Take Up Thy Bed and Walk: Death, Disability and Cure in Classic Fiction for Girls

by Lois Keith

"The Secret Garden" is a classic story of a miracle cure. Such stories contain an implicit that disability is a punishment, and can be cured by moral improvement and "mind over matter". This study explores the representation of disabled characters in children's fiction.

Genres: Disability, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Manybooks]

So yes, Lois Keith's Take up Thy Bed and Walk is yet another of these often really infuriating "my way or the highway" types of literary criticism and analysis tomes. And while SOME of the author's assertions and conjectures do indeed make much and even common sense, Lois Keith obviously also seems to have a massive and rather all encompassing angry personal chip on her shoulder with regard to death, disability and cure in children's literature (and especially in so-called girls' fiction).

Now I do realise that Lois Keith as an author who is, in fact, physically challenged and uses a wheelchair, might well see disability themes in literature for children somewhat differently and more critically than I for example would. But be that as it may, and even though especially the first part of her analysis (on classic fiction for girls) is generally and mostly astutely observant, I am still left with a feeling that with Take up Thy Bed and Walk Lois Keith often does not read in any way below the surface, between the lines, since some of the featured classical girls' novels she has chosen to analyse (in particular regarding the so-called miracle cures) are pretty facile in their analysis and that for her second part, concerning death, disability and cure in more recent fiction for girls, she has seemingly deliberately and annoyingly conveniently, and dare I claim also more than a bit lazily focused on primarily those authors and their work that bolster and support her interpretations and attitudes (understandable perhaps, but annoying and woefully unacademic nevertheless). And thus, only two stars and recommended only with major reservations and with the caveat of needing to peruse Take up Thy Bed and Walk with a healthy dose of critical skepticism.

And no, I do not really want this here review to contain too many spoilers, but in light of my rather negative star rating (although I have, in fact, enjoyed many of Lois Keith's views and commentaries), I should at least demonstrate some of my main textual issues with Take up Thy Bed and Walk, such as how for example in the section on the so-called miracle cures in classic novels for girls, the author focusses a bit too heavily on two main novels, on Johanna Spyri's 1881 novel Heidi and on Frances Hodgson-Burnett's 1911 novel The Secret Garden.

Because honestly, while Lois Keith does indeed make a point when she claims that Clara's alpine "cure" in Heidi is rather miraculous and seemingly magical, she really only manages to skim the mere surface of the novel with this, with her interpretation and musings. For if one reads Heidi closely and delves between the lines, Clara is perhaps physically challenged, but is in many ways spiritually and psychologically much more resilient and hardy than Heidi (who will literary wither away and destroy herself if she is in any place other than her grandfather's alpine meadows, as is rather stridently demonstrated with and by her sojourn in Frankfurt). And even whilst and naturally both Clara's grandmother and her father consider Clara's cure a miracle, Heidi's in all ways down-to-earth grandfather actually considers Clara's increasing health and the fact that she can now walk again more of a natural remedy, precipitated by Clara's own desires, her actively wanting to get well, and the bracing alpine air and sunshine (as well as the nourishing foods Clara has been consuming whilst visiting Heidi on the Alp). And no indeed, I am NOT in any manner claiming that Clara being able to cast her wheelchair aside (well, actually, it was pushed down the hill by a jealous Peter) might not be considered a miracle type of cure of sorts, but there is so much more than this present and visible in Johanna Spyri's clasic and that Lois Keith has simply focussed on just the supposed miracle aspects of Clara's cure is and continues to be rather personally chafing and very much annoying and depressing (as really, this only very partially the case and thus in my opinion, Lois Keith most incompletely understands Heidi as a story, as a novel).

And then with Colin's supposed miraculous regeneration in The Secret Garden, well, I am sorry, but I absolutely and totally do in NO WAY consider the latter any kind of a miracle, period (even if and even when Colin, Mary and Dickon do consider it magical). Because the storyline, the plot of The Secret Garden very clearly and in my opinion obviously always demonstrates that Colin has NEVER actually been physically disabled. He was born prematurely and weak (due to his mother's fatal accident), and because everyone, including his doctor, then assumed that he would be an invalid and have a hunchback like Archibald Craven, like his father, he was coddled, but also often spiritually neglected to the point that he had become a hysterical psychosomatic pseudo-invalid (but Colin's legs are actually not withered and crooked, his back is straight and as soon as he is willing to be outside with Mary and Dickon, his health naturally and in no way out of the proverbial blue improves). Therefore Lois Keith considering Colin's return to health a miracle cure really totally and utterly (in my opinion) misinterprets The Secret Garden in every way, as Colin was never actually physically challenged to begin with, and ALL his maladies are thus completely psychological, are generally psychosomatic.

So to continue on, and with the second section of Take up Thy Bed and Walk (about disability and cure in more recent fiction geared towards girls), it actually in many ways often feels much much more annoying to and for me than the first part, since aside from a tone of authorial writing expression that almost feels vicious and accusing at times, Lois Keith has also rather willfully ignored many current, many more recent novels and authors that do not mesh with her attitude that even today, that even in recent fiction for girls, there supposedly is still mostly a stigma with regard to disability and curing disability is still a main objective. So while I might still consider some of the author's interpretations both acceptable and even agreeable, I absolutely fail to see why for example Izzy in Cynthia Voigt's Izzy Willy Nilly should simply and seemingly happily and with natural acceptance EMBRACE her new medical condition (her having lost a leg in an automobile accident) and not be sad, frustrated and even unfortunately often consider herself as a "cripple" (for while this latter designation does of course bother me, it is the unfortunate truth that erstwhile active cheerleader Izzy would naturally be devastated and consider herself as lesser, as she has to learn to accept the fact that she will for the rest of her life be a person with just one leg). Similarly, with Judy Blume's Deenie, why is the fact that the protagonist has scoliosis and thus a condition that can usually be cured such an issue for Lois Keith? It is not as though life is shown as being a bed of roses for Deenie, but the fact that there is hope in sight, that the brace will probably cure Deenie's curvature of the spine is in my humble opinion both realistic and also a sweet assurance to other teenagers with scoliosis that their struggles with the latter are not or at least do not have to be permanent.

Now I guess this hope and desire for a cure from infirmity is perhaps personally so anathema to and for Lois Keith, because yes, her own physical challenges do indeed appear to be permanent and will not simply and cannot simply be removed, be changed (and thus is at least somewhat understandable). However, it does still massively bother me how much she tends to project and it is just blatantly WRONG for Keith to categorically insist that most modern, that most recent literature for girls focusses mainly on disability as a constant and consistent negative, as something to be overcome. Yes, with the books the author has so carefully chosen, this indeed does seem to mostly be the case, but there are many many more recent children's authors who not only write about disability, but who also often show that disability can be permanent and an almost natural, even at times essential part of a character's self, of his or her personality (authors like Guelph Ontario's children's author Jean Little, for example, whose characters often and even usually have both physical and emotional challenges that are permanent and mostly unchanging, but I guess her oeuvre does not quite fit and mesh with Lois Keith's thematics, conjectures and rather negative attitudes regarding disability in modern girls' fiction and is thus rather conveniently just ignored, but of course, I should also consider that a UK author like Lois Keith might just not be aware of Jean Little, but since she seems to be aware of those authors who fit her analysis, I do think she has at best kind of ignored inconvenient for her interpretation authors and really not done enough research). And while I definitely more than understand and appreciate that Ms. Keith has included her own and yes, excellent, novel A Different Life (about a teenager permanently confined to a wheelchair after a mysterious illness), I do wonder, considering how in many ways similar this novel is to Jean Little's oeuvre, why the latter has not been included, has not been analysed and interpreted. And no, I actually do not in any way despise Take up Thy Bed and Walk (there is in fact, as I hope to have pointed out, much of interest featured in the latter). I just think that the author, that Lois Keith is more than a bit one-sided and too on the surface in and with many of her interpretations and analyses and also portrays too much of a personal and at times even vindictive type of negatively nasty bias.

[Stef Rozitis]

This is significant, careful, intersectional, thoughtful and though it was written in 2001 still needs to be thought about by any aspiring author and possibly by readers too. Keith is fantastic at discussing the flaws of beloved classics without invalidating people's (including her own) past or current love for them. She also discusses more modern writings in a fair and balanced way, managing even to put hers in without bragging, humble-bragging or promoting (and it would be silly to leave it out).

I agree with her analysis of Gleizman who is one of the most talented and thoughtful children's authors I can think of.

Keith's call is for more dis/abled characters to be in the centre of the story, not played as a tragedy or a "miracle-cure" trope but shown with complexity as "living well" with their dis/ability. She mentions early in the book that she gets around in a wheel-chair herself, so her advocacy is practical and grounded in a thorough understanding of her subject. She mentions the way disability is socially constructed without getting into Foucault (although I am sure she could if she wanted to) and keeps it very, very simple. What makes a dis/abled person's life potentially hard and tragic is social stigma and exclusion more so than their embodiment (although she is not making light of things like pain, she is focused more on the social aspect of things).

I recommend this book. I enjoyed the analysis of stories I had read and even ones I hadn't. This is something we should all try to be more aware of to avoid cliches and belittling other people's lives.

[Seonaid]

A fascinating examination of the uses of sickness and disability in (mostly 19th C) girls' fiction, exploring Heidi, What Katy Did, Pollyanna, Little Women, The Secret Garden, Jane Eyre and Seven Little Australians, and written from the perspective of an author who herself became a wheelchair user after a road accident.

I think this is important, and I'm sure Lois Keith does too, because the disabled children in the books will either die ('Too Good to Live') or get up and walk ('The Miracle Cures') having spent years in bed or in an 'invalid chair', with all the muscle atrophy and skin issues that would come with 19th c disabilities, because they certainly still come in the 21st c. Keith's point is that few of the disabled children in these books are allowed to grow up and live a full, and fulfilling, adult life, *with* their disability, but are instead used as moral lessons for their readers. (The exception being Jamie in Pollyanna Grows Up, who is allowed to marry, but not to the heroine).

And this moral lesson is important, because even now we still view disability as a personal failure, as evidenced at the moment by the current UK Labour government's attitude to disabled people, cutting PIP payments and suggesting disabled people just need to get out more. Take up they bed and walk, indeed.

Writers of the 17th and 18th centuries saw disability and sickness as punishments for people who were bad, or who simply did not have enough faith in God to make them better, a sucketh-to-be-thee attitude. By the 19th century, pity for the poor sick or disabled child was in vogue, but the moral lesson was the same - the disability is frequently brought upon the child, usually a girl, because her behaviour is socially unacceptable and she needs to learn that the hard way. Katy Carr should have listened unquestioningly to her aunt, and saved herself 5 years (!!) of bed rest, but this is exactly what Katy really needed because she learnt to stop thinking about herself, her hopes and dreams, and instead become the Angel of the House, she to whom everyone turns when *they* need comforting. Heidi's friend Clara is chair and bedbound for apparently her whole life, for reasons unknown, until Peter destroys her chair and the Grandfather says, Have you ever thought about maybe just getting up and walking? You could bottle that old Swiss cure and sell it for a fortune.

There is some discussion about Colin elsewhere, but I feel that Keith makes it clear that Colin's illness is psychosomatic, brought about by living in a dark room, being abandoned by his father and treated as an hysterical invalid by the rest of the house. Colin's paralysis comes from fear, and it takes Mary's callous, childish indifference to him to open his eyes to the reality of his situation. There is physically nothing to stop Colin from walking, and at least Burnett gives him some time to slowly build up his strength before he goes bounding off across the moor.

Keith, however, does not want to put us off enjoying the books of our childhood, those formative texts that set so many of us on the road to a lifetime of reading. What I think Keith wants, is for the non-disabled to see the disabled as actual people worthy of their own stories, fulfilling lives and happy endings, not as moral lessons, not as figures of pity tinged with a sense of personal failing because some part of their body 'does not work.' In the final chapter, Keith briefly looks at changing attitudes in the 1980s and 90s towards disability in fiction, and mentions some novels, her own included, that centre disabled children. There are not many.

"In our modern society, after many years of social progress about disabled people's right to be accepted and valued for who and what they are, one might expect a more enlightened approach to the treatment of disability in cultural works, a more complex exploration of this well-worn metaphor. However, it would appear that the 'Take up thy bed and walk' approach to story-telling has life in it yet." (Keith, 2001, 249)

Totally recommended if you, like me, enjoy children's fiction and want to do a deeper exploration into it.

See also 'Oh Caledonia' by Elspeth Barker, which to an extent satirises many of these books and their attitudes to girls and young women - Janet is not disabled, but she is wild and independently minded, and in 1950s Scotland that is clearly just as bad. Janet is not too good to live, she is too free-spirited.

[Farah Mendlesohn]

Mixed feelings about this book. I can't remember where I came across it but I know that reading it was in part of a response to detesting Jacqueline Wilson's Katy (I usually love Wilson) which I thought utterly failed to grasp what's going on in What Katy Did.

With Keith's work I found myself agreeing with much that she said about the depiction of disability and miracle cures while at the same time saying "yes but" . As someone else notes, the whole point of The Secret Garden is that Colin is not actually disabled, he has been scared into illness in part by a wicked uncle who wants the estate (it is a gothic after all).

And similarly, Keith seems to think that injuring the spine is the *only* back injury and therefore that must be what happens to Katy, at the same time as she does note that the Victorians didn't know much about back pain. There are lots of reasons why Clara might not walk--ME comes to mind--and plenty of ways to end up with a really bad back and beg to be just allowed to rest because none of your limbs are working the way they should etc (sorry, bad memories of my teen years coming through).

All of that said: well worth reading. One of the more comprehensive and critical handlings of this topic. If you liked it, try Susan Honeyman's book Child Pain, Migraine, and Invisible Disability.

[Em 🦚🐚🪷]

One of my first “academic” literature commentaries that I did snag for free #barnard. Really interesting commentary however I do fear it got a little bit repetitive. But it really did provoke thought about how girls are represented in literature and how central the theme of being “saved” is. Brought up religion in this era as well. How reliant we were on the idea that a rebellious girl needed a miracle to become the perfect woman…

[Beth]

It's all about some of my favorite books -- Little Women, Heidi, Secret Garden... Although the author does have the distressingly common bad take that the big problem with Little Women is that Jo doesn't marry Laurie.

It's also an examination of how literature has treated disability as a metaphor and a plot device but rarely as part of the human experience.