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| Karel Dujardin 1663 |
Description of a Cripple, from Elizabeth Gaskell's short story 'The well of Pen-Morfa' (1852)
Nest revived during the warm summer weather. Edward came to see her,
and stayed the allotted quarter of an hour; but he dared not look her in
the face. She was, indeed, a cripple: one leg was much shorter than the
other, and she halted on a crutch. Her face, formerly so brilliant in
colour, was wan and pale with suffering; the bright roses were gone,
never to return. Her large eyes were sunk deep down in their hollow,
cavernous sockets; but the light was in them still, when Edward came.
Her mother dreaded her returning strength - dreaded, yet desired it; for
the heavy burden of her secret was most oppressive at times, and she
thought
Edward was beginning to weary of his enforced attentions. One
October evening she told her the truth. She even compelled her
rebellious heart to take the cold, reasoning side of the question; and
she told her child that her disabled frame was a disqualification for
ever becoming a farmer's wife. She spoke hardly, because her inner agony
and sympathy was such, she dared not trust herself to express the
feelings that were rending her. But Nest turned away from cold reason;
she revolted from her mother; she revolted from the world. She bound her
sorrow tight up in her breast, to corrode and fester there.
Night after night, her mother heard her cries and moans--more
pitiful, by far, than those wrung from her by bodily pain a year before;
and night after night, if her mother spoke to soothe, she proudly
denied the existence of any pain but what was physical, and consequent
upon her accident.
Mary Wollstoncraft Shelley on Monstrous Men, Greek Beauty, and Contemporary Deformity:
I do not forget the popular opinion, that the Grecian statues were
not modelled after nature. I mean, not according to the
proportions of a particular man; but that beautiful limbs and
features were selected from various bodies to form an harmonious
whole. This might, in some degree, be true. The fine ideal
picture of an exalted imagination might be superior to the
materials which the painter found in nature, and thus it might with
propriety be termed rather the model of mankind than of a man. It
was not, however, the mechanical selection of limbs and features,
but the ebullition of an heated fancy that burst forth; and the
fine senses and enlarged understanding of the artist selected the
solid matter, which he drew into this glowing focus.
I observed that it was not mechanical, because a whole was
produced—a model of that grand simplicity, of those concurring
energies, which arrest our attention and command our reverence.
For only insipid lifeless beauty is produced by a servile copy of
even beautiful nature. Yet, independent of these observations, I
believe, that the human form must have been far more beautiful than
it is at present, because extreme indolence, barbarous ligatures,
and many causes, which forcibly act on it, in our luxurious state
of society, did not retard its expansion, or render it deformed.
---
Besides, nothing can be so prejudicial to the morals of the
inhabitants of country towns, as the occasional residence of a set
of idle superficial young men, whose only occupation is gallantry,
and whose polished manners render vice more dangerous, by
concealing its deformity under gay ornamental drapery. An air of
fashion, which is but a badge of slavery, and proves that the soul
has not a strong individual character, awes simple country people
into an imitation of the vices, when they cannot catch the slippery
graces of politeness.
---
Going back to first principles, vice skulks, with all its native
deformity, from close investigation; but a set of shallow reasoners
are always exclaiming that these arguments prove too much, and that
a measure rotten at the core may be expedient. Thus expediency is
continually contrasted with simple principles, till truth is lost
in a mist of words, virtue in forms, and knowledge rendered a
sounding nothing, by the specious prejudices that assume its name.
---
A man of rank or
fortune, sure of rising by interest, has nothing to do but to
pursue some extravagant freak; whilst the needy GENTLEMAN, who is
to rise, as the phrase turns, by his merit, becomes a servile
parasite or vile pander.
---
Thus,
as wars, agriculture, commerce, and literature, expands the mind,
despots are compelled, to make covert corruption hold fast the
power which was formerly snatched by open force.* And this baneful
lurking gangrene is most quickly spread by luxury and superstition,
the sure dregs of ambition. The indolent puppet of a court first
becomes a luxurious monster, or fastidious sensualist, and then
makes the contagion which his unnatural state spreads, the
instrument of tyranny.
It is the pestiferous purple which renders the progress of
civilization a curse, and warps the understanding, till men of
sensibility doubt whether the expansion of intellect produces a
greater portion of happiness or misery.
* Men of abilities scatter seeds that grow up, and have
a great influence on the forming opinion; and when once the public
opinion preponderates, through the exertion of reason, the
overthrow of arbitrary power is not very distant.
---
As to the argument respecting the subjection in which the sex has
ever been held, it retorts on man. The many have always been
enthralled by the few; and, monsters who have scarcely shown any
discernment of human excellence, have tyrannized over thousands of
their fellow creatures. Why have men of superior endowments
submitted to such degradation? For, is it not universally
acknowledged that kings, viewed collectively, have ever been
inferior, in abilities and virtue, to the same number of men taken
from the common mass of mankind—yet, have they not, and are they
not still treated with a degree of reverence, that is an insult to
reason?
