Ying Wang’s, PhD Le handicap dans la littérature féminine au XIXe siècle en France (The Representation of Disability in Women’s Literature in 19th-Century France) has been published by the University of Montreal Press (Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal) in Canada. This study examines how representations of disabled figures operate in nineteenth-century women’s novels, shedding light on the intersections of disability, gender, and women’s writing. Grounded in a feminist perspective and informed by Disability Studies within socio-cultural and literary contexts, the analysis focuses on four works of fiction: Anatole (1815) by Sophie Gay (1776–1852), Olivier ou le secret (1822) by Claire de Duras (1777–1828), Monsieur le Marquis de Pontanges (1835) by Delphine de Girardin (1804–1855), and Laide (1878) by Juliette Lamber (1836–1936).
This book builds on the work of feminist disability scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, whose integration of disability into feminist studies has transformed the analysis of women’s literature. It positions the disabled body as a key lens for examining gender and the literary production of nineteenth-century French women writers. Inspired by Henri-Jacques Stiker’s assertion that “disability is a factor of discovery and change,” this study brings together feminist literary criticism and Disability Studies to offer the first interdisciplinary exploration of nineteenth-century French women’s writing from this perspective.
