Extraordinary bodies : figuring physical disability in American culture and literature / Rosemarie Garland Thomson.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-189) and index.

The cultural work of American freak shows, 1835-1940. The spectacle of the extraordinary body -- Constituting the average man -- Identification and the longing for distinction -- From freak to specimen : "The Hottentot Venus" and "The Ugliest Woman in the World" -- The end of the prodigious body.

Benevolent maternalism and the disabled women in Stowe, Davis, and Phelps. The maternal benefactress and her disabled sisters -- The disabled figure as a call for justice : Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin -- Empowering the maternal benefactress -- Benevolent maternalism's flight from the body -- The female body as liability -- Two opposing scripts of female embodiment : Rebecca Harding Davis's Life in the iron mills -- The triumph of the beautiful, disembodied heroine : Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The silent partner.

Disabled women as powerful women in Petry, Morrison, and Lorde. Revising Black female subjectivity -- The extraordinary woman as powerful woman : Ann Petry's The street -- From the grotesque to the cyborg -- The extraordinary body as the historicized body : Toni Morrison's disabled women -- The extraordinary subject : Audre Lorde's Zami : a new spelling of my name -- The poetics of particularity.