Your individuality makes up who you are in society but what if that is not the case, what if you where to share who you are and most parts of how your body function with another person? Such is the case for Indian twins Radica and Doodica twins forced to live their short life spam together. Having a deformity over the centuries has always been frowned upon because most people are never able to accept the different. To humanity something that is not anatomically correct like them is deemed ugly, sinful and most of all monstrous. The Orissa twins where also considered as such and not only them but all other conjoined children where and still are bound to be defined as such. People view conjoined siblings as people that do not have self-value in specific “tapping into the fears and fantasies of audience members for whom physical attachment to another person could only have been considered unbearable because it compromised the integrity of the self” (Durbach 65). There have been various discourses as of what makes up the “self” and seeing the way in which such people with deformities are defined what makes us is the similarities amongst others, meaning that since they are not similar in the anatomical build as others they do not classify as a self? What then do they classify as “it”?.

 

 

 Throughout the years the amount of criticisms conjoined twins have received has served as the demonstration of the true self of “normal” people. Most deemed these deformalities as a curse or something that might be contagious and that is why since many fear them they actually vouch for their deaths, they figure that something different from them deserves death. This is where the boundaries of human norms and what is justifiable interact. “When they were born, the people of their village saw them as symbols of divine wrath and chased the family out of town. Their father wanted to separate the twins himself and was about to do so when a local official stepped in and rescued the girls, turning them over to a local temple” (Phreeque). This demonstrates how being deformed not only affects the person with the defect but the family a well, trying to kill these children in order to maintain normalness within society shows the extremities humanity will do in order to belong deeming not the deformed but the ones that want to kill such children to be called monsters.

 

         The disability the Orissa twins had does compare to monsters that we have read about in various works of literature but one in particular is Frankenstein’s monster. Both can be deemed as monsters in the fact that they are different from average humans, but the monster in the story has been built with various dead body parts made to simply look human where as he has only the means to be deemed a creation. Yet both receive the same treatment from those that are different from them “There was non among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies?  No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery” (Shelley chp 16). Both the creature from the story and those in real life have been shunned and discriminated against because of their appearances, yet the creature feels anger and wants war with those that pin hate on him. This is where they differentiate in monster and the disabled. A monster has the means to be angered and be able to defend itself from harm but the idea that disabled people cannot fight because of their disability and their mortality is what makes them not monstrous but human.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        After analyzing how people with disabilities such as being conjoined are deemed monstrous simply by how they look, what they represent and what is their standing in society it can be said that the ones deemed “normal” are only the people that are alike in every aspect to one another. It seems that society only accepts the non different yet we each have similar opinions but not entirely the same making being the same a paradoxical statement.It seems that conjoined twins and people with disabilities are practical slaves to the wondering eyes of people “significantly, although the film was intended for a medical audience, pirated copies where soon shown to lay audiences (544)” (Couser, pg 54). wether fictional monster or disabled person there is no such thing as not being an outcast, the different will always be subjected to the study of others. In the case of the Orissa twins however they used their “difference” as a way to promote people with disabilites. Even though they where showcased in various shows as the spectacle they used such for of representation as a career “The sisters began a career exhibiting themselves across Europe often paired with another Colman prodigy, a dwarf billed as the smallest man in the world, Peter the Small” (Marvels). It is demosntrated as an ability to accept who they are instead of falling pray to the subjugation of the public. What makes the preson in the end is not the disablity  but the ability to cope with one’s own self .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works cited

 

Couser G, Thomas. Signifying Bodies: disability in the contemporary life writing. U.S.A: University of Michigan press, 2009, print.

 

Durbach, Nadja. Spectacle of deformity: freak shows and modern culture. U.S.A: University of California press, 2010, print.

 

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, the 1818 text. U.S.A:

 

University of Chicago press, 1982, print.

 

 

"the Indian Siamese Twins." The human marvels.com. Human Marvels, n.d. web. 19 May. 2011.

 

 

"Radica and Doodica- The Orissa Twins." Phreeque.com. n.d. web. 19 May. 2011.