ABSTRACT
Both feminist critics and disability studies scholars write about the ways that disability—and its attendant stereotypes of limitation and punishment—transform this wild girl into a good woman. Disability, it appears, is used to reinforce femininity. This chapter suggests that rather than relying on a simple binary of normal bodies versus disabled bodies, the novel What Katy Did presents a collage of images and experiences of disability. On its surface, What Katy Did, like other nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, utilizes disability as a metaphor with which to correct Katy's tomboy behavior. It begins in the middle of things—the fantasy of a healthy household has already been lost with the death of Mrs. Carr. Disability in this novel is not simply a metaphor or plot device whose resolution brings closure; instead, What Katy Did describes the impossibility of normalcy.
