Abstract
AbstractThis chapter focuses on the influence of prosthesis use on social mobility, challenging predominant utopian views regarding nineteenth-century prosthetics. It exposes the social restrictions underpinning prosthesis use, while showing how several writers challenged the status quo. Centring on a case study of Charles Dickens’s portrayal of the villainous wooden-leg user Silas Wegg in Our Mutual Friend (1864–1865), the chapter identifies how Dickens drew from anxieties surrounding the social position of amputees by presenting a wooden-leg user as a transgressive social climber. The chapter places Dickens’s representation of Wegg in context with his other depictions of prosthesis users and those found in his journals Household Words and All the Year Round. This chapter argues that stories such as Dickens’s ultimately problematize the logic of prosthesis use.
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
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