This is Orlando, a podcast about the history of women's writing from medieval times to the present.

This episode is about technology, disability, and women’s writing in the nineteenth century.

We talk to Vanessa Warne about Alice King, a nineteenth-century novelist who was also a blind woman. Writing in The Girl’s Own Paper about her experience of blindness, King assures her readers that loss of sight is nothing to fear.

She writes: “As a child I was peculiarly bold and fearless; indeed, my blindness seemd to make me braver than others of my age… I did not fear darkness, because I needed no light. I learned to ride on horseback, and was a bold horsewoman, sitting in my saddle with as much ease and confidence as if I was in an armchair.” 

As a child, King’s parents read aloud to her, and her mother tried to improve her memory by having her memorize verse. She remembers “My capacity for writing began to develop at a very early age, and broke out into little ripples of verse almost as soon as I could speak. It seemed to come naturally to me, like song to a young thrush.”

Disability brings the relationship between writing and technology to the foreground. The nineteenth century saw the invention of several technologies that improved the access of people with vision impairment to print material. The development of Braille allowed some to read through their fingertips. And the typewriter, which became commercially available in the 1870s, helped those who were sighted and those with vision impairment alike to compose legible manuscripts quickly and efficiently. 

We also discuss the broader importance of disability and language. Even today, ableism, the presumption that able-bodied people are superior to those with physical disabilities, permeates our language. We discuss the harms of using terms like “shortsighted” and “myopic” metaphorically to discuss shortcomings that have nothing to do with impaired vision.