Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of Disability

This book deals with early attitudes toward blindness in France and England, and the light those responses shed on contemporary attitudes toward disability.
Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind
explores representations of blindness in literature, art, and religious texts during the later medieval period, paying particular attention to the differing attitudes in France and England. These countries were united by the ambivalence of Christian teachings about blindness - was being made blind a sign of God’s love, or of his wrath? - but separated by the cultural significance their societies placed on being sightless. Whereas the French adopted numerous policies - both positive and negative - toward the disability, among them the use of blinding as punishment and the foundation of hospices specifically for the blind, the English paid markedly less attention. Wheatley posits that, despite their generally horrible treatment of the blind, the greater awareness of blindness by the French led the country to make important strides in its treatment, including eventually the invention of the Braille system.