9 The Panopticon
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Fred Reid
Abstract
In this chapter the author narrates his direct and personal insights into the continuity of Victorian values and practices relating to the welfare and education of blind people that were maintained well into the twentieth century. Using his novella, The Panopticon, which is based on his lived experiences of growing up in a residential blind school in the 1950s, the author argues that residential institutions for disabled people acted similarly to prisons in some aspects of their treatment of those in their care, particularly in relation to how personal relationships between pupils were regulated and the ways in which transgressions of the strict moral code of the institution were punished. He also illustrates how these places of education failed to prepare their pupils for the sexual challenges of adolescence and adult life, while acknowledging the benefits that communal living with contemporaries could provide.
Abstract
In this chapter the author narrates his direct and personal insights into the continuity of Victorian values and practices relating to the welfare and education of blind people that were maintained well into the twentieth century. Using his novella, The Panopticon, which is based on his lived experiences of growing up in a residential blind school in the 1950s, the author argues that residential institutions for disabled people acted similarly to prisons in some aspects of their treatment of those in their care, particularly in relation to how personal relationships between pupils were regulated and the ways in which transgressions of the strict moral code of the institution were punished. He also illustrates how these places of education failed to prepare their pupils for the sexual challenges of adolescence and adult life, while acknowledging the benefits that communal living with contemporaries could provide.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations viii
- List of contributors ix
- Series editors’ foreword xi
- Foreword xii
- Introduction 1
-
Part I: Attitudes
- 1 Restoration to usefulness 21
- 2 Imperial lives 38
- 3 Disabling the author in mid-Victorian realist fiction 55
-
Part II: Interventions
- 4 Medicalising deafness in Victorian London 73
- 5 Drunkenness, degeneration and disability in England 92
- 6 Victorian medical awareness of childhood language disabilities 110
- 7 ‘Happiness and usefulness increased’ 126
-
Part III: Legacies
- 8 The disabled child in an industrial metropolis 145
- 9 The Panopticon 164
- 10 Allowed to be idle 177
- Index 195
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Dedication v
- Contents vii
- List of illustrations viii
- List of contributors ix
- Series editors’ foreword xi
- Foreword xii
- Introduction 1
-
Part I: Attitudes
- 1 Restoration to usefulness 21
- 2 Imperial lives 38
- 3 Disabling the author in mid-Victorian realist fiction 55
-
Part II: Interventions
- 4 Medicalising deafness in Victorian London 73
- 5 Drunkenness, degeneration and disability in England 92
- 6 Victorian medical awareness of childhood language disabilities 110
- 7 ‘Happiness and usefulness increased’ 126
-
Part III: Legacies
- 8 The disabled child in an industrial metropolis 145
- 9 The Panopticon 164
- 10 Allowed to be idle 177
- Index 195
