"Blue Horse" Exhibition
In the May 30th 1868 publication of Harper’s Weekly, an exhibition of a “blue horse” is advertised. This advert consists of a sensationalized and highly dramatized description of a blue horse; a creature defined by, and displayed for its difference from normalcy. It is evident that this excerpt from Harper’s is actively exploiting difference, and putting it on spectacle for the enjoyment of the public. Such exploitation of physical difference as displayed in the "blue horse" advert brandished in Harper’s, can change the way we read “Limping Lucy’s” difference in The Moonstone.
Franklin Blake describes Lucy as “a wan, wild, haggard girl, with remarkably beautiful hair, and with a fierce keenness in her eyes, [who] came limping up on a crutch” (Collins 300). Her dramatized description is read much like that of the blue horse in the exhibit; it is exaggerated and relies heavily on defining her by her physical difference, her disability. Blake labels Limping Lucy as a “strange creature” (Collins 301); and by doing so seems to be employing language which parallels that used to describe the blue horse on spectacle. It is de-humanizing and estranging language that plays into the idea of exhibitionism and sensationalism of difference or otherness
Works Cited:
Collins, Wilkie. “Third Narrative” The Moonstone. Ed. John Sutherland. New York: OUP, 2008. 292-307. Print.