capri0mni | (Reply)

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*shakes fist* Bloodletting!! (if he weren't a prince, he might have survived).

The word "palsy" has been around for centuries, true. But the condition now called "Cerebral Palsy" was coined by the physician Sir William Osler in the 1890s (But it may have been the early 20th century), I believe, when he was continuing the work of William John Little.

And guess who's credited with grouping all the different types of C.P. (spastic, ataxic -- if Arthur was shaky, that's the kind he had -- and dyskinetic) together as different forms of the same condition. Go on, guess.

(it was that bastard Sigmund Freud).

Anyway, I think metaphorical disabilities are already all over fairy tales -- in the trope I've come to call the "Wish born" children: an elderly couple, believed to be well past the age of having kids, wishes for a child "even if that child ___" (were a hedgehog, only as big as my thumb, were only half a person, etc.), not to mention all the youngest sons who are "simpletons" who don't understand social manners, and take everything literally, who sure do read to me as (a blunt and ableist, to be fair) understanding of autism. And they're the ones who go on to win the day. In the Grimm tale "Thumbthick," it's even mentioned that he was born prematurely -- at seven months. I was prematurely, at around seven months.

Thumbthick is one of the few actually positive stories of disability metaphors I've come across. Instead of rejecting him for his difference (like Hans Mien Igel's parents do), they respond with: "We got the child we wished for! Now, how can we make this work?" Granted, the story also makes clear that Thumbthick, though small, was both handsome and clever, so there's still that bias about who's an acceptable disabled person, and who isn't.

In my story, I went with the "Wish born" child angle, where the elderly woman makes a magical wish without even realizing it -- while she's chasing after her best milk goat through the forest, she takes a sip from a well she doesn't even know is magical, and mutters something about wishing she had children to help out, so she doesn't have to do everything.

She gives birth to twin girls. One is smaller than the other, and at first, they're afraid she won't survive (C.P is relatively common in the smaller of twins), but she does. ...And I describe her symptoms that are consistent with C.P., in a "Fairy Tale" way: that she never progressed beyond crawling on her belly like a baby, and that her "Tongue was slow in her mouth." So her father makes a wheeled cart for her to roll on, and she's grows to be able to watch after the chickens in the yard, to make sure the fox doesn't get them, and rake the coals of the fire, so the pot doesn't boil over. And her more nimble sister can chase after the goats.

Technically both girls have the potential to understand the voices of all animals and the wind (because of that magic water her mother drank), but only the smaller twin develops the ability because the neighbors are wary of her, and impatient with her slow speech, so she talks to the forest inhabitants, instead.

So -- in a way -- her condition kind of defines her character, except not. Because what really defines her is how she responds to what's happening in the rest of the story.