ABSTRACT
Poor Miss Finch argues for an acknowledgement of the rights of disabled people to self-actualization. Poor Miss Finch portrays an adult woman, Lucilla Finch, who has been blind since infancy, cataracts having grown over her retinas. Collins's aim is to portray an individual's experience of a sensory disability's psychological and practical effects in a way that could be recognized as medically accurate and psychologically realistic. In Poor Miss Finch Lucilla's characterization both utilizes and departs from these traditional symbolic meanings of blindness. Poor Miss Finch delivers the message that blindness is not a pathological or pathetic state. Collins does depict Lucilla as lacking 'insight' in one regard: her fear of dark colours, which the novel represents as dangerously close to racism. While Lucilla fear of dark colours is part of the novel's attempt to make its representation of blindness psychologically nuanced, there is a strong case for believing that Collins uses Lucilla's fear to provide an allegorical commentary on racism.
