Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies

"It Is Only with One's Heart That One Can See Clearly"

The Loss of Sight in Teresa Medeiros's The Bride and the Beast and Yours until Dawn

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies (2012), 6, (3), 275–289.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3828/jlcds.2012.23
Language
English
Pages
15

Abstract

How is disability, in particular visual impairment, used in romance fiction? The article explores the use of blindness and the loss of sight in two historical romances by American author Teresa Medeiros. While in The Bride and the Beast (2001) the inability to see is caused by darkness and leads to insight and (self-)knowledge, the hero of Yours until Dawn (2004) has been blinded in battle. Although the latter contains a number of similarities to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), a comparison with the Victorian classic shows that Medeiros rejects various dominant cultural stereotypes about visual impairment and disability such as the disempowerment and perceived helplessness of blind characters.

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Schwab, Sandra