Status Updates From Woeful Afflictions: Disabil...

This chapter "Can the Blind Girl Speak?" compared two published autobiographical works by blind women. I thought the discussion of the first one, by Mary Day, comparing it to slave narratives written at the same time, was interesting, but the second one didn't seem to fit that theme at all.

Just finished the chapter on Laura Bridgman. Because this is a book on literary conventions, the chapter mostly focuses on Howe's Annual Reports about Bridgman, and how Bridgman was presented by Howe, Dickens, and others as a "Sentimental Heroine". I think it's a good argument, although I wish the section about Howe's religious plans for Bridgman had come earlier.

Chapter 5 was awesome and very relevant to my interests re: sentimentality in the Annual Reports of the Perkins School for the Blind. I'm now part way through the Laura Bridgman chapter and equally enjoying it. Yay history!

Chapter 4 was interesting, but repetitive. Focused on one book, "The Lamplighter". The next two chapters look more like my thing, on Institutional Sentimentality & Laura Bridgman.

Chapter 3 is all Literary Crit. Not my cuppa.

Second chapter makes more sense than the first, but wow, Samuel Gridley Howe was not quite the man everyone likes to make him out to be. Language is better in this chapter, and less background knowledge is needed, but still a bit dense.

First chapter is really 17th century philosophy heavy. I know why, but needs more context for the uninitiated.