The Politicization and Gendering of Disability in Raymond Williams' Fiction

Abstract

This paper explores the politicization and gendering of disability in the novels of Raymond Williams, in which male characters are often undermined and even mutilated, and female characters are relatively endowed with certain mysterious abilities. Raymond's disabled characters are not only role models for the victims of capitalism's severe divisions, but also represent the working class, whose voices have been silenced, as well as Wales, which has been violated by the British regime, and the characters' disabilities form a metaphorical relationship with the country's disabilities. Disability in Williams's writing occurs mostly in the legs and face, undermining male roles with leg disability, highlighting the de-gendering of women with facial disfigurement, and endowing women with a mysterious witchcraft ability to exert a powerful influence over their husbands, brothers, and so on, so that the gendering of disability and the politicization of disability are highly intertwined, subverting the traditional discourse of gendered power, and metaphorically proposing a politicization of the own hopes of reconfiguring the political structure of Welsh society.