Lucy Maud Montgomery’s The Blue Castle (1926) challenges the presumptions about gender, illness, and the male gaze in the late 19th century and early 20th century through the portrayal of her own female protagonist with a terminal illness. In this essay, I will be presenting the tropes of the Femme Fragile and the Victorian Sickroom and investigating how Montgomery uses these tropes to give her female protagonist agency through her illness. I will be using Susan Sontag’s "Illness as Metaphor", Robert Mcruer’s "Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence" and Laura Mulvey’s "Visual pleasure and Narrative Cinema" to support my theoretical approach.

Authors:
Emma Todd, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Emma Todd is currently a Master's student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln studying Spanish Literature and Ethnic Studies. She is interested in Feminist and Feminine literature and creative writing.

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