Something Deficient and Great: Disability Aesthetics and Narrative Prosthesis in Willa Cather’s My Ántonia

Abstract

This essay emphasizes the relevance of disability in Willa Cather’s My Ántonia. I argue that Jim Burden’s responses to three disabled characters are not prejudiced but rather represent his education in an aesthetics that appreciates disability—an education that he simultaneously absorbs and resists. Discussing disability aesthetics and narrative prosthesis, this essay argues that disability in Cather’s early writing ranges from being a simple prosthetic sign of narrative differentiation to a complex and sympathetic resistance against an aesthetics of wholeness that results in exploitation and prejudice.