A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

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pain…” (laughs)… “Do you want a taste of it, mate?” (laughs)… erm… and then
they do tend to back away (laughs)… and shrivel up… (l.1:723)
Arthur Frank‟s conception of the restitution narrative is useful in making sense of what is
happening in exchanges like the ones Jennie describes. As Frank notes, contemporary culture
treats health as „the normal condition that people ought to have restored‟ (Frank, 1997:77).
When impairment is identified closely with ill health there is always a cultural expectation
that disabled people will aspire to „get better‟:
The restitution narrative not only reflects a „natural‟ desire to get well and stay well.
People learn this narrative from institutional stories that model how illness is to be
told (Frank, 1997:78).
Such institutional stories are those learned by Charles, Sarah, Roshni, Kevin and Mary in
special school. They have also been learnt by Rose, Hazel and Surinder in mainstream
community life. They are learned in the silence about disability as well as in the charity
images. Surinder recalls:
I remember in school… we didn‟t talk about disability… there was nothing
discussed… erm … I mean … in hindsight, had we looked at that… we talked about
sex education and we talked about … erm … the differences between boys and girls,
but we didn‟t talk about disability… (l.1.147ff.)
Cathy Reay draws attention to recent research at Leeds University identifying typical
misconceptions held by schoolchildren:
disabled people are not able to work, they are unlikely to have a partner or get
married, disabilities are passed on to children and disabled people have tragic lives,
often cut short by their impairment (Reay, 2009:unpaged).
Reay quotes Angharad Beckett, leader of this study, as saying in regard to primary school
education on disability: “Many schools are doing very little, sometimes nothing” (Reay,
2009:unpaged).
Frank discusses Talcott Parson‟s theory of „the sick role‟ which he describes as „a modernist
narrative of social control‟ (Frank, 1997:82). To summarise, the sick role involves granting a
person identified as sick a temporary reprieve from social responsibilities providing they
acknowledge the task to get well and return to the normal obligations of work and family as
quickly as possible.