ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the place of intersubjectivity and, specifically, the formative qualities of the look, in two novels that feature ambiguously ‘different’ children: Doris Lessing’s (2007 [1988]) The Fifth Child and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s (1987 [1911]) The Secret Garden. The chapter uses a conceptual framework informed by object relations psychoanalysis – in particular Donald Winnicott’s (1971a) essay on the mirroring function of the mother’s face, and Kenneth Wright’s (1991) work Vision and Separation. Further, in order to reflect on the interpersonal and intergenerational mobility of states of feeling and sensation associated with disability, I also draw on Teresa Brennan’s (2004) book The Transmission of Affect. The chapter’s analytical framework necessitates a discussion about the epistemological status of my acts of reading and the claims to knowledge I am making; such questions are revisited in later chapters as I approach the issue of ‘making the disabled child’ from other theoretical angles. In Chapter 1, I introduce the metaphor of the ‘over-looking/overlooking’ gaze to theorise my own early experience of being looked at, as well as exploring the relevance of this concept both for critical disability studies and for reading practices more generally.
