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catastrfy · 6 days ago

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i wrote this in April 2019 and want to share it here

Autism Acceptance Month 2019 Day 10

Book Characters Who I've Identified With and/or Who Ping Me As Autistic

I've been wanting to do this as a counter to the Bewareness idea of OMGEPIDEMIC for a while, because good grief, people who seem to be autistic (at least to me) have been in books for well over a hundred years!

Beth in Little Women: too shy for school or socialising, preferred to be home with her family, including her kittens. (I have always always loathed Marmee for forever for intentionally letting Beth's Pip die. alsolutely despise her.) Beth's slow decline after her scarlet fever was very easy to identify with; my undxed back then eds/pots/mcas meant I was always a sickly, weak child.

Autistic (to me) characters are ALL OVER in the Agatha Christie books (and her autobiography makes me wonder if she was herself).

Mr Goby always addresses inanimate objects instead of the person he's talking to.

Miss Lemon loves organising, wishes to create the world's first perfect filing system, and isn't social.

Poirot has his passion for symmetry and tidiness, no hesitation about ignoring social conventions.

Ariadne Oliver uses scripting to deal with fans, ignores social conventions, feels awkward a lot, and ... I'm not even sure what else, but she is my favourite of all the characters and pings me *really* hard.

Megan Hunter in Christie's "The Moving Finger" is described as much younger than her age, clumsy, doesn't understand why people care what she wears or why it's important (I identified hard with her when i was in my teens/early 20s)

In at least one of the Christie books, a character remarks to another character that every family has someone odd in it, whether it's that they're slow or brilliant. Every. Family.

In LM Mongomery's Jane of Lantern Hill, Millicent Mary Snowbeam is 6, doesn't talk, and is considered by others to be "not all there". In Magic for Marigold, the elderly Derusha siblings Abel and Tabby: Abel is called "cracked" for not being conventional, and Tabby is called "not all there".

Zenna Henderson's People stories: Bethie in Gilead is an untrained Sensitive who is overwhelmed by the sensory stuff from other people and can't handle school. "She tried school at first, but skinned knees and rough rassling and aching teeth and bumped heads and the janitor's Monday hangover sent her home exhausted and shaking the first day, with hysteria hanging on the flick of an eyelash." -- that hysteria hanging on the flick of an eyelash was ME so much in school!

In "Wilderness" there's Lucine, "my 12 year old first grader". She's filled with rage over the bullying and abuse she gets for being slow and different. She erupts when it gets to be too much and is treated like a dangerous animal after she injures one of the bullies.

(I also like the reference to synesthesia in one of the bridging bits in "Pilgrimage" that ties the stories together: the fruit koomatkas are described as tasting like music sounds.

These are all stories that predate "autism" as a diagnosis.

But we were there. From those of us with low support needs to those of us with complex support needs.

If you're Autistic, what book characters have pinged you or have you identified with?

~Autisticat

(ps: yes, mine are mostly older books cause I am mostly older *grin* *skitters off, stage left!*)

#autistic acceptance #agatha christie #louisa may alcott #lucy maud montgomery #zenna henderson #characters that ping me as autistic

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