability, class, and gender: “Colin can only become 

able-bodied by exploiting Dickon and pushing Mary to the margins – it still usefully exposes the 

workings of the (dis) ability system and its relationship to other categories such as class and 

gender” (276). There is a need to cure Colin’s body so that he can be a normal man and live into 

adulthood. The article shows how only a non-disabled figure could be part of a higher social 

class and fulfill a male role in the twentieth century. 

Melanie Eckford-Prossor’s “Colonizing Children: Dramas of Transformation”  studies 

the figure of the child as a colonized subject and how the novel presents a different narrative 

structure: “a kind of inverted travel narrative, a genre which links the assertions of identity so 

necessary to empire with the consequences of translation” (242). Hence, Mary Lenox is the one 



21

seeking acceptance in the Craven household (her new home) and trying to find a suitable place 

for her treatment of the servants. The author resolves that, by using post-colonial strategies to 

analyze this novel, one can say that children in the text are similar to natives because they are 

perceived as less developed and weaker. 

Sandra Dinter’s “Spatial Inscriptions of Childhood: Transformations of the Victorian 

Garden in The Secret Garden, Tom’s Midnight Garden, and The Poison Garden” explores the 

aesthetics of the Victorian garden as a facilitator of rites of passage. The child is a deviant 

subject: “As various scholars have proposed, childhood is commonly constructed as an 

inherently deviant identity” (219). Consequently, in order to be considered normal, the child 

needs to reach adulthood. Dinter also mentions that Foucault's theory of heterotopia solves the 

status of the garden, which can be both an everyday place but also another world in which 

utopias can become true: “A heterotopia can be located and makes utopian experiences 

accessible on a symbolic and performative level” (219). Therefore, the garden becomes an 

institution in which the deviant child can be accommodated and then transformed. Dinter 

concludes that the garden is a symbol of transformations and, in The Secret Garden, it is not only 

a space that provides the elements for a rite of passage, but also a means to evolve from deviancy 

to normalcy. 

To conclude, the academic articles reviewed for The Sound and the Fury focus on topics 

such as form and style of the novels, the implication of having a mentally disabled character in a 

narrative, symbolism and religion, and the lack of rationally and humanity of Benjy. In addition, 

in The Secret Garden, the articles explore topics such as the connection between disability and 

class in Victorian times, social constructions of disability, the child as a colonized subject, and 

the garden as a place for transformation. However, in both cases, none of the articles analyze the 

role that disability has as a rhetoric device in the engagement of readers or the reinforcement of 



22

stereotypes about disability in the readers. Therefore, this research adds a different perspective 

about the role that physical and metal disability have in literature by describing the consequences 

of the reinforcement of stereotypes in the reader’s reality. 

Conceptual Framework

This conceptual framework intends to establish the elements that contribute to the 

construction of disability and how it has been used in literature. In addition, these elements 

inform the literary analysis by providing concepts and historical background that have created a 

series of notions and stereotypes about disability. In the first section, it defines aesthetics and the 

basic theory that creates the concept of aesthetics. The second section explores the constructions 

of identity: the normal, the abnormal, and the stigmatized subject. The third section focuses on 

disability: the disabled body, beauty and ugliness, the freak show, the otherness, and the 

anomaly. The fourth section analyzes the history and characteristics of disability studies. 

1. Aesthetics

Different literary theories and elements contribute to the construction of disability and the 

way it can be aesthetically used in literature. As Terry Eagleton comments, aesthetics is always a 

result of a social categorization and, therefore, it is ambivalent:

Aesthetics is thus always a contradictory, self-undoing sort of project, which in 

promoting the theoretical value of its object risks emptying it of exactly that 

specificity of ineffability which was thought to rank among its most precious 

features. The very language that which elevates art offers perpetually to 

undermine it. (2–3)



23

Aesthetics gives value to a determined object but, at the same time, it can take away all of its 

worth. Eagleton argues that the dominant ideology and the historic time are key points in its 

construction. For instance, in current times the aesthetic value of a body resides in its thinness, 

strength, and symmetrical features; however, in the seventeenth century, the value was 

determined by other characteristics, such as pale skin color, muscular atrophy, rounded hips, and 

a bit of a belly in the women. Eagleton says that aesthetics is subjective: “aesthetic is at once, as 

I try to show, the very secret prototype of human subjectivity” (9). The notion of an aesthetically 

attractive body then becomes a misleading kind of universalism. Factors such as time, place, 

personal standards and ideology determine the value of a body; a particular judgment is not 

universal as some may think. 

Aesthetics can also become a medium to suppress subjects under the power of the 

dominant ideology: “The aesthetic, then, is from the beginning a contradictory, double edged 

concept… a kind of ‘internalized repression’, inserting social power more deeply into the very 

bodies of those it subjugates, and so operating as a supremely effective mode of political 

hegemony” (Eagleton 28). Therefore, the aesthetic value is subjective and can be manipulated 

for the benefit of a dominant part of society. Eagleton states that aesthetics is the root of social 

reactions and the foundation of all human bonding. Consequently, when the aesthetic value of an 

object or an individual is high, the relations and role in society are accepted. On the contrary, if 

the aesthetic value is poor, the social position will be lowered and the object or individual will be 

subjugated.

The aesthetic notion is socially constructed in fields such as literature, painting, and 

architecture. Literary critics have tried to define the notion of what art is, or what defines a work 

as a piece of art; for instance: “The art work is, to be sure, a thing that is made, but it says 



24

something other than the mere thing itself is” (Heidegger 81). Consequently, the work of art is an 

allegory and also a symbol. There is more meaning than the one seen on the surface. 

1.1Aesthetics of disability

Tobin Siebers states that aesthetics studies the emotions that some bodies feel when they 

confront other bodies. Therefore, the relation between bodies depends on the appearance and the 

perception of the beautiful. Siebers states that the aesthetic representation posits the body as the 

subject and the object of production:

The body creates other bodies prized for their ability to change the emotions of 

their maker and endowed with a semblance of vitality usually ascribed only to 

human beings. But all bodies are not created equal when it comes to aesthetic 

response. Taste and disgust are volatile reactions that reveal the ease or disease 

with which one body might incorporate another. The senses revolt against some 

bodies, while other bodies please them. These responses represent the corporeal 

substrata on which aesthetic effects are based. (Siebers, “Disability Aesthetics” 

63)

Julie Allan states that the creation of the aesthetics of disability has the capacity to integrate 

disability in society: “An aesthetics of disability represents a dramatic new social movement with 

the potential to challenge forms of oppression. It is driven by pride, beauty, and the celebration 

of difference, giving disabled people a voice” (40). It is an aesthetics that helps people with 

disabilities to reject the repression and invisibility that they have suffered for years. Allan argues 

that the purpose of the aesthetics of disability is to win more equality, inclusion, and more 

importance in all the social spheres: “Involves individuals portraying themselves as aesthetic 

objects, through dance, photography, art, and other cultural forms” (Allan 41). Moreover, Tobin 



25

Siebers states that what he calls disability aesthetics pursues to expose the presence of disability 

in artistic representations over the years: “It is not a matter of representing the exclusion of 

disability from aesthetic history, since such an exclusion has not taken place, but of making the 

influence of disability obvious” (“Disability Aesthetics” 64). He seeks to expose how disability 

has always been present. In addition, disability aesthetics rejects the representation of the healthy 

body as the only source of aesthetics: “It is often the presence of disability that allows the beauty 

of an art work to endure over time” (Siebers, “Disability Aesthetics” 65). The aim is to stop 

stereotypes and give disability the importance it has for society. 

1.2 Aesthetic Nervousness

Aesthetic nervousness describes the encounter between the disabled and the non-disabled 

characters in literature: “(the term) allows even the most horrified (and horrifying) encounters 

with disability to be transformed into something else, something potentially revelatory, 

something that raises questions not only with regard to the ethical core of a text but also with 

regard to its form and texture” (Bérubé, The Secret Life of Stories). The author states that the 

ethical core refers to the disruption of the surface of representation. However, the ethical core 

does not exclusively need the presence or the reference of a character with disability. It can be a 

matter of the text or a motive of the characters. Aesthetic nervousness may include disgust, 

repulsion, or horror manifested when non-disabled characters encounter disabled characters. 

Bérubé criticizes that theory focuses on the representations of characters with disabilities, and 

undermines textual tropes, rhetorical devices, and narrative strategies for constructing and 

deconstructing disability. As a result, disability can become an opportunistic metaphorical 

device. 

Bérubé makes reference to nine possible functions of aesthetic nervousness: disability as 

a moral set and/or moral test, disability as the interface with otherness (race, class, sexuality, and 



26

social identity), disability as an articulation of disjuncture between thematic and narrative 

vectors, disability as evil, disability as epiphany, disability as signifier of ritual insight, disability 

as inarticulable and enigmatic tragic insight, disability as hermeneutical impasse, and disability 

as normality. The author states that disability as normality seems to be exempt from the 

dynamics of aesthetic nervousness and appears to be present in non-fiction and autobiographies 

instead. 

2. Identity

Ervin Goffman argues that many factors influence the construction of the identity of an 

individual, but that society has a key place because “(society) establishes the means of 

categorizing persons and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural for 

members of each of these categories” (11). This categorization will make subjects have a 

determined social identity and a specific place in society. 

Tobin Siebers states that the dominant ideas, feelings, and customs of society determine 

the perception of bodies and that the body does not control its own representation: “The sign 

precedes the body in the hierarchy of signification” (Siebers, “Disability in Theory” 739). He 

argues that, in the categorization of the body, political ideologies and cultural mores exercise the 

major authority. Siebers mentions that Foucault’s theory of biopower has a strong influence in 

the construction of a theory of the body: “Michel Foucault defined biopower as the force that 

constitutes the materiality of any human subject; it forms, secures, and normalizes human 

subjects through a process of "subjection"” (Siebers, “Disability in Theory” 739). Therefore, the 

ideology in power is the one that controls the constructions of identity and the body; it accepts 

certain physical characteristics while rejecting others. Siebers states that abject beings, such as 

the disabled, are born when their bodies cannot comply and adapt to the social norms imposed: 

“people with disabilities are not yet ‘subjects’ in Foucault's disciplinary sense: their bodies 



27

appear as a speck of reality uncontrolled by the ideological forces of society” (“Disability in 

Theory” 739). Thus, social conventions determine how bodies are labeled and which are 

unacceptable.

2.1 Stigma

The social standard for what is considered normal lives outside the contaminated, the 

diseased, and the ones that have been reduced to less than others because of racial, physical, or 

gender differences. These elements contribute to create a category for individuals: “Such an 

attribute is a stigma, especially when its discrediting effect is very extensive; sometimes it is also 

called a failing, a shortcoming, a handicap” (Goffman 12). There are various types of stigma into 

which a person can fall. One is “abominations of the body.” This stigma includes many types of 

physical deformities. When a person tumbles into this category, he or she is not entirely human. 

Consequently, discrimination and inferiority are inherent to the person. 

2.2 The Abnormal

Culturally constructed notions have constituted the normal and the abnormal. Many 

factors have influenced this categorization; however, physical appearance has been a decisive 

aspect to classify someone as normal or not: “many bodies stigmatized as abnormal have no 

significant functional limitations. Appearance is often the decisive factor” (Kudlick and Baynton 

65). These authors add that, in the early twentieth century, fitness was related to beauty and 

disability to ugliness. Consequently, a disabled body not only becomes abnormal, but also ugly. 

Moreover, mental capabilities are also stigmatized. Mindlessness is associated with the 

conditions of possibility of narrative itself. Bérubé affirms that the mindless “can give no 

account of themselves” (“Disability and Narrative” 571). They are unable to understand what has 

happened to their world and the ironies or facts of the narrative. As a consequence, a body with 

lower mental abilities is also abnormal and socially discriminated. 



28

2.3 Masculinity

Masculinity is a social construction that helps create the identity of men. In the nineteenth 

century being manly was a primordial requisite for boys to turn into men: “Boys became man not 

only by jumping through a succession of hoops, but by cultivating the essential manly attributes- 

in a word manliness. Energy, will, straightforwardness and courage were the key requirements” 

(Tosh, A Man’s Place 111). These attributes were considered to be the correct path for men to 

achieve wealth and independence. According to Tosh, the Victorians believed that having 

independence not only meant freedom of patronage from their parents, but also meant autonomy 

and opinion; men had the ability to perform all types of activities by themselves and also the 

privilege of being outspoken and participating in social decisions. Moreover, manliness was not 

limited to intellectual characteristics; it also involved certain physical qualities that men needed 

to have: “But manliness had bodily associations which were less universally acclaimed. Self-

defense, whether individually or as a part of a collective assertion, placed a premium on physical 

prowess and readiness for combat” (Tosh, A Man’s Place 111). Additionally, countenance, 

voice, and hand-claps had to be manly. Tosh states that a manly appearance suggested physical 

health, strength and virility. To Victorians, if men were the sex at large in society, they had to 

live by a code that reaffirmed their masculinity: “Victorian manliness was an elite cultural form. 

Of an often crudely didactic kind” (Tosh, “What Should Historians Do with Masculinity?” 181). 

In addition, masculinity embraced notions of chivalry such as the protection of sisters, wives, 

and any other respectable woman. Men had to demonstrate their manliness in three different 

areas: home, work, and all-male associations. They were expected to be in charge of these 

spheres, the people who lived within, and also secure their future: “In most societies that we 

know of, setting up a new household is the essential qualification for manhood. The man who 

speaks for familial dependents and who can transmit his names and his assets to future 



29

generations is fully masculine” (Tosh, “What Should Historians Do with Masculinity?” 185). 

According to Tosh, for the professional and business classes behavior, self-control, hard work, 

and independence were the central aspects of the dominant code of Victorian manliness. 

3. Disability

Disability involves problems with functioning in the interconnected areas of body 

function, structure, and the ability to perform regular life activities: “Impairments are problems 

in body functioning or alterations on body structure… activity limitations are difficulties in 

executing activities… participation restrictions are problems with involvement in any area of 

life” (World Health Organization 5). Thus, disability relates to one or all of these factors and 

does not depend on the cause or type of limitation. Moreover, the environment (including the 

natural and the technological) in which the individual lives also has an impact: “Disability arises 

from the interaction of health conditions with contextual factors” (World Health Organization 5). 

Therefore, disability is created by personal factors such as self-esteem and the world in which a 

person with different levels of functioning lives. Similarly, a disability can be related to social 

canons for the body: “it is the attribution of corporeal deviance – not so much a property of 

bodies as a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do” (Garland-Thomson, 

Extraordinary Bodies 6). So, the construction of normalcy and the notion of a normal body is 

determined socially.

3.1 The Disabled Body

Society constructs the disabled figure, which implies multiple perceptions of a disabled 

subject. One definition provided by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson shows the plurality of this 

categorization: 



30

Disability is an overarching and in some ways artificial category that encompasses 

congenital and acquired physical differences, mental illness and retardation, 

chronic and acute illness, fatal and progressive diseases, temporary and permanent 

injuries, and a wide range of bodily characteristics considered disfiguring, such as 

scars, birthmarks, unusual proportions, or obesity. (Extraordinary Bodies 13)

Several conditions have been stigmatized and become part of the notion of disability; the author 

also argues that the classification occurs because the stigma creates commonality and a sense of 

belonging to a particular group. Moreover, Garland-Thomson states that a disparity between 

people with disabilities and the perception of normal people towards them create a figure of 

“otherness.” In addition, every individual has a different conception of what is common and of 

what is a general type or norm. People classify in order to make their worlds knowable and 

predictable; consequently, the categories that they create become stereotypes shared culturally 

after general use. 

The social constructions of the body create new categorizations: “stereotypes in life 

become tropes in textual representation” (Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies 11). These 

tropes can be used to create an artistic effect in literature:

A highly stigmatized characteristic like disability gains its rhetorical effectiveness 

from the powerful, often mixed responses that real disabled people elicit from 

readers who consider themselves normates. The more the literary portrayal 

conforms to the social stereotype, the more economical and intense is the effect; 

representation thus exaggerates an already highlighted physical difference. (11)

In this case, the disabled body becomes an instrument for rhetoric and, following the line of 

other artistic creations, the material body has a transcendent meaning because literature can 



31

permeate any visual difference “with significance that obscures the complexity of their bearers” 

(11). Hence, the ambiguity resides in the point that disability can create repulsion and contempt 

but, at the same time, sympathy and delight. 

According to Garland-Thomson, disabled bodies are seen as unnatural, but some 

strategies grant them human status; for instance, a disabled person that can use charm, humor, 

intimidation, passion, or who can entertain others becomes more than an abnormal body. These 

types of characteristics can free the non-disabled from their discomfort. The critic mentions that 

another feeling that disability arouses is fear because the normal person feels that there is a 

constant risk of becoming disabled (as a result of an illness or an accident), and this contributes 

to increasing the contempt that many people feel and the stereotype that this might provoke. 

3.2 Beauty and Ugliness

The beautiful and the ugly share some characteristics with the abled and the disabled 

body. These four notions are social constructions determined by society: “Concepts of beauty 

and ugliness are relative to various historical periods or various cultures” (Eco 10). The historical 

period and the values of the society are key factors to classify subjects into these categories. 

Umberto Eco states that the concept of ugliness has also been applied to disabled subjects: “Not 

only was the term ugly applied to anything that was out of proportion, like a human being with 

an enormous head and very short legs, it was also used to describe the beings that Aquinas 

defined as ‘shameful’… those who lacked a limb or had only one eye” (15). Hence, the disabled 

body not only faces the difficulties of adapting into a world that rejects those who cannot comply 

with the requirements of a normal body, but it is also labeled as ugly. Society feels rejection and 

contempt based on the physical appearance of the person. 

Ugliness in literature contributes to the aesthetic effect of the fictional text: “El efecto 

estético tiene lugar cuando el objeto produce al mismo tiempo un efecto de ficción. Solo lo 



32

representado, lo que se anuncie como resultado del artificio, puede producir lo feo-bello y, en 

general, lo bello artístico” (Herra 67). Consequently, the ugliness of the disabled body is seen as 

fantastic and as something that is far from the reality of the reader. In addition, Herra argues that 

the ugly or monstrous involves everyone else who is different, or who has physical differences to 

the acceptable body. In literature, ugliness turns differences into something fictional: “La 

presencia de lo feo en la obra de arte entraña una victoria contra el dolor, porque lo integra, lo 

suprime como real, tornándolo en ficción” (66). Therefore, the ugly and the beautiful can coexist 

in the game texts: “Lo feo se integra a lo bello siempre y cuando no esté presente de forma 

directa, como objeto real, sino por medio de su representación imaginaria, como ente ficcional” 

(Herra 66). The critic also states that the fact that the normal and the beautiful body can become 

disabled or ugly at some point in life produces terror. Therefore, literature is a medium to make 

this imminent threat fictional:

El monstruo es mi doble, si, pero lo identifico como tal bajo una condición: la 

tranquilidad de verlo a cada instante como ficcional: se que existe mientras y solo 

mientras yo lo produzca en mí. Los dobles imaginarios me salvan pues su 

acusación se enmascara, se torna carnavalesca o se encauza como obra de arte. 

(10)

Herra asserts that fiction serves as a means to classify the ugly or the disabled body as the other: 

an unconnected entity that is only bearable in the fictional world of literature. 

3.3 The Freak Show

The freak show was an exhibition of human bodies; it displayed the ones that had one or 

several characteristics that resided outside of the normal body. In Victorian England there was a 

physical and racial differentiation that created a freak: “In freak shows, white bodies deemed 



33

deviant – gigantic, miniature, or otherwise grotesque – were differently displayed next to 

colonized bodies made freakish by their difference” (Lacom 549). Therefore, the body that was 

classified outside of the normal aesthetic stereotype was categorized as one of those freaks. 

Moreover, the bodies presented in these shows were primarily chosen for their physical 

differences. The dissimilarities were related to their race, ethnicity, and congenital or acquired 

disabilities: “The freak show consequently created a ‘freak’, or ‘human curiosity’, from an 

ordinary person who had a visible physical disability or an otherwise atypical body by 

exaggerating the ostensible difference and the perceived distance between the viewer and the 

showpiece on the platform” (Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies 62) Thus, one of the 

strategies of the exhibition was to make the anomaly bearable for the normal people; the person 

in charge was even allowed to exaggerate the different conditions and take advantage of this in 

the spectacle.  However, the spectator always felt unconnected to the different disabilities and 

congenital diseases that were exposed in the freak show. 

3.4 Otherness and the Anomaly

Garland-Thomson mentions that the anthropologist Mary Douglas proposed that culture 

creates different ways to cope with the ambiguity that extraordinary bodies create and this has 

been achieved by five major methods. These classifications start with the creation of otherness: 

“Social groups can reduce ambiguity by assigning the anomalous element to one absolute 

category or the other” (Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies 34). In this category, one 

specific difference marks the entire person as disabled. The segregation previously mentioned is 

similar to what occurs with other systems, such as gender and race; according to the author, the 

disabled/able body dichotomy sorts people by characteristics that are more difficult to categorize 

than what they seem: “For example, although actual impairments usually affect particular body 



34

parts or physical functions, one specific difference classifies an entire person ‘disabled’ even 

though the rest of the body and its functions remain ‘normal’” (Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary 

Bodies 34). Consequently, otherness reduces complex and multifaceted individuals into 

categories like black, gay, or disabled. Moreover, Garland-Thomson states that the second 

cultural solution is the elimination of the anomaly. The alternative follows the ideology that 

considers national and individual progress as a priority and even places progress above human 

rights; the elimination of the individual may be perceived as the smarter choice because a person 

with a disability cannot contribute to the economic progress in the same way that a non-disabled 

individual can. A third way is to avoid the anomalous. Segregation worked in many different 

ways; for instance, trying to make individuals invisible: “the common U.S. ‘ugly laws’ of the 

nineteenth and twentieth centuries that banned visibly disabled people from appearing in public 

places” (Garland-Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies 35). Likewise, there was the mechanism of the 

asylums or almshouses, and all of them had the same objective: to hide the abnormal. A fourth 

method used was to label the anomaly as dangerous; the disabled were usually a synonym of 

threat, monstrosity, and evil. The classification worked as a reason to justify eliminating the 

anomaly by neutralizing the danger. The fifth way was inclusion: “incorporating the anomalous 

elements into ritual to enrich meaning or to call attention to other levels of existence” (Garland-

Thomson, Extraordinary Bodies 37). From all the methods that Douglas proposed, this is the 

only one with a positive or transformative interpretation of the extraordinary. In this point, 

Garland-Thomson makes reference to Bakhtin’s carnivalesque figure, which may be Bakhtin’s 

version of the disabled figure because it functioned as the other: “(the carnivalesque figure) 

represents the right to be ‘other’ in this world, the right not to make common cause with any 

single one of the existing categories that life makes available” (Extraordinary Bodies 38). The 

existence of different labels or categories for an individual does not mean that, for a person, it is 



35

mandatory to comply or fit into one. Garland-Thomson remarks that Bakhtin’s disorganized 

body is a challenge to the existing order. Bakhtin’s body also suggests that the anomaly and the 

grotesque can be agents capable of reconstructing cultural discourses and the idea of interpreting 

disability not as discomforting or intolerable abnormality, but instead as entitled carrier of a fresh 

view of reality. In addition, as the disabled figure always represents the extraordinary, this 

interpretation opens the door to imagine disability narratives as transcending tales of abnormality 

and deviance. 

3.5 The Supercrip

Tobin Siebers states that there are some representations of people with disabilities that 

use narrative structures that masquerade disability and empower the abled-bodied: “Human-

interest stories display voyeuristically the physical or mental disability of their heroes, making 

the defect emphatically present, often exaggerating it, and then wiping it away by reporting how 

it has been overcome, how the heroes are ‘normal,’ despite the powerful odds against them” 

(Siebers, Disability Theory). In addition, some stories try to make the disabled person possess 

talents and abilities that are fantasies that only the abled-bodied have. Disability is exaggerated 

but the disabled never receive a benefit and it only reaffirms the necessity of having a normal 

body; as a consequence, the only one who is validated is the non-disabled: “This variety of the 

masquerade advantages able-bodied society more than disabled people because it affirms the 

ideology of ability. This ideology represses disability by representing the normal body as 

normative in the definition of the human, and because human-interest stories usually require 

their hero to be human” (Siebers, Disability Theory). In addition, Michale Bérubé states that 

supercrip views tend to make disabled characters seem significant only if they manage to 

somehow overcome their disability. Bérubé gives the example of Michael K, who is a character 

with a mental disability that manages to survive in his society only because he has artistic gifts: 



36

“It is very tempting to read Michael K as a kind of Homo sacer supercrip, the minimal man 

whose story is narratable only because he manages to escape incarceration twice, eking out a 

bare existence not on his wits –his mind is not quick– but on his skills as a gardener” (Bérubé, 

The Secret Life of Stories).

Moreover, Eli Clare states that the supercrip is one of the dominant images of people with 

disabilities and that the non-disabled world exalts stories in which a disabled person overcomes 

disability: “A boy without hands bats on his Little League team. A blind man hikes the 

Appalachian Trail from end to end… Stories about gimps who engage in activities as grand as 

walking miles or as mundane as learning to drive. They focus on disabled people ‘overcoming’ 

disabilities” (Clare, Exile and Pride). According to the author, these stories turn individuals into 

symbols of aspiration and reinforce the superiority of the non-disabled body and mind. Clare 

argues that another negative consequence of the supercrip is that no one ever focuses on the 

various conditions that make it so difficult for disabled people to achieve their goals: “I mean 

material, social, legal conditions. I mean lack of access, lack of employment, lack of education, 

lack of personal attendant services. I mean stereotypes and attitudes. I mean oppression” (Clare, 

Exile and Pride). Finally, the author states that there is a darker side around the supercrip notion 

because in this part they can encounter pity, tragedy, and the nursing home. The author argues 

that people with disabilities always know about this risk and sometimes they believe it is a strong 

threat to their life, so they embrace the goal of overcoming their disability as their only hope for 

survival: “We use supercripdom as a shield, a protection, as if this individual internalization 

could defend us against disability oppression” (Clare, Exile and Pride).

4. Disability studies

Disability studies is an academic discipline that analyzes the different characteristics, 



37

consequences, and challenges of disability. Several factors assembled in order to create this field 

of study: “Disability studies pione3ers originally aligned the emergent field with racial and 

ethnic studies” (Cassuto 218). Moreover, according to Cassuto, people with disabilities were able 

to claim a collective identity and demand their civil rights (in the 1960s and 1970s). Scholars 

started to pay attention to the group and the social and political consequences of their position. 

The task was challenging because the field did not boast a significant background or ample 

research: “Without a canon to champion, literary critics in disability studies have taken the world 

for their text, focusing on the meaning of disability within it” (Cassuto 220). Fortunately, the 

academic discipline is contemporary of cultural studies, so new useful methodologies were being 

explored and also used in disability studies: “The first major move in disability studies in the 

humanities…was to educe and analyze the meaning of disability from the point of view of the 

able-bodied” (Cassuto 220). Another characteristic of disability studies was their notion of 

disability as an identity: “An important characteristic of this early scholarship was its emphasis 

on the broad application of disability as an identity category, even if such moves could be vexed” 

(Altschuler and Silva 3). Consequently, people with disabilities were being classified into a 

closed category and metaphorically compared to unfit humans. 

The Society for Disability Studies (SDS) appeared in 1986 and had a determinant impact 

in integrating disability to society: “… (it) was committed to ‘the study of disability in social, 

cultural, and political contexts,’ followed shortly thereafter by the emergence of disability 

studies in humanist fields like history and literary studies” (Altschuler and Silva 3). The 

development that disability studies had during the 1970s and 1980s was quick and broad; it 

expanded its range of action and its concepts were constantly changing to incorporate the reality 

of the disabled. According to Altschuler and Silva, contemporary disability studies understands 



38

disability as an object of analysis: “It is a category that purposefully brings together experiences 

as distinct as blindness, autism, paralysis, Down syndrome, and diabetes in order to draw out 

broader structures and experiences of exclusion and oppression” (5). Disability studies places 

several human conditions that confront the same stereotypes together and considers its constant 

changing relations with the world. In addition, in the late twentieth century, this discipline 

described the factors that produced disability more profoundly: “Disability studies was 

associated with establishing the factors that led to the structural, economic and cultural exclusion 

of people with sensory, physical and cognitive impairments” (Goodley et al. 81). Moreover, it 

seeks to respond and fight against those factors. 

4.1 Critical Disability Studies 

Critical disability studies can be defined in a short way: “When conventional disability 

studies encounters cultural theory, it generates what is now usually referred to as critical 

disability studies (CDS)” (Shildrick and Söffner 137). According to Garland-Thomson, the 

objective of critical disability studies is to correct and broaden the way in which health sciences 

have constructed disability. In addition, she states that the movement became a field of pervasive 

and productive presence in society. Critical disability studies evolved into an interdisciplinary 

area of work: “Critical disability studies start with disability but never end with it: Disability is 

the space from which to think through a host of political, theoretical and practical issues that are 

relevant to all” (Goodley et al. 82). Different elements influence the way in which disability 

works; for instance, ethics of care, political and theoretical appeals of the body, and global 

economy have an impact in the understanding of disability. According to Goodley, the study of 

such a diversity of elements creates the intersectionality of disability studies: “Intersectionality 

seeks to explore convergence and divergence of multiple markers. This involves difficult 

conversations across socio-cultural categories and forms of interpellation to ask how, for 



39

example, disability, gender, race, sexuality and class constitute or contradict one another” (87).  

Therefore, Goodley states that the key task of the field is to explain how all these conditions 

relate and interact. Moreover, the field also considers how they promote values and how they 

counterattack or justify forms of oppression such as racism, homophobia, and disablism.

4.2 Physical and Mental Disability

Physical disability has been the most common type of disability analyzed over the years: 

“much of the literature on disability is restricted to physical disabilities” (Carlson 87). 

Additionally, from the beginning of disability studies, whiteness and physical disability have 

been prioritized over other types of disabilities, which created an iconic figure: “the wheelchair 

user” (Adams 500). However, mental disability has gained importance in the last years. 

Focusing only on physical disability creates a problem because there is a difference 

between impairment and disability:  “First, impairment and disability are two distinct constructs; 

impairment is individual, private, and a personal tragedy, while disability is structural, social, 

and externally imposed. Second, disability as a social creation distinguished disability from 

individual deficit” (Reddy 292). As the author states, physical disability does not take into 

account different types of impairments; in addition, different types of disability cannot be treated 

the same way. According to Tobin Siebers, discrimination towards people with physical 

disabilities is the product of a society that designed a world only suitable for abled bodies: 

“Discriminatory practices deposit people with disabilities in social locations that are less 

accessible to the goods, resources, services, and benefits enjoyed by non-disable people, and 

these practices affect the reality of disabled people’s identities” (Disability Theory). As a 

consequence, inequality forces the physically-disabled to be perceived as another minority 

group. Siebers states that the social model of disability aims to reduce the breach between abled 



40

and disabled bodies. However, the problems of people with other types of disability are not 

satisfied by those changes: 

Even if social barriers are removed, it will not help people with other 

impairments, such as sensory and cognitive limitations, to overcome the physical 

barriers. The critics of the social model argue that discrimination or oppression 

manifested in disability cannot be fought at the cost of impairment. Impairment 

cannot be treated as something asocial or pre-social, as pain and suffering that 

accompany impairment drive experiences that mean a lot to those who live with it. 

(Reddy 294)

The mentally-disabled suffer not only from the same discrimination of the physically-disabled, 

but also from a greater invisibility and marginalization: “intellectual disability is more readily 

and widely deployed as a device of dehumanization than is physical disability” (Bérubé, The 

Secret Life of Stories). Mental disability has been named in different ways such as idiocy and 

mental retardation. Connotations such as these have created a stereotype of wider dimensions 

because the mentally-disabled is turned into a metaphorical figure that represents erroneous 

beliefs: “Historically, individuals who were believed to suffer from idiocy have been thought of 

in a number of different ways: viewed as objects of pity, demon possessed, holy innocents, 

eternal children, and diseased organisms” (Carlson 24). In addition, eugenics has increased the 

stereotype of the disabled as an inferior race: “With the rise of the eugenics movement, they have 

been seen as a threat to the very quality of the human race” (Parmenter 268). As a result, the 

mentally-disabled lack complete individuality and autonomy. For instance, Siebers argues that 

the physically-disabled have many obstacles to fully participate as citizens in a political process, 

but that the mentally-disabled are denied all those rights: “The “feeble-minded” hold rights of 

citizenship nowhere, and few people in the mainstream believe this fact should be changed. 



41

Behind the idea that physical disability may be cured by acts or the imagination is a model of 

political rationality that oppresses people with mental disability” (Disability Theory). Therefore, 

the fight for the civil rights of mental disability is harder and more stigmatized and encounters 

more resistance. 

Additionally, a mental deviation casts people with intellectual disabilities as inferior to 

those with physical disability: “This caste system, of course, encourages the vicious treatment of 

people with mental disabilities in most societies” (Siebers, Disability Theory). The author argues 

that the influence of this system reaches the history of human rights, the politics of non-

discrimination and institutionalization, the opportunities of employment, and the organization of 

the disability community. Siebers states that the strong connection between rationalism and the 

concept of human is another obstacle for mental disability:

Theories of rationality rely not only on the ability to perceive objective properties 

of things in the world; they configure rationality itself in terms of the objective 

properties and identifying characteristics of those agents whom Kant called 

rational beings, and these identifying characteristics do not always allow for the 

inclusion of people with disabilities, especially people with mental disabilities. 

(Disability Theory)

Intelligence and rationality entitle humanity. Therefore, a person who lacks a regular cognitive 

development is considered as inferior and inhuman: “In today’s world, being seen as intellectual, 

cognitively, or developmentally disabled is dangerous because intelligence and verbal 

communications are entrenched markers of personhood” (Clare, Brilliant Imperfection). 

Additionally, Trevor Parmenter also states that there are three capacities that cultivate humanity 

in the world: the ability to examine oneself critically, the ability to see beyond some local group 

or regions, and the ability of an intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence. According to 



42

Parmenter, the reduction or lack of some of these capacities decreased humanity. Consequently, 

even physically-disabled people tend to categorize the mentally-disabled as inferior. The 

discrimination among the disabled creates another division in a minority group in an already 

divided society. Siebers argues that disability does not have to be seen as a divided mental or 

physical defect, but as a cultural minority identity. In this way, disability will not be categorized 

as a biological or natural property but as a social category with the capability of achieving social 

change.

4.3 Disability and Literature

Michael Berubé states that disability in literature has the ability to appear everywhere 

without announcing itself as disability. Representation is one of the most common uses of 

disability but not the only one: “narrative deployments of disability do not confine themselves to 

representation. They can also be narrative strategies, devices for exploring vast domains of 

human thought, experience, and action” (Bérubé, The Secret Life of Stories). However, Bérubé 

argues that the field of Disability Studies limits itself to a very narrow range of options in literary 

criticism because its only interest is to determine the disability status of a character. Bérubé 

affirms that a diagnosis does not solve the problems that the text posits. Hence, disability studies 

should expand: “if disability studies is going to have greater influence on the world of literary 

criticism, the degree of influence it can and should have, it needs to pay closer attention to the 

textuality of texts” (Bérubé, The Secret Life of Stories). Therefore, the discipline of disability 

studies has to broaden its scope of analysis to be able to have a major impact in literary criticism. 

David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder study the diverse representations and uses that 

disability has had in literature, film, and art through history. The authors established five major 

moments: Negative Imagery, Social Realism, New Historicism, Biographical Criticism, and 

Transgressive Resignifications. According to the authors, a main characteristic of the Negative 



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Imagery was that it dispossessed the disabled from humanity: “Disability was viewed as a 

restrictive pattern of characterization that usually sacrificed the humanity of protagonists and 

villains alike. For instance, a few key characters continually surfaced as evidence of this 

tendency: Shakespeare’s murderous hunchbacked king, Richard III” (Mitchell and Snyder 196). 

In addition, the negative imagery created three main stereotypes of disabled characters: disability 

as a punishment for evil, the disabled as a bitter and hostile being, and the disabled as the 

vengeful person who wanted take over the abled characters. Additionally, isolation became a 

major trait of the disabled: “What stands out in the analyses of the negative image school is the 

importance of plots that emphasize individual isolation as the overriding component of a 

disabled life” (Mitchell and Snyder 198). Disability was portrayed as a negative condition that 

condemned characters to a lonely existence and promoted their discrimination in real life: “This 

almost exclusive focus on negative representations functioned as a means of humanities-based 

“proof” that discrimination against disabled people not only existed but also was fostered by the 

images consumed by readers and viewers alike” (Mitchell and Snyder 198). Hence, the negative 

imagery helped to raise the idea that disability was socially produced. Disability analysis of 

literature brought a brighter understanding of reality: “Identifying common characterizations that 

reinforced audiences’ sense of alienation and distance from disability began an important process 

of scholarly attempts to rehabilitate public beliefs. Literature and film provided a needed archive 

of historical attitudes from which to assess ideologies pertaining to people with disabilities” 

(Mitchell and Snyder 199). Therefore, literature and film are sources that prove the constant 

presence of disability in time and the importance of acknowledging the role of the disabled in 

society. 

The Social Realism movement followed the Negative Imagery. Its aim was to offer more 

realistic representations of disabled characters: “The social realists’ primary criteria centered on 



44

whether literacy depictions reserved as correctives to social misapprehensions about specifics of 

disability experiences” (Mitchell and Snyder 199). According to the authors, social realists 

wanted a more accurate representation of the political reality of disability and its implications 

from architecture to attitudes. For instance, how stairs or uneven terrains would affect the 

mobility of disabled characters. In addition, social realists were able to identify inaccurate 

characterizations that prevented them from falling for positive images that celebrated the lives of 

people with disabilities in a romantic way. On the contrary, they were able to resist the 

idealization of disability: “Scholars approached even the production of self-stylized ‘positive’ 

portraits with skepticism and saved some of the most severe critiques for notions of disabled 

‘heroism’” (Mitchell and Snyder 200). Consequently, a more realistic image of the disabled 

person was created, which brings into attention real barriers and problems that the disabled 

person faces.

New Historicism in disability studies emerged as a response to Social Realism. Mitchel 

and Snyder state that it criticized four main aspects: social realism assumed that in literature and 

film disability was concealed rather than pervasive; it overlooked the specificity of disability 

representation as an ideological consequence of determined historical times; it presumed that 

their critique and study on “inaccurate” disability images have never been done before; and 

finally, it projected its own contemporary desires into their analysis. In addition, New 

Historicism studied the relation between disability and ideology: “Within the studies developed 

by the New Historicists, disability was recognized as a product of specific cultural ideologies 

that did not simply reveal reductive or stigmatizing attitudes”(Mitchell and Snyder 203). Its 

interpretations situated disability as a perpetual obsession of society and as the object of complex 

cultural beliefs. It showed examples of how some cultures integrated the disabled in surprising 

ways. New Historicism also evidenced the political implications of disability that had been 



45

ignored before: “Disability had begun to be recognized as a potent vehicle of political critique at 

various moments in the literary tradition. By and large, these alternative representational modes 

had been ignored or overlooked by literary and disability critics alike because of insufficient 

paradigms for analyzing disability as a site of literary investment” (Mitchell and Snyder 204).

Mitchell and Snyder mention two more literary approaches to disability analysis: 

Biographical Criticism and Transgressive Resignification. They state that Biographical Criticism 

analyzed the interactions between medicine and literature, written by authors with disabilities 

and without: “The analysis of critical readings on disability by abled-bodied and disabled 

scholars alike, the analysis of the relationship between literature and medicine, and the 

interpretations by disabled writers of other disability characterization in history” (Mitchell and 

Snyder 205). Additionally, this approach focused on the work of disabled, chronically ill and 

physically impaired authors, trying to find a disability logic in their artistic works. Finally, the 

authors mention Transgressive Resignification, which studies the subversive potential of the 

meanings that disability has in literature: “Rather than rail against or bemoan the unjust social 

exclusion of cripples, scholars have begun to attend to the subversive potential of the hyperbolic 

meanings invested in disabled figures” (Mitchell and Snyder 208). One example of this tendency 

that the authors discuss is the appropriation of words such as “cripple” or “gimp” and the 

creation of new meanings for these terms: “The power of transgression always originates at the 

moment when the derided object uncharacteristically embraces its deviance as a value” (208-

209). Therefore, the embracement of these derogatory terms provide power and force for the 

disabled person and lead the dominant ideology to recognize their dehumanizing norms.



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CHAPTER II 

The Construction of Mental Disability

This chapter identifies the characteristics of mental disability in the novel The Sound and 

The Fury. First, it analyzes the construction of Benjy’s disability and his role (as a mentally-

disabled figure) in the novel and the literary implications of his presence. Then, it establishes 

how other characters help to construct the notion of who Benjy Compson is and what it means to 

have him in the family. Finally, it examines Benjy’s narration of the story and the unique 

circumstances of his life and family. Although this analysis can be perceived as stemming from 

an speciesist perspective with a bias against non-human animals, it is fundamental to take into 

account that the discrimination between humans and non-humans (and the resulting hierarchy 

evaluating their worth) is established exclusively by the social values and assumptions 

manifested by the literary works.

Mental Disability in the Novel

Several factors determine the role of mental disability in The Sound and the Fury: the 

construction of aesthetics, identity, and disability. First, the notion of aesthetics has a vital 

impact on how Benjy is perceived. As previously mentioned, Eagleton argues that the historical 

time and the dominant ideology construct the way in which the aesthetics of disability is 

categorized: “The construction of the modern notion of the aesthetic artifact is thus inseparable 

from the construction of the dominant ideological forms of modern class-society, and indeed 

from a whole new form of human subjectivity appropriate to that social order” (The Ideology of 

the Aesthetic 3). The novel depicts a society that is dominated by white rich people; therefore, 

their standards, judgment, and values are the ones that dominate the views that surround Benjy’s 

life. The story takes place in a Southern state of the United States between the 1910’s to the 



47

1930’s, where discrimination was normal and everyone who was different from the dominant 

white class was rejected. Whiteness gave certain value to Benjy’s body; however, his inability to 

function and look like a normal white adult was a determining factor in the rejection that he 

suffers. In the novel, the characters describe Benjy as a child trapped in a man’s body with 

disorganized and clumsy movements that do not fit into their standards for normality. As 

Eagleton also points out, aesthetic classifications became a medium to suppress a person and 

exert social power over vulnerable bodies, and in this case, to repress Benjy under the dominant 

ideology of his time: 

The aesthetic is simply the state in which common knowledge, in the very act of 

reaching out to its object, suddenly arrests and surrounds upon itself, forgetting its 

referent for a magical moment attending instead, in a wondering flash of self-

estrangement miraculously convenient way in which its inmost structure seems 

how geared to the comprehension of the real. (The Ideology of the Aesthetic

331)

Consequently, Benjy’s family and servants confirmed their biased perception of him with 

evidence that was created socially and that they used as factual support to reject him. 

Additionally, aesthetics is at the foundation of all human bonding, which explains why Benjy's 

appearance becomes an obstacle to establish any kind of relationship. 

Benjy constantly experiences the consequences of aesthetic nervousness. As discussed 

before, Michael Berubé states that the term refers to the encounter between a non-disabled 

character with a disabled one, the positive or negative outcomes this struggle can have in their 

lives, and how a first impression can be transformed: “(aesthetic nervousness) has the potential 

to reframe that primal scene, recasting the disgust, repulsion, or horror evinced by nondisabled 

characters in the presence of disability” (The Secret Life of Stories). That is not to say that all the 



48

encounters will necessarily have a positive outcome by transforming the disgust or horror into 

some new favorable feeling; the way in which Ben is rejected and mistreated shows that almost 

all the characters that have an encounter with him react in a negative way. For example, his 

mother feels that his disability is a punishment and an overwhelming burden; Jason feels 

repulsion and visceral disgust; Dilsey pities him and treats him with occasional contempt; and 

Versh and Luster feel disdain and reject Ben openly. Strangers also react in a negative way; for 

instance, when “the man in the red tie” meets him, he expresses his estrangement towards Benjy 

and also his rejection towards his presence inside the family: “He looked at me. ‘Why dont they 

lock him up.’ he said. ‘What’d you bring him out here for’” (Faulkner 49). This encounter is full 

of prejudice and disgust toward the disabled man, which further normalizes the remarks and 

actions that discriminate against Benjy.

Second, the construction of identity becomes another factor that determines the role of 

Benjy’s disability. Goffman claims that society plays a key role in the construction of the 

identity of an individual: “Social settings establish the categories of persons likely to be 

encountered there. The routines of social intercourse in established settings allow us to deal with 

anticipated others without special attention or thought” (11). Consequently, a social identity that 

determines the category of a person is created. In the novel, society dictates who Benjy is and 

what his place in the world would be. For instance, he is limited to the space of the house and the 

yard because Ben is not a normal man that can go and socialize with other people. In addition, in 

his discussion of perception of bodies as abnormal and defective, Tobin Siebers points out that 

the dominant political ideas and feelings of his society categorize bodies, such as Benjy’s: 

“Political ideologies and cultural mores exert the greatest power, social constructionists claim, 

when they anchor their authority in natural objects such as the body”  (“Disability in Theory” 

739). Social customs and their ideology dictate which bodies are accepted as normal and which 



49

are not. Therefore, Ben’s identity is created based on ideas of prejudice, discrimination, and 

standards that reject those who do not comply with the economic and functional requirements of 

the time. Consequently, he is stigmatized because he falls short in intelligence and the 

compliance of duties (such as taking care of his home and having a successful job) that a man 

has to do. The discrepancies between Benjy’s physical capacities and the expectation for a man 

of his age stress his disability and relegate him to an inferior place in his society. 

Benjy is not considered an autonomous man. As Bérubé states, the mindless individual is 

unable to account for himself: “They do not have the capacity to understand what has 

happened… just as they do not have the capacity to proclaim that nothing will come of nothing” 

(“Disability and Narrative” 571-572). One must not consider this notion as a harmless idea that 

only seeks to protect the disabled, but also consider the implications it has on them such as 

prejudice and the belief that they depend on others to make decisions for them. The disagreement 

between Benjy’s large white body and his mental capacities make him abnormal. Accountability 

is actually an expectation from adulthood: a person has to have the capacity to reason, make 

decisions, and then answer for the consequences of those decisions; however, Ben is incapable of 

doing any of those. Hence, he is considered a person who will never be able to take 

responsibility for his own actions. Characters such as the servants and family members 

underestimate his capacities. For instance, Luster constantly treats his actions with contempt: 

“‘He cant tell what you are saying.’ Luster said. ‘He deaf and dumb’” (Faulkner 49). In addition, 

his brother Jason and his niece Quentin believe he needs to be sent to an institution because his 

behaviors are abnormal and consequently harmful for the reputation of the family; for example, 

the society in which they live may think that mindlessness is not an exclusive defect in Ben, but 

that it may be a trait that runs in the family. Additionally, they think that Benjy can hurt other 

people and this will be a consequence that will need to be faced by the family and not by him. 



50

Moreover, as previously mentioned by John Tosh, ideals of masculinity shape the identities of 

men. Even though Tosh work centers in nineteenth century men, the masculinity traits he 

describes are useful in many other contexts such as the one described in this novel. For instance, 

the critic mentions the need of men to be energetic, independent and autonomous: “The 

dominant code of Victorian manliness, with its emphasis on self-control, hard work and 

independence, was that of the professional and business classes” (Tosh, “What Should Historians 

Do with Masculinity?” 183). Benjy is unable to comply with these masculine traits as he will 

never be able to have self-control or perform daily activities independently. Several times in the 

novel, the characters mention how Ben will always need a caretaker and, when no one will take 

care of him at home, he will have to be sent away. Ben lacks autonomy: he never has a saying in 

the decisions about his life because he is lost if someone does not tell him how to act: “‘Oh, 

Lawd,’ Dilsey said. She drew a chair into the corner between the woodbox and the stove. The 

man went obediently and sat in it” (Faulkner 275). Tosh also states that manliness incorporates 

the ability to provide for and protect women, managing a household, ensuring the economic 

support of the family, and passing on a legacy: “Manliness expresses perfectly the important 

truth that boys do not become men just by growing up, but by acquiring a variety of manly 

qualities and manly competencies as part of a conscious process… if man are the sex at large in 

society, they must live by a code which affirms their masculinity” (“What Should Historians Do 

with Masculinity?” 181). One must not simply entertain the idea that those attributes where 

easily accomplished by all men; on the contrary, they set a bar that few men are actually able to 

reach, in particular those who are disabled. For example, Benjy will never be able to achieve any 

of those requirements: he cannot work and make money for his family, he will never marry or 

have children, and he cannot take care of his mother or Caddy. In th