Suddenly Monstrous: Gothic Configurations of Disability and Justice in Joshua Pickersgill Jr.’s The Three Brothers

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay places Joshua Pickersgill’s novel The Three Brothers (1803) in the historical context of Romantic-Era bodily difference and considers the options Gothic narratives offer to the monstrous Other pushed outside of the biopolitical sphere and the protection of the law. The Three Brothers, though obscure, captured the literary imagination of central Romantic figures, such as Lord Byron and Matthew Lewis, both of whom wrote plays inspired by the novel’s plot: a hunchback, Arnaud, suffering social and legal persecution for his deformity, makes a deal with the devil for a new, ideal body. Pickersgill’s text offers detailed insight into the experience of disability in the late eighteenth century, and it differs from other depictions of the period in that the disabled figure is not born into difference but rather acquires it later in life and, therefore, must navigate a new multiplicity of self and the uncertainty of bodily stability.