ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that disabled characters in literature are also hamstrung by readers' and critics' tendency to engage in the same behaviour. It shows how the widespread ignorance of the history of eugenics, both in terms of compulsory sterilisation and of eugenic 'euthanasia'. The chapter covers a lot of ground as Garland-Thomson shows with other works of literature, modern readers and critics of Beware of Pity have all-too conventional ideas about impairment and disability, and these have prevented them from being able to appreciate the novel fully. It also argues that ignorance of the eugenics movement, as well as of the fact that impairment always occurs within a social context, means that these nuances are just as lost on many other readers as they are on Lezard. The chapter proposes the Beware of Pity is simply the wrong title for the novel, and only encourages an already-existing tendency to regard Anton Hofmiller as a saint and Edith as a devil.
