Genre, Disability, and Storytelling in Molly McCully Brown’s The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded

Abstract: Molly McCully Brown’s The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded is, by all appearances, a poetry collection. However, this article argues that reading the text within the history of the novel as a genre illuminates how Brown’s text resists and critiques both eugenic thinking and traditional novelistic narratives. By telling the stories of the characters within the text in verse, Brown challenges the idea that the traditional novel is perhaps even capable of representing the lives that are lived by her characters. Brown’s text asks readers to consider whether inscrutability, fragmentation, and a refusal of the tidy ending might in fact be key to representing the experiences of those who lived and worked at the Virginia State Colony. Readers of the text must confront ideas about who “counts” as a narrator (and perhaps even as a person) as they sit with discomfort, make peace with ambiguity and uncertainty, and practice reading with care.