As Lennard Davis points out, disability is a porous and unstable category that can be defined and conceptualized in a number of ways. This paper explores disability in the context of mothering, - particularly in terms of stress-related trauma indicators or other mental health issues - and its representation in British fiction in a number of literary-fantastical and supernatural forms. Following Davis' argument that realism in the novel is associated historically with ideas of the primacy of the "average," or "normal," Davis (2001 p. 543), I make a distinction between disability in "realist" and "magic fantastical" children's fiction, taking David Almond's novel Skellig (1998) as a central example. I explore the ways in which the central figure of the angel emblematises the distinction between the imaginative and the adult, "everyday" world: and the way in which this takes a transgressive or socially liberating form. I compare this to the more historical-realist approach found in Michelle Magorian's Goodnight Mr. Tom (1983). Parallels are drawn with the themes of mothering, disability and discourse found within Philip Pullman's children's trilogy His Dark Materials (2001). A final comparison is drawn with Jan Needle's My Mate Shofiq (1978). I have picked these texts because they display different approaches to mental health, mothering, disability and the adventuring child and -- although the central themes are common -- they span different genres and generations. The difference between the four works is summarized in the way they suggest the children of mothers with traumatic stress disorders or other mental illnesses should be treated: whether, (as historically was the case) when parents experience mental disorder, the children should be removed semi-automatically, as if from "danger" and abuse, or (in line with more recent mental health and family welfare policies) supported to achieve constructive parenting and maintain children's well being.

Realism in Children's Fiction of Disability: A Historical-Thematic Approach

"Realism" is a historically contested category with its own in-built assumptions and social resonances. As Lennard Davis points out, the ideology of fictional realism is a problematic one for disability studies, Davis (2001 pg. 243). Moreover, the term "realism" implies that there is an idea of the "real", "usual," or "normal." Clearly, some novels do try to engage with disability in a "realistic" way: this can be viewed as helpful. However, "realistic" social writing does not always mean "realism" in terms of fiction writing. Children's fiction is a genre that contains many exemplars of idyllic and magic-fantastical writing. This is not necessarily detached from social realism. Frances Hodgson Burnett, the writer of The Secret Garden (1911) blended children's fictions of the pastoral and historical with attempts at social realism, and educational social comment.

Such writers of "realistic" children's fiction intersect the idyllic and the more "realistic" social world. Michelle Magorian, in Goodnight Mr. Tom, continues this tradition. A "mad," or mentally ill mother is contained within the dystopian world of the urban slum: as a carer she is harmful, and her evacuee son is rescued to the world of the village. Mr. Tom, his new carer, is also "eccentric " and unpopular: but unlike the mentally unstable mother his "eccentricity" proves to be nothing more than that. In an environment away from his mother, the young boy finds love and steadiness, and begins to grow up: much as in the boys find freedom and adulthood in My Mate Shofiq, although in a different way and era.

Different as these works are, all three engage both with the topic of care in mothering and with the issue of disability. Shofiq's mother has an unspecified mental illness: Needle uses her incapacitation to explore socially transgressive themes. Goodnight Mr. Tom depicts a clearly unstable, presumably semi-psychotic mother, whose own mental problems and delusional religious qualities produce an emotionally damaging (and, for William's little sister, literally life-destroying) experience of childhood. In Burnett's work mothering in absentia and tropes of emotional damage co-exist (and are juxtaposed with) physical disability: the effectively "damaged" Mary, who led a spoiled childhood and whose parents are now dead is paralleled by the apparently physically disabled Colin. His mother has also died.

Burnett's work takes a traditionalist and patronizing view of disability. In Michelle Magorian's work the mental illness of the mother is presented highly unsympathetically: this is a traditional topos of mad/bad parenting, as opposed to the more sympathetic and nuanced view of Needle, Pullman and Almond. Pullman and Almond use fantasy to create a setting in which the multiplicity of individual perspectives and various levels of understanding as related to effectiveness and dis-ability, can in fact be more "realistically" explored. Removal of children from their parents is a cultural device for "restoring order: " it is also a traditionalist (and arguably inhumane) way of dealing with the so-called "problem" of mental illness. It is also, however, a traditional topos in children's literature, in order to allow children to have adventures, free from adult norms. These novels play with this convention in very different ways.

Signifiers of the imaginative and fantastical in even the "realist" social agenda of contemporary portrayals of disability in children's fiction suggests that the borderline between the disabled and the fantastical, whilst contentious, provides an interesting counterpoint within which to engage with the idea of difference and perspective. What is imagined is not what is necessarily un-real: The difference between subjectivity and reality, personal reality and interpersonal perspective is a crucial one, especially in disability studies, where the focus is often on the vast difference between what is felt externally and what is internally "seen."

The idea of the contained body (Foucault, 1987) is obviously a relevant one here: The disciplining of the subjected human body may involve labelling difference from a seen or standardized norm as "disability": it may also, however, involve erecting barriers between the idea of the irregular, the invisible, the stereotype and the regularly "seen". Fictions of identity form only part of the topic of disability studies, however. In itself difference can be seen as a source for joy, for positive endeavour and the possession of a unique, different and wholly valid perspective, or life experience.

In the discourse of the imaginary, "fictional," and perspectival can be viewed in a context where the " real" or "generally" believed itself needs to be considered abnormal, imperfect, in its own way unreal: the idea of hyperrealism perhaps has relevance here, as the primary and dominating fictions of contemporary signifying society are challenged and engaged with by these alternative visions of reality. As such, the very fluidity, flexibility and uncertainty of the imaginary functions as a counter-coding to the hyper-rigidity of the contemporary dominating signifiers themselves.  This is to be distinguished from the reality of disability, which can itself be an enabling, affirming, and ultimately positive "experience". For all these reasons magic realism and the fantastical is a highly appropriate genre through which to explore social issues and qualities of disability: it departs from the difficulty of the dominance of the "normal" in the realist form.

Childhood, Mothers and Disability: Pullman and Almond

Pullman and Almond both react against symptoms of social stigmatization, and also against the creation of an idea of the "normal." Their work explores the boundary between the fantastical, the personal, the unusual and the disabled human identity. This enables a complex scene setting between the emotional intricacies of the inner life and the symbolic orders of the outside world. As such they deal with significances of physical disability and mental illness in a particularly sophisticated and symbolic fashion that has great significance for disability studies.

In Skellig, childhood becomes a messy experience in which the young person is constantly presented with issues of parental dysfunction and inadequacy, as well as dramas of life and death. Skellig won the 1998 Carnegie Medal and Whitbread Children's Book of the Year, and is an ALA Notable Children's Book: it received a five-star review from readers in the Disability and Illness section of the Cool Reads website.

The central character -- Michael -- is a young boy with an apparently dying baby sister (the sister is in hospital) who moves into a new house with his agonised and temporarily dysfunctional parents. Left to his own devices, he is soon bored, clearly emotionally troubled, disaffected and confused. Into this world comes an angel -- "Skellig" -- with what appears to be a condition of chronic arthritis. Of Christian typology, the angel is theologically identifiable with a non-conformist Blakean vision of evolution promulgated within the text. He is also disabled. I use the word disabled here cautiously, because it is possible to argue that arthritis represents not a disability itself but an illness, or complaint. However, since Skellig is himself a highly symbolic figure and his "arthritis" is of a particularly fantastical nature, I feel justified in stretching descriptive boundaries in using the term. As Gareth Williams points out, whilst illness and disability are clearly separable categories it is possible to at some level to identify disability phenomenologically with the "pain or discomfort of bodies" (Williams: 2001, p. 135). I also use the word "disabled" rather than illness to refer to Skellig's condition precisely because the otherness of the angel is implicitly validated by the otherness, or unexpectedness of his condition -- he is not fallen, he simply is - and because his condition seems to be an implicit part of who he is, a very function of his identity rather than a temporary or aberrant health-departing norm. He is an angel: he is disabled: his disability is surprising, although of course not as surprising as his presence himself.

In this sense, far from being a condition associated with defeatism and significant suffering, disability becomes part of a radically transfiguring scheme in which the very differentness and otherness of the angel becomes part of a radical response to the outside world's problems. He does not promise "healing," does not bring any gifts, yet in his very presence there is steadiness and visibility. He does not efface the world's problems, but nor is he wholly conditioned by them. Rather, he functions as a kind of reappraisal of value-systems in a world which currently appears -- to the boy with a sick sister -- obsessed by both attempts at social standardization, erasure of difference, "coping" mechanisms and "healing" norms. His sister needs healing, but so do his parents: Michael himself is in need of inner healing, dealing as he is with significant family trauma. Yet at the same time he is suspicious of the socially conditioned healing establishments, which he rightly recognizes as socially differentiating and potentially stigmatizing. Against this, the angel's chronic "disability" is unexpected, tangible, and strangely joyous. Michael seeks to "cure" him, but for the angel such an outcome is tangential and irrelevant.

Critically, the angel disrupts both Michael's preconceptions about wellness, wholeness and his preconceptions about being and the idea of death and life. He does not even recognise Skellig as an angel initially, because the angel fits none of the characteristics one might expect of heralded supernatural beings:

I thought he was dead. He was sitting with his legs stretched out, and his head tipped back against the wall. He was covered in dust and webs like everything else and his face was thin and pale. Dead bluebottles were scattered on his hair and shoulders. I shone the torch on his white face and his black suit.

Such an ambiguous picture fits ill with the resplendent splendour of angelic imagery in historical Christian (Western) culture:

He spake: and to confirm his words, outflew/ Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs of mighty Cherubim." (Paradise Lost 1667, Book 1. 665 )

Transgressive themes matter here: Skellig represents a form of liberation not just from cultural stereotype but from the social norms of "education" "health" and "cure" posited by the adult world. He is repeatedly presented as a form of being, superior in range yet with tellingly human characteristics: the word "evolution" is presented in this context, and it is suggested that his body is the kind to which humanity may aspire. Disabled, he liberates, and teaches us to see differently. As such he is an optimistic fictional creation: a figure of awe.

As a relevant signifier for disability studies, the notion of a disabled angel is the precise opposite of viewing difference as deviant, an unhealthy departure from the societal norm. It represents difference as opportunity, as a place and space for potential growth. The angel's difference is clearly relevant here, as a symbolic figure of future potential. Like many hopes for the future, he bears wings. His disability is part of him: it is not a negative aspect, simply part of who he is. He offers a different perspective. His presence is healing, valuable and joyous in itself. In what is perhaps a classic trope of disability studies, by his very differentness he changes the way others see.

The instructive qualities of the disabled angel as a figure of hope and difference contrast with the difficulties of "seeing" or believing in him. The last inhabitant of the house was reckoned "mad" by the medical establishment, having said he saw Skellig. Cultural intersections also operate between disability, exclusion and radical issues of social justice: medical interventions and the theme of social pain. In this story, themes of social disability, medical exclusion, and emotional and physical handicap intertwine. The interface between physical disability and public institutions plays a particularly important role. Michael's anger at the medical establishment is represented by his fear and hatred of Dr Death:

Then I heard the doorbell ringing, and heard Doctor Death coming in. I called him Doctor Death because his face was grey and there were black spots on his hands and he didn't know how to smile. I'd seen him lighting up a fag in his car one day as he drove away from our door.

Reacting against his own mother's mental suffering -- she is in a clearly dysfunctional state relating to present trauma -- Michael shuns the worldview that the doctor represents. The childish stereotype of doctors -- an inversion of the disability-world view as "sick," and in need of "cure" -- is manifested outwardly in a hatred of all institutions, including school. Since the school and hospital are both concerned with the training and disciplining of the human body, it is possible to read Michael's rebellion against school as a counter-cultural reaction, including an awareness of the freedom from "normative" bodily functions and form.

'The baby might not die,' I said.

'That's good,' said Mina.

I sat on the wall a few feet away from her.

'You weren't at school today,' she said.

'I wasn't well.'

She nodded.

'Not surprising, considering what you've been through.'

Mina doesn't go to school: her mother teaches her. The free-flowing style of Mina's mother's parenting contrasts with the inadequate parenting Michael currently receives. Central to the schema of Skellig, too, is an engagement with the idea of children's intolerance of other children, of types of difference; in other words, of the existence of playground intolerance, misunderstanding, and its emergence in bullying. This has particular significance for a disability reading, because slang tropes of disability are clearly a central part of such derogatory reference and social catcalling.

Mothering matters in this context because care is a word of some significant fault. Care is a difficult concept to encounter in the perspective of disability studies, carrying as it does loaded connotations of "dependence" and enforced childishness: in this case, however, the care given is by children, to the angel. There is a significant parallel here with the representative inversions of disability studies: the children invert adult expectations of dependency not only by "coping," but by themselves caring for and being cared for by an angel, so is the model of child-adult relations reversed.

The children are startlingly independent. Like disabled people within society, they discover that they are in possession of a unique perspective, different abilities; they can encounter realities that the adults can't. The carer-cared-for model is inverted: as Michael's mother becomes increasingly unable to function in her socially defined model of motherhood, Michael is brought into a position of autonomy, independence and creative care himself. Childhood is redefined. There is perhaps a parallel here with the historical position of disabled people, who for so many generations were denied any autonomy over their own bodies, treatment (or, indeed life-choices) and who in social terms were regarded more as burdens than as independent human beings with much to care for or to "give." However, the difficulties of the parents are not minimized. Motherhood may be regarded here not just as a trope of individual care per se but also as a signifier of the nurturing and protective care idealistically provided by "society," or normative social structures: it is highly significant here that it is in the absence of such normative (encasing) structures that Michael encounters the angel, the possibility of different ways of being, begins to function independently with regard to social institutions, thinks for himself and is brought to a new sense of wellness in life.

This connection between maternal incapacity -- the inability of society to care -- and the transformation of the child from dependent to independent carer and adventurer -- is echoed in His Dark Materials trilogy. In Philip Pullman's fiction, Will is a teenage boy whose mother is suffering from mental illness. Will -- who is initially unable to tell the difference between his mother's fears and reality -- is plunged into a situation of learning to travel between worlds, use a sacred knife, and grow up.

Will's adventures ironically parallel those of his mother's, whose delusions are eventually traced to the bizarre disappearance of his father. She is not quite as ill as she appears: Her illness had its roots in significant events. As Will travels between worlds, the reasons behind his mother's illness become clear: her husband was genuinely being followed, he did not die, he did genuinely just "disappear," and for much of her marriage he and they were in significant danger. There is an implicit point here -- that the causes of mental illness are complex, and that what seems bizarre and inexplicable, especially in terms of mental illness, is perhaps explicable and wholly understandable, when viewed from a different perspective. Our sympathy for Will's mother increases as we learn her true tale. Will's journey of learning contrasts with the (inhumane, and uncomprehending) treatment meted out to Will's mother in "this-world": She has no access to effective treatment. The social comment is clear.

Pullman's work is useful to compare to Almond's as both contain a strong parallel strand between discourses of the fantastical and disability. Both also contain tropes of non-effective mothering, linked with images of acute mental suffering. Both mothers are treated sympathetically, though, as suffering from the consequences of some unknown mental trauma. Like Almond's, Pullman's work contains angels: like Almond's, his area also unusual (transgressive) although here the difference is not that they are disabled but that they are gay. Bodies differ and change enormously in his narrative, in what may be read as a celebration of alternativity, difference and, by implication, the value of the disabled body. Alternative (deviant) bodies such as gay angels or armoured bears may also be said to function within a context of transgression to the norms of male dominated, heterosexist, homogenous and repressive "adult" society: There is therefore a parallel between the fantastical qualities used in children's fiction and the topic of children's disability. Both also imply a discourse of liberation. There is a parallel between the celebratory nature of contemporary disability studies, the explosion of post-modern "difference" and the paradox of anti-institutional, alternatively bodied sites of being and discourses of the fantastical explored in these texts.

If we are to take disability in children's literature studies seriously, a more serious, radical, and "inclusive" model is required. As the characters in these novels grapple with their understanding of the supernatural and the unthinkable, the death of a baby, the breakdown of parenting and childhood breakaway, the operating models of social expectation and "normal" behaviour are called into question. In different ways, both His Dark Materials and Skellig demand that we re-order our senses not just of what it means to be whole or "normal" but what it means to be. As a disabled angel, Skellig represents both limitation and possibility: effective transcendence and suggestion of its bodily limitations. The angel does not represent perfection: rather, he suggests that reality contains both surprises and challenges, and that disability is itself an alternative model of reality. As such, Skellig encapsulates many of the paradoxical qualities of the idea of disability, in its more transfiguring and liberating form. Both Will and Michael have not a lesser, but a different childhood experience: by the end of the novels, it would be hard to view either of them as "repressed" or "deprived." In a significant and telling sign of social responsibility and the role of the child-carer, just as Michael re-integrates symbolically into his family, Will literally leaves the fantasy world behind him and returns to his mother, at the end. His responsibilities extend beyond the fantastical world.

This contrasts strongly with the view of mental illness in parenting expressed by Magorian, who presents her central child character -- again called Will -- as having had a wholly damaging and ineffective parenting experience. The only way for him to flourish is to be removed permanently -- into another home, as an effective experience of adoption and fostering. Left to herself, his mother damages him and accidentally kills his sister. She is a cardboard figure: a stereotype of the "mad, bad and dangerous" category. We understand nothing of her condition: she is presented as implicitly "evil," and strong value-judgements about her behaviour are made. Will is clearly an abused child, and rightly receives support. However, no efforts are made in the text to help his mother, who is in equal need. She simply "disappears" at the end: The mental health problem is erased, to help provide a happy ending. The implicit message in this text is that mental illness is comparable to "evil," that where a parenting experience is dysfunctional removal is the only option, and also that mental health difficulties are incompatible with bringing up a child -- all highly reactionary views.

There is a stylistic paradox here. Magorian's is seemingly the more "realist" text; it has no fantastical qualities, and is set in a realistic historical setting. It might seem, therefore, that it is the more realistic discussion. However, like Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, Magorian's work is in fact highly stylized and allegorical. The central topos is of a rural idyll -- old-fashioned country values, etc., into which, like Mary and Colin, the London-born Will can escape. His troubles disappear, in the context of the countryside, in what is actually quite an unrealistic and -- from the perspective of mental health studies -- unhelpful way. By contrast, both Will and Michael return, in different ways, to help their mothers. Although the fantastical in children's fiction might appear escapist and unrealistic, it is clear that realism in children's novels about disability is not just a question of form, as Pullman and Almond both provide more cogent and socially satisfactory readings. The context of the fantastical can provide a creative and socially resonant reading of its own.

Clearly, however, in dealing with depictions of motherhood and disability, gritty realism has its own part to play. Shofiq, by Jan Needle, is a story of two boys in a cross-cultural neighbourhood where both mothers are suffering or have suffered from post-natal depression, rendering them temporarily incapable of effective parenting. Bernard, the white boy, recognizes Shofiq's mother's symptoms before Shofiq himself. Both are therefore cast into the roles of effective survivors and carers, just like Pullman's Will and Almond's Michael: they fight bullies together, explore the town from different perspectives and transcend their sense of racial stereotypes and difference. However, disability is ultimately presented as neither a transformative nor ultimately life-affirming experience. For Shofiq's family, the consequence is disastrous. The story ends with his mother being taken into hospitalized care and his family facing being split up by the authorities. Such a reading of the social consequences of disability in mothering is a tragic one. At the end of the novel, Needle implies that the wrong decision has been made. Similarly, we see little sense of positive experience in Bernard's encounter with his mother's disability.

The key difference between the four works is that Magorian's Will has to be removed into a somewhat unrealistic rural idyll in order to flourish. The mentally ill mother, therefore, has to be removed entirely. This contrasts with a more socially inclusive way of handling mental illness, in which social agencies attempt to help the family to cope better, rather than removing the children. Pullman's Will leaves home, in order to grow -- he reaches a better understanding of the causes of his mother's illness, and then returns home to deal with his responsibilities. In Skellig, the parenting trauma is temporary, and is removed by natural causes: When the crisis passes, the angel leaves. It is as if, as well as transforming Michael's understanding of the world, the figure of the disabled angel has acted as a symbol of hope. Yet where Will and Michael both manage to transform the experience of dealing with severely dysfunctional mothers into something positive and liberating, - Will may return to deal with the problems of his own world, but in his fantastical adventure, much has been taught and much overcome - the ending of Needle's novel shows "hope" at a low premium. 'Realism' is identifiable with sadness. The sense of hope is lacking in this novel: the children 'cope,' but as regards disability there is no sense of any greater understanding, inner growth or liberation. The disabled mothers are a 'problem,' although sympathetically viewed.

In conclusion, then, it seems that, whilst children's fiction of all varieties has much to offer on the topic of disability, the fantastical in children's literature shows a symbolically alternative way of imaging disability, in a more inclusive, thoughtful and hopeful way. Clearly, social realism and fantasy literature both have different strengths and weaknesses, but care needs to be taken by all to represent these issues responsibly, and not fall into the "trap" of either over- glamorising or over-stigmatising the situation.

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Biographical note:

Dr. Kidd did her Ph.D. at Sheffield University in English Literature. She is now Wellcome Scholar at the Institute of Genetics and Biorisk in Society at Nottingham University as part of an interdisciplinary team investigating the cultural representation of mental health issues in contemporary society.