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

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get back to Dundee... will Angus be able to get to the meeting... I‟ve got itchy balls
but I can‟t really scratch them here...
I don‟t have access to Donald‟s private thoughts, but I would suggest that it is more likely
that these, or similar, rather than his blindness would have been the objects of his
meditations. Yet from out of nowhere the disabled role is imposed on him once again by a
stranger he cannot see, who speaks to him and walks away. The fact of his blindness is
pointed out to him. He is reminded that he is perceived by others as the victim of a „woeful
affliction‟ (Klages, M. 1999). The difficulty in knowing instantaneously how to respond to
such an unexpected intrusion is reflected in Donald‟s words:
You know he‟s trying to be helpful and I know it wasn‟t malicious and it wasn‟t
nasty … and I wasn‟t rude to him and I did say thanks... (l.3:842ff.)
There was much laughter at this comment, from Donald himself, from Mary and from me.
Alienation
Hazel: Shopping
I accompanied Hazel as she went to buy a pair of shoes in Abington Street in Northampton.
It was a mild, grey mid-November Friday morning. The town seemed busy, full of people. I
waited for Hazel on a bench opposite Marks and Spencer. A Santa‟s grotto had been set up
nearby and the tune of Jingle Bells could be heard playing.
I wanted to consider with Hazel the absence of images of people with impairments as we
passed along Abington Street and through the shops. I wanted to discuss with her the
possibility that the invisibility of disabled people in marketing and advertising played a part
in her own reluctance to identify as disabled. If people with impairments are almost never
seen in commercial depictions of desirability, did she feel that at some level this could be
involved in shaping her reservations about disclosing to others details of her condition? At
what cost is an outward appearance of normality bought?
During our initial discussion in Jenny‟s Cafe, Hazel questioned my reading of photographic
and televised images, mannequins and displays in high street shops as reinforcing
assumptions about the attractiveness of normality. I had suggested that the absence of
impairment might be saying something about impairment.