Julies Disability

Moreover, further emphasising how the able-bodied person will focus on the physical differences of the disabled individual, as it is demonstrated with Julie. This is made evident when Aunt Bea first perceives Julie from afar. Aunt Bea first indicates the visual characteristics of Julie, in referring to her as the “The fat Lord,” then focusing on her “crazy brush cut” or “her funny walk” (Gowdy 9). The minor physical details that ought not to matter is what causes Aunt Bea to recognize that Julie is disabled. However, it is also important that Julie is perceived to be the opposite of what Aunt Bea ‘desired’ when she chose to foster her. This is because Aunt Bea imagined Julie as a “Jewish girl- dark (black), undernourished [...] haunted Anne
Arguably, the societal benefit system is supposed to reach to understand individuals like Julie, however this does not happen. This inaction to understand Julie, further critiques how society fails to properly aid the vulnerable. Problematically, since Julie is recognized as the vulnerable, this also causes primal rejection in the able-bodied; consequently, this causes the able-bodied to minimize their attention towards Julie. This idea is then emphasized by how severely disabled individuals must endure a life that is an on-going foil (Burghurdt 557). Burghurdt, explains that possessing a disability will not only functionally damage the individual’s life, but also sociocultural norms will entail their abjection. Consequently, this causes the vulnerable to become abandoned within society. Furthermore, Burghurdt argues there is a generalized agreement in disability studies that the concept of being disabled is determined on the otherness in the agent’s appearances, or behaviors. Rather, possessing a disability is not recognized as a normative state that “Just is” (557). Problematically, it has become an extensive focus on the agent’s physical conditions that has been pushed to the extremes, which causes the able-bodied to ignore the injuries that are caused by the disability and focus more on their aesthetic otherness. Arguably, focusing on the appearance of the vulnerable is the able-bodied society’s way of creating a barrier against what contradicts their own ideal body. Additionally, this barrier causes the able-bodied to disregard the significances of Julies utterances, or actions throughout the story. However, the story makes Julie’s emotionally harmed state clear to the reader when the text momentarily focuses on her internal thoughts, as she “remembers there is a