(De)Forming Families: Disability and the Marriage Plot in Dinah Mulock Craik and Charlotte M. Yonge

Abstract

This chapter examines a selection of domestic realist novels by Dinah Mulock Craik and Charlotte M. Yonge in which disability is situated at the heart of familial and romantic plotlines. Both authors represent disability as a powerful state which develops the disabled character’s moral qualities, enabling them to exert an uplifting influence upon those around them, and fostering dependent relationships which are depicted as mutually beneficial. For both writers, this becomes a way of validating experiences and qualities coded ‘feminine’. Moreover, the disabled character’s problematic relation to the marriage plot enables these authors to experiment with familial structures which are not based on the marriage bond, and to experiment with alternative narrative possibilities for female characters, without overtly questioning the desirability of marriage. This chapter also demonstrates that attitudes to disability have been inextricably bound up with the reception of domestic fiction, showing how these authors serve as test-cases for understanding the relationship between disability and canon formation.

Chirality: An inescapable concept for the pharmaceutical, bio‐pharmaceutical, food, and cosmetic industries

“…Chirality can be an inescapable concept for both nature and a variety of industries, including cosmetics, food, biopharmaceuticals, and medicines. There are several instances of chirality all around us like hands, feet, ears, helical goat horns, butterfly wings, sea shells, towel gourd tendrils, right-handed scissors, shoes, hand gloves [16,17], and so forth. Most plant secondary metabolites that are employed as medications for different illness conditions show chirality.…”