Diagnosing Disease:

Discrimination and Precarity in Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music (2014) and Michael Nava’s The City of Palaces (2014)

Abstract

This article discusses the representation of contagious diseases in Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music (2014) and Michael Nava’s The City of Palaces (2014). It argues that, in the two texts, disease is used to illuminate instances of discrimination and exclusion in the nineteenth century, thus inviting a consideration of the issue of (non)belonging then and now, as well as within neo-Victorianism. In particular, the article aims to show that the two texts utilise disease to shed light over the abjection of particular ethnic groups in the nineteenth century, and that in doing so they allude to contemporary issues of exclusion. Furthermore, the two texts employ disease to suggest connections between these abjected Others and the female protagonists, emphasising that the latter too are vulnerable to arbitrary violence from various figures of authority as a result of their sociopolitical disempowerment. Finally, the article raises questions about the ethics of mediating the experiences of marginalised communities through the perspectives of those with greater societal privilege, and discusses the implications of this narrative strategy for neo-Victorian fiction and scholarship.

 Emma Donoghue, Frog Music, Michael Nava, neo-Victorian, precarity, vulnerability