BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 01:26 AM

Suibhne -- Heh. "The Dangers of leaving a story before it's finished" could end up as a plot twist element in a story of its own...

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: GUEST,SharonA
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 12:26 PM

Hi, CapriUni:

I've skimmed through this thread and I have not seen any mention of the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin... so I thought I'd mention it. :-)

In the version of the tale with which I'm familiar, there was one lame boy who could not keep up with the other children who were led by the Piper through the "door" in the mountain, and could not reach the door before it closed. Looking it up today on Wikipedia, I find reference to the Brothers Grimm version in which there are two children (one lame, the other blind) left behind by the Piper; Wiki also alludes to an unidentified version in which there are three children (the first lame, the second deaf [but curious enough to follow the crowd], the third blind) shut out of the mountain.

As a child hearing this story, I always thought it was terribly cruel of the Piper to leave the lame boy behind, since I was being told that all the other kids ended up in some happy land on the other side of the closed door, away from the selfish and greedy adults of the town. Now, I wonder if that part of the story was a variation on the narrative of the story of Job ("I only am escaped alone to tell thee" [of the tragedy that has befallen thee]), since the lame boy of Hamelin was the one who told the townspeople what had happened to the kids while the adults were in church.

Of course, this particular folk tale is based on an actual event: the disappearance of the children of the town of Hamelin, Germany, circa 1284. Too bad no one knows the real reason why. But it's curious that a lame boy was inserted into the tale to be the messenger of bad news.

Segue to the chat about mercury (from posts in April 2011): Hatters (makers of hats) were indeed affected by mercury poisoning because mercury was used in the curing of pelts and the production of felt for hats (around the 18th to 19th centuries). The buildup of the toxin in their bodies resulted in vision problems, confused speech, excessive anxiety and timidity, dementia, and sometimes eventual death. I don't know how bronze got into the discussion of mercury (maybe it was in a blog entry?).

SharonA

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 18 Jul 11 - 01:34 PM

Sharon A -- Thanks for reminding me about the Pied Piper -- now that you mention it, I do remember that detail.

Also interesting is that it was linked to an historical event. I've often noted that the people who live with disabilities are actually stronger than others, who go from being able-bodied to dead. I, for example, was born 9 weeks premature, and without an incubator and antibiotics, would not have survived my first week; Christopher Reeve lived as a quadriplegic because he survived a "hangman's injury."

Perhaps an epidemic swept through Hamelin that killed many children, and left the survivors lame and/or blind (meningitis? polio?). And that later got romanticized into the story of a mysterious stranger...

The mention of mercury was originally my mistake -- there are some theories that so many Smith/Forge gods in Indo-European mythology are lame because they used lead as a cheap substitute for tin in making bronze. And in my faulty memory, I switched the two toxins around.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: SharonA
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 07:08 PM

Thanks for clearing up the mercury thing for me. It all makes sense now!

Theories about the disappearance of Hamelin's children abound: an epidemic; a catastrophe such as a landslide in the mountains; foul play and eventual execution of the children by the Piper; the luring of the children by some silver-tongued orator who convinced them to join the Children's Crusade.

There's even a theory that it might have been a case of simple emigration (assuming that the phrase "children of the town" could've referred to the residents of the town, second-generation and onward [minors and adults]), and that a large number of these residents moved away at around the same time, lured by recruiters as part of the drive by Germany to colonize new lands in eastern Europe that had been won in battle.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 08:57 PM

Yes, it's like when they say about modern movies or TV shows: "Based on a true story!" to give it an air of gravitas it wouldn't ordinarily have, but it could be that that one sliver of truth is simply that a guy named "Joe" really did walk around the corner that day ... and the whole, lurid murder Joe witnessed was totally made up.

Personally, I focused on the illness or meningitis angle first because the focus of my blog is on how depictions of disability in folktales are just as based on real-life experiences as any other depictions in the stories (such as ploughboys and scullery maids), and not simply (as they are often treated in folktale analysis) metaphors for psychological states.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 05 Sep 11 - 12:05 PM

I just realized that it's been a while since I updated this thread. Until I came back here, I didn't realize how long a while it's been.

So here's what I've been posting in the meantime:

I wish I could say more about this (some legends regarding the origins of Mother Goose).

The Squirrel and Fox: Awe and fear in the face of Disability

Mrs. Smith from Persuasion -- Physical Disability and illness as the Great Equalizer

Changelings: When parents fear the child they did not expect

Hans my Hedgehog: When disabled children are hidden for shame

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 08 Sep 11 - 02:53 AM

I can't believe no-one has mentioned "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". Not a folktale, but might as well be one since people think anything Disney has adapted is a fairy/folktale.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 08 Sep 11 - 03:37 AM

BTW, I've always wanted to see "Hunchback of Notre Dame" or "Notre Dame De Paris" redone in novel form as a story about disabled children who are raised in isolation and the effects of being raised in isolation from the world.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 08 Sep 11 - 07:45 AM

Oh, and by *people*, I mean "most of the people I know".

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 07:10 AM

Did I mention the Pig With the Wooden Leg? Or that classic about the deaf ferryman in Absjorsen and Moe (Axe Handle)? Check out the opening of Joseph Jacob's rendering of The Leeching of Kayn's Leg - how's that for a catalogue of disability & outsider cultural terror?

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: Crowhugger
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 10:35 AM

Morwen--I have no problem considering 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' a folk tale. Who is to say that there is no room to add a recent story to the lore? I don't know folklore well enough to comment on whether HOND could/should be classified as retelling an archetypal story.

Also along the line of recent tellings of old stories, it's only a matter of time until Aesop's Fables or are retold according to the computer age, though I suspect it's already so for example in the gaming world and for Sci-Fi or Space specialty TV channels. Even mainstream: Does anyone remember Rocket Robin Hood? Not exactly classic folklore, but children of a certain generation got their steal-from-rich-give-to-poor stories there. It's not about disability in particular, I raise it just to illustrate that current authorship doesn't mean it can't serve the role(s) of folklore.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 11:34 AM

Was the pig with the wooden leg the one who saved the family from the fire? (You don't eat a pig like that all at once!)

I actually didn't know till just now that the children of Hamelin had actually vanished, and I hadn't heard about the disabled child(ren) left behind. I shall have to do me some rereading.

In Greek mythology and reality, I believe, misshapen children were often exposed, to wit left to die in the wilderness.

In the part of Africa that I grew up in there were always interesting things about twins, and whether they were sacred, cursed, or birds (i remember the ones that thought twins were birds especially). But I was wondering, are there any folktales about *conjoined* twins?

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 11:46 AM

(And, not to make it a music thread or anything...)

But...

Even the cripple forgets his humch
When he's snug outside of a jug of punch!

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 02:23 PM

Morwen -- Thanks for the reminder about Hunchback of Notre Dame. That is actually a good fit since I'm including all literature up to the start of World War 1 (which is the turning point I pick as the start of the "modern world"), and I've already included snippets from Shakespeare* and Jane Austen.

Mrrzy -- Regarding the treatment of infants with disabilities in Ancient Greece, another blogger wrote a very good critique & examination of that particular historical "Fact" in another piece for Blogging Against Disablism Day, this year (Which was the event which inspired me to start Plato's Nightmare). It's here: B.A.D.D.: Researching Disability in Ancient Greece.

Suibhne -- Yes, you mentioned the beginning of The Leeching of Kayn's Leg, above. And I mentioned it when a friend in Canada was complaining, this last election cycle, about how no politicians from any party was taking disability rights seriously, and maybe we disabled should start our own party. ...She agreed with me that "The Beggarly Brotherhood" would be the perfect name for such a party.

Thanks for the hint about Axe Handle; Absorjen and Moe have given me some of my favorite stories.

*I also plan on doing a piece on Caliban from The Tempest, and getting around to critiquing Freud's critique of Richard III.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 05:59 PM

Maybe *I* should write that HOND retelling!

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 09 Sep 11 - 07:08 PM

Morwen -- You should. Even if someone else does, too, only you could infuse it with what you've learned, from your own experience.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 10 Sep 11 - 03:40 AM

Well, to find out whether HOND retells a folktale/archetypal story or should or could be considered as doing that - are there any folklorists on this board who have read it and can tell us whether of not they can see any folktale motifs in it and/or name any traditional French or European folktales involving hunchbacks/ disabled people and isolation and confinement, the Catholic clergy, and the Romani people?

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 10 Sep 11 - 11:54 AM

Morwen -- I'm sure there are such 'Catters here (And I'd be interested to know other stories with the isolation archetype, as well).* But you have the right to tell any story you're drawn to.

*Of course, it may be harder to find scholarly categorization of the archetype, if the people sorting them don't recognize the themes because they haven't thought about it in their daily lives.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 10 Sep 11 - 06:35 PM

The only one I can think of right now is the very well-known "Rapunzel" and similar tales, which only has blinding at the end. There must be some traditional tales involving disability and isolation. BTW, CapriUni, I read your blog post on "Hans-My-Hedgehog'and the conclusions you came to from retelling it. And I have to ask, are you going to be drawing comparisons in themes between the tales and the classic literature you write about on the blog? BTW again, thanks for sharing those posts, you've made me think about folktales in a different way!

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 10 Sep 11 - 10:00 PM

Morwen -- I plan on drawing some comparisons between stories that I post on the blog, yes. But I also want to leave some space for readers to draw their own conclusions. And I want each post to stand mostly on its own, without making people feel like they have to read every post to understand each one. There was so much more I could say about Hans, for example, but the post was already six word-processor pages long, and I didn't want to talk the poor reader to death.* But I do welcome (and look forward to) continuing the exploration of these tales via discussions in comments. *hint-hint*

As for Rapunzel -- Yes, she's kept isolated, but not because of a disability (rather, an attempt to keep her chaste). And it's not her blindness, but the prince's. And that's another story I will post in the future (though I'm hoping to keep the Grimms tales spaced out a bit -- like raisins in raisin bread -- it's not as much fun if they're all clumped together in one spot).

But, you know Hans-my-Hedgehog could be seen as belonging to the isolation motif, since he's kept hidden behind the stove when he's home, and hides himself in the middle of the forest when he's on his own...

And -- you're welcome. My pleasure. :-)
*also, it brought up a lot of personal anger issues from things I'd witnessed in my own childhood, and I didn't want my discussion to slide into a full-blown rant).

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 10 Sep 11 - 11:37 PM

In fact, CapriUni, I think a way of adding a twist to retelling a story would be to combine it with another one. BTW, I never actually read an actual book of Grimms' tales when I was little (maybe I should ask for that as another birthday present)buy they might give me ideas!

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 11 Sep 11 - 12:07 AM

*But* as a correction to my 10 September post.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 11 Sep 11 - 01:17 AM

Morwen -- I've always loved fairy and folktales. But it wasn't until I was a freshmen in college, and took a survey course in the genre (going from Grimms at the "oral storytelling" end of the spectrum, to Michael Ende's The Neverending Story at the literary end of the spectrum), and was required to read them closely, and then discuss them in class, that I really realized there was so much meat there to chew on (or beans, if you're vegetarian ;-)).

And definitely: combining stories together is a fantastic way to twist a tale. Are you familiar with the musical Into the Woods? That combines four Grimms Tales into a single play.

This site has good translations of most of the Grimms' Tales as e-texts (and the translator has included the motif index number for each of them): The Grimm Brothers' Children's and Household Tales

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 11 Sep 11 - 08:03 AM

Yes. I've never seen it, though.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 11 Sep 11 - 03:00 PM

I recommend it. There was a version made for television back in the '90s; it might be available on DVD.

Last year, though, I saw a production put on by the local Evangelical Christian college. And they saw fit to change it, by framing it as a child's dream, rather than letting it stand on its own. I suspect, perhaps, that the second half, when the characters fight back against the Narrator, and take ahold of their own destinies, is too much for a culture that takes the Book as the ultimate, unquestionable Authority in All Things. At least they didn't fiddle with the central narrative.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 11 Sep 11 - 05:38 PM

BTW, how do you do italics on this board? Off-topic, but something I've been wondering for a long time.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 12 Sep 11 - 12:30 AM

Morwen -- to create italics, type an "i" between angle brackets (the "upper case" on the period and comma keys) before the section you want to italicize; at the end of the section, do the same, but put a / mark before the "i" like this:

< i > and < / i > ... but without the spaces. Use a "b" for bold text, a "u" for underlines, and an "s" for strike-through.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 12 Sep 11 - 08:30 AM

Thanks, CapriUni!

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 12 Sep 11 - 08:47 AM

BTW, I also remembered four other books- don't know if you've thought of these. "Jack and Jill", Louisa May Alcott. "What Katy Did", ","Pollyanna", and "Heidi" Three of the heroines of these books get mysterious paralysing spinal injuries and have to stay lying down for months.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 12 Sep 11 - 03:08 PM

Thank you for the reminder! I knew about Heidi and Pollyanna, but didn't know about the other two. And, to boot, I bet my local library will probably have "Heidi." at least. Of course these stories all say more about the condescending attitudes toward people (especially girls) with disabilities than what life with disability is actually like.

"The Secret Garden" has a boy who has an apparent disability (But it turns out he was just faking/was coddled). So ableism has interesting overlaps with sexism...

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 12 Sep 11 - 05:18 PM

(hijack).Talking about "Heidi", anyone have any ideas on what exactly Clara had?

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 12 Sep 11 - 05:21 PM

BTW, about my comment about my C.P. Yes, I *did* say it was mild.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 14 Sep 11 - 11:20 AM

Okay, thinking of doing Pied Piper of Hamelin, next. Question, though: Which version?

How many versions/translations are out there? And am I correct in thinking that the poem by Robert Browning is the one most people know?

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 05:48 AM

Well, I remember hearing that poem (Robert Browning one) read aloud class in Year 2.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 08:07 AM

CapriUni, have you got any ideas about what Clara in "Heidi" had that made her paralysed? Or was it like "The Secret Garden"- Thanks! I forgot that one- with Colin who wasn't paralysed but thought he was?

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 01:32 PM

Morwen -- It's been so long since I read Heidi, I had to go back and remind myself of the plot in Wikipedia. ... Now, I know why I put it out of my mind!

Ack! So much ableism! So much Fail (and not just paralysis, but blindness and epilepsy, too). I think Johanna Spryri just wanted to give Clara something tragic and heart wrenching that she could be cured from, so the parents would be grateful to the titular heroine, without any regard to what these conditions are really like.

(All she needed was to have her wheelchair thrown off a mountain, and be forced to walk! She could walk if only she tried hard enough! She was only an invalid because her parents were too soft on her!)

As I'm writing this post up, I'm coming to the realization that, in the late 19th Century, at least Disability in literature was like Sci-fiction or fantasy today -- actual people with actual disabilities were so secluded from society that they might as well have been elves, or little green men from Saturn. Writers could make stuff up and throw it into their stories as metaphors and plot points and there was no expectation to be factual in any way about it.

The problem is, these stories are still being read, today, and unfortunately, people still think these fantasies are realistic. And people still come up to me and insist I really could walk, if I just tried hard enough.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 03:55 PM

CapriUni - you might want to look into the history of mental illness for the backstory to some of these disability 'fantasies' in literature. Genuine mental illness has a peculiar history of manifesting in 'socially acceptable' ways depending on the period - so where 'hysterical paralysis' or 'hysterical blindness' for example would have been more commonplace in years gone by, it now is almost non existent. By way of contrast, we now have a lot of food related behavioural problems (and related dysmorphias) such as anorexia and bullimia, which in years past was as unknown as hysterical paralysis is now.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 03:59 PM

I'd like to rephrase 'socially acceptable' to read 'socially expected' (symptoms of mental illness)

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 06:18 PM

It's like those movies where the glasses-wearing heroine has her glasses taken off to make her look more beautiful, but you have to wonder how she can see after that. If you need glasses to see, you can't do well without them. It might be the same kind of thing.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 16 Sep 11 - 11:08 PM

Guest -- Good point! (I still don't think that throwing someone's wheelchair off a mountain is an acceptable way of confronting mental illness, either, but that's another rant)

There's also "selective mutism" as one of this age's relatively expected manifestations of mental illness.

Morwen -- I know, right? I think it's part of the spectrum where assistive technology = unsexy. Beautiful women are rendered plain, once they put on glasses, and totally asexual in a wheelchair. And prosthetics can either mark you as evil (Captain Hook, Long John Silver) or inhuman (the Borg).

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Sep 11 - 02:41 PM

Loved The Secret Garden, where he could walk once he wasn't mollycoddled.

Hadn't thought of the parallel to Heidi, though.

The borg were also evil, from the human point of view.

I can't remember the movie where Cary Grant has the officious woman take her glasses off, but I do remember wondering how she managed through the rest of the movie.

True story: My 5'2 sister, when she first became a litigator (1m55 and barrister to you Brits), had to get glasses that she didn't need so she could take them off when she needed to say Your Honor in a very serious voice and be taken seriously. If she didn't have the glasses to take off she just looked 12. Is that disablism? Or ageism? Or heightism? It was definitely something-ism. Now she's a US Attorney who actually does wear glasses, so ça va. (Hope that html works.)

And I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Kevin from the Mists of Avalon version of the Arthur stories. Kevin was one of the Merlins of Britain, who had been terribly burned as a child and was kind of half-melted, and had a strong effect because of that, and a different one, each on Guenevere and Morgana le Fey.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: Crowhugger
Date: 18 Sep 11 - 02:01 PM

I'd forgotten about The Secret Garden, thanks for that Mrrzy!

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 22 Sep 11 - 02:36 AM

Refresh. Actually, "girl gets spinal injury and learns to be more feminine"plots were once very common.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 22 Sep 11 - 01:45 PM

Oh, yes. Because being too active and athletic and independent is Dangerous in Girls. But a spinal chord injury will cure that, and make them all pretty and willing to accept help from gentlemen after...

There's a bit of that in Persuasion, by Jane Austen (I wrote about the character Mrs. Smith from that book, recently), when one of the pretty, superficial, girls falls and suffers a head injury and personality change, after (The only defense I can put up in Ms. Austen's defense is that they didn't understand how important the brain really was, to health, back in 1811).

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 23 Sep 11 - 08:26 AM

In "What Katy Did", Katy has a paralysed cousin who helps her learn to deal with it. i think it's significant in these stories that the protagonist nearly always gets permanent help while other characters don't.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 02:53 AM

RE: question I raised earlier about folklore archetypes in "Hunchback of Notre Dame", I suddenly remembered this from the last time I read an English translation of the book: spoilers for anyone who has not read . Near the end of the book, when Esmeralda, the Spanish Romani girl, is about to be sent to the gallows, Hugo reveals that Esmeralda is actually not Romani at all, but a French girl named Agnes, the illegitimate daughter of a woman who became an anchoress after losing her daughter that she had in an out-of-wedlock relationship with a soldier. Agnes was actually kidnapped by a band of Spanish Romani from Andalusia. Her name was changed to Esmeralda, and Quasimodo was exchanged for her,abandoned on the steps of Notre Dame when he was discovered to be deformed.

So basically, Victor Hugo portarays Romani in a similar way to "The Fair Folk" in British Isles stories. They kidnap beautiful mortal/White European children and replace them with their own deformed babies/changelings. It's the chnageling archetype.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 02:55 AM

*portrays* and HOND .

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: CapriUni
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 02:47 PM

Hey, wow. You're right, that is a changeling story... (I've never actually read Hunchback of Notre Dame -- only saw an early silent film version in a film appreciation course I took in high school).

And boy! isn't it full of Racism fail along with ableism fail? Esmerelda is seen as a monster, and worthy of the gallows, as long as she's believed to be one of the outcasts, and an inferior race. But as soon as it's proven that she's really born to a "proper" European race, and upper class, then all of a sudden, she's the worthy victim and heroine.

Tsk. *Shakes head.*

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 06:13 PM

Was the silent film version the one with Lon Chaney? BTW, every English teacher I've had tells me Charles Laughton is really good.

Subject: RE: BS: CapriUni's blog: disability in folktales
From: MorwenEdhelwen1
Date: 28 Sep 11 - 06:57 PM

And the implication(probably fully intended by Hugo) is that Esmeralda, despite her flightiness amd superficiality, is a good person and should be treated in the same way as White French people because she is one of them, and not really Roma. i.e. "blood will tell", a person's ancestry, their racial origin, determines their personality and morality, not how they were raised and their own emotional reactions. So the other implication would be that Quasimodo, although he was raised by White people, will (as revealed by the plot twist that he is of Roma ancestry) have a bad streak because he is Roma.