How would Paulines illness have been viewed in the arts?
Traditionally, Pauline’s illness would have been a darker reference, because physical handicap or deformity was often reserved as a symbol of evil, or it was viewed as a ‘punishment’ meted out on those who had sinned, or it could be a manifestation of a hidden spiritual defect. More rarely, deformity could be an unjust burden, the selfless bearing of which resulting in spiritual elevation. Examples are rife throughout classical literature: Shakespeare was particularly fond of this device and “Richard III” springs to mind as a prominent example of deformity linked to evil, with Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and Stevenson’s “Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde.” Melville’s Ahab in “Moby Dick,” Hugo’s Quasimodo in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” and Shelley’s monster in “Frankenstein” are examples of more spiritually complex deformities.
