Femininity, Madness, and Disability in Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature and Film Adaptation: A Study in Textual and Visual Forms

Helm, Hannah

Abstract

This thesis argues that key works of nineteenth-century children’s literature, fairy tales, and twenty-first-century live-action Disney film mobilise progressive and subversive representations of mad and/or disabled women in order to express agency and empowerment and challenge feminine and patriarchal nineteenth-century norms. I analyse Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010), and James Bobin’s Alice Through the Looking-Glass (2016) in Chapter One; Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1837), ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ (1838), and ‘The Red Shoes’ (1845) in Chapter Two; and Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s ‘Little Snow White’ (1812), ‘Rapunzel’ (1812), and ‘The Maiden Without Hands’ (1812), along with Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent (2014) and Joachim Rønning’s Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019), in Chapter Three. I contend that, across these texts, non-normative femininities are allied to madness and disability and work to resist, challenge, and overcome feminine, sanist, and ableist nineteenth-century norms. Bringing the primary texts into dialogue with approaches derived from Mad Studies and Literary Disability Studies, this thesis explores how female characters associated with madness and/or disability have the potential to interrogate, rather than uphold, dominant representations of normative femininity.

Chapter One: Part One, entitled ‘“We’re all mad here”: Non-Normative Femininity and Madness in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)’, explores how the novel represents feminine constraints in the Victorian period, whilst also revealing the liberatory potential of madness as a feminist strategy for challenging oppressive gendered and medical norms. In Chapter One: Part Two, entitled ‘Alice’s Afterlives: Female Agency and Madness in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Alice Through the Looking-Glass (2016)’, I develop the argument that non-normative femininity and madness are linked. I do this by using Burton and Bobin’s film adaptations to develop and bolster the connections I make between gender, identity, and agency in my earlier readings of Carroll’s novel. I investigate how anti-sanist representations of female madness align with the key aims of contemporary feminist and Mad Studies movements and work to challenge the ongoing medicalisation of madness.

Chapter Two, entitled ‘“The sense of sight was especially cultivated by me”: Femininity, Disability, and the Gaze in Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales’, uses theoretical approaches taken from Literary Disability Studies, such as the work of Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Lori Yamato, to undertake the first combined literary analysis of gender, disability, and the gaze in Andersen’s tales. Through an examination of ‘The Little Mermaid’, ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’, and ‘The Red Shoes’, I move beyond highly theorised notions of the male gaze and argue instead that Andersen draws on the disabled female gaze as a productively feminist tool. In doing so, I contend that female characters with disabilities challenge their marginalised position in the text by exercising the gaze as a form of visual agency, using sight to overcome ableist and patriarchal barriers.

In Chapter Three: Part One, entitled ‘“Grimm” Mothers? Representations of Non-Normative Mothering in Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Fairy Tales’, I explore how the Grimms represent and celebrate different forms of non-normative mothering through the figures of the stepmother, the adoptive mother, and the disabled mother. Investigating ‘Little Snow White’, ‘Rapunzel’, and ‘The Maiden Without Hands’, I examine how female characters challenge oppressive feminine norms and idealised biological motherhoods in order to perform non-normative maternal roles. Chapter Three: Part Two, entitled ‘Physical Disability, Social Exclusion, and Maternal Love in Disney’s Maleficent (2014) and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)’, develops these strands of argument and further interrogates the links between gender, disability, and motherhood through an analysis of the character of Maleficent, who challenges stigma and social exclusion in order to nurture a non-normative mother-daughter relationship with Aurora.

Citation

Helm, H. (2023). Femininity, Madness, and Disability in Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature and Film Adaptation: A Study in Textual and Visual Forms. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 31, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 30, 2025
• Award Date: Sep 29, 2023