ABSTRACT
The Law and the Lady's complex representations of mental illness and physical impairment provide a rejoinder to the period's obsession with rationality and personal self-control. The Law and the Lady focuses on a homicide investigation conducted by Valeria Woodville, a resourceful female amateur detective, and on exploring women's position of social and legal disability. Apart from this focus on women's position of legal disability and constraint by physical norms, the novel looks more widely at physical and cognitive disability. The Law and the Lady depicts scenarios showing the physical and emotional compensations Dexter employs in response to this physical impairment and depicts his use of a wheelchair. The Law and the Lady shows various individuals offering differing subjective opinions about whether Dexter is irrational and has crossed the 'borderline' into insanity. The assumption of women's mental inferiority is compounded for Valeria because her nervous temperament seems to confirm her instability.
