Betteredge on Roseanna

Roseanna's introduction by Betteredge in the opening pages of The Moonstone's fourth chapter is one that implies a sympathetic attitude towards her disabilities. Beginning with empasizing her history as "a most miserable story" (Collins 455) as shown in this opening page, and continued in the following pages through her physical characterizations, like her plainness and "additional misfortune of having one shoulder bigger than the other" (Collins 456), Betteredge acknowledges her physical differences, but does not imply that Roseanna has a negative character as a result of them. The other women-servants of the house, on the other hand, seem to show a dislike of Roseanna and her physical difference, as they "pounded on it like lightning the first day she came into the house" (Collins 456), a viewpoint that Betteredge feels "was most unjust" (Collins 456).

While the other women-servants of the house seem to treat Roseanna as a form of the other, Betteredge views her disabilites in a sympathetic fashion. In such a way, Betteredge defies the Victorian notion that Cindy Lacom proposes, that "Disability does the important work of defining a norm and using bodies literally and metaphorically to establish concepts of normality and deviance" (Lacom 547). While the servants link Roseanna's disability with deviance in this fashion, Betteredge opposes this general notion, and offers a more progressive and accepting viewpoint towards Roseanna's physical differences.

Works Cited: 

Lacom, Cindy. “‘The Time Is Sick and out of Joint’: Physical Disability in Victorian England.” PMLA, vol. 120, no. 2, 2005, pp. 547–552.

Collins, Wilkie. "The Moonstone." All The Year Round 11 January 1868.