Today it’s my pleasure to welcome Ella T Holmes to GeekDis to discuss the ableist narrative of toxic perseverance. Ella discusses this harmful narrative in literature by offering a critical analysis of Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.

This post was part of the GeekDis event which you can follow on social media using the #GeekDis. You can also view all this year’s content at GeekDis 2023 content hub!

Important

It has come to my attention that instead of leaving comments about this essay here at Just Geeking By some people have contacted the author directly to harass her. This is not acceptable.

This essay offers an alternative perspective, and before you read Ella’s post I would like to remind everyone that the disabled and neurodivergent community is not a monolith. I have read Fourth Wing and my views of the EDS representation concur with Ella’s. You can read my personal opinions in my book review of Fourth Wing here. I fully support this essay and the right of members of the disabled and neurodivergent community to speak up about inaccurate representation. That is the entire point of GeekDis.

There seems to be a pretty low bar when it comes to stories with disability representation: It didn’t use the “magical cure trope”! The rep must be good!

Am I the only one who hears an angry buzzer noise whenever I hear that? 

Unfortunately, some problematic representations and narratives can be quite sneaky and insidious, easily overlooked for the empowerment that they’re promising. The specific narrative I’m talking about today is the narrative of pushing through, of overcoming, of gritting one’s teeth and getting on with things. 

In critical conversation with two of my good friends about this narrative, one of them raised the question of what this is called, making the point that it’s a pretty common narrative in fiction even unrelated to characters and stories centering disabled folk. For the purposes of this essay which does centre on disability, I’ll be exploring it under the name “toxic perseverance”, for I believe that covers the basics: the unhealthy persistence of doing something that is detrimental to oneself and one’s body.

Toxic perseverance in fiction is not inherently problematic. If it shows up in a book and is criticised, problematised, or questioned, I’m okay with giving it the benefit of the doubt and believing that the author doesn’t actually think that it’s the answer to everything. However, when it shows up in fiction and does go unproblematised, such as in Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing, that’s when the lines get blurry and the representation sours for me. 

When we look at the narrative Rebecca Yarros created and break it down into a basic premise, we get this: A young woman named Violet, who has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS, or a similar disability unnamed in the text), is forced to enter a military training school that requires her to do multiple high-intensity and high-impact activities every day, such as sparring, exercise, and dragon riding.

While Fourth Wing does not utilise the “magical cure trope”, it did seem to have Violet magically* do almost everything her able-bodied companions (and enemies) do through toxic perseverance that goes completely unproblematised or critiqued. In fact, I would argue that the narrative endorses it by rewarding Violet often with either success or zero consequences. 

*I say magically here for parallelism, and because it feels like a miracle she could function the way she did for months on end with no consequences.

Unfortunately, in the real world, there is a very real, harmful, and problematic belief that if disabled folk aren’t able to do something, they must not be trying hard enough. As someone who lives with EDS and neurodivergence, I can’t count how many times I’ve gone to medical professionals and explained my symptoms only for them–the people I’m entrusting my care and wellbeing to–to tell me I “just need to try harder” or “just need to push through”. To see this kind of attitude reflected in a fantasy novel, one of the first I’ve ever seen that claims to represent a body and a disability like mine and see it not be questioned or critiqued, but held up as “good” rep, makes me uncomfortable.

There are of course times in everybody’s lives when we need to mentally shelve our pain and struggles in order to get on with things that need doing—it’s an unfortunate fact of life that we won’t always have the time and ability to accommodate ourselves with rest, self-care, or an appropriate level of respect for our body’s capabilities. It’s also an unfortunate reality that doing this has detrimental impacts on our bodies and our mental health. 

Any fiction that doesn’t reflect the consequence of doing so feels like it’s pretending and or endorsing perseverance as a good and effective tool, and not acknowledging the toxic issue that it can be, especially in extenuating circumstances such as Violet’s.

Mentally shelving pain is a coping mechanism that Violet explicitly employs several times throughout the book, but one could argue she’s doing it all the months that the narrative spans over. It’s a coping mechanism that not only works, but works every time for months on end, and does not cause any issues for Violet.

Creating a narrative in which a character with a disability overcomes all of their pain and other symptoms through force of will alone sets unrealistic expectations—unrealistic expectations which are, as I mentioned previously, a very real issue for very real disabled people in our very real world. 

I believe we should have seen some impact of that lifestyle if the author was trying to engage with this intentionally. Because fiction is not created in a vacuum and this narrative goes unproblematised in-text, it’s unclear whether Yarros actively endorses this mindset, or is accidentally endorsing it, neither of which is good. 

This characterisation paints Violet as reckless and self-endangering to me, however, the text doesn’t seem to think so, and neither do a lot of the 5-star reviewers who laud this book for its “amazing rep”. The one character who points out any danger engendered by Violet’s perseverance is vilified because he’s also being condescending and infantilizing, rendering any good points he might have made completely moot because we’re in Violet’s head and pre-disposed to aligning with her—a reality easily verified by the mass reviews calling him an asshole, as Violet does. Worse, the characters we’re supposed to like often “empower” Violet by encouraging her to do what she wants, and telling her she’s just as capable as the rest of them. Is that really, truly empowerment, though? 

In Fourth Wing, this ability to push through pain and other symptoms doesn’t reflect a big part of the reality of living with EDS and chronic pain, and it feels like, because Violet always succeeds and because anyone we’re meant to like doesn’t question it, that the text is perpetuating typical and harmful ideas of bodies and heroism, where endurance = moral and heroic.

Violet is strong, and she’s a hero because she doesn’t let her pain or her disability get the better of her. Heroes don’t give up. Violet doesn’t give up. Heroes don’t let pain stop them. Violet doesn’t let her pain stop her. She’s not weak. Only the weak stop when they’re in pain. 

Having her always succeed through ignoring or through willpower perpetuates the harmful stereotype that disabilities can be “overcome” if only we try hard enough. The realities of EDS and other disabilities are complex, and stories like this feel like they’re grossly oversimplifying it.

In fact, they bring to mind images I’ve seen on Facebook in which someone who has a very visible deformity, difference, or disability, is climbing a mountain, and the caption reads “They can do it. What’s your excuse?” My excuse is that my disability literally disables me, and doing things is not always a choice, let alone a healthy one.

It pains me to criticise a book that features such prominent disability rep, since we so rarely see these books in the mainstream, and I would love nothing more than to be represented in popular fiction. While I am appreciative that this book exists and that we have a book that centres a character who shares my disability, I believe that it’s important to talk about these things with an open mind, acknowledging that even those of us with disabilities can accidentally and unintentionally uphold potentially harmful messaging. We grow up and are socialised in a world that is steeped in ableism. Nobody is free of it by virtue of being disabled.

I would love for a book that says “Hi, I represent bodies like yours!” to actually represent bodies like mine. This isn’t about wanting all representation of EDS to be the same. I know and understand the nuances and complexities of individual experiences even within the same disability, and I would love to see more and more of them reflected in fiction. This essay is advocating for taking bodies and letting them exist realistically, in all of their glory and pain and limitations.

By putting Violet in an environment that requires her to participate in high-intensity and high-impact activities every day, (activities that are very much not recommended for folks with EDS, mind you) the author necessitates we see some consequences of said environment: at least thinking about needing painkillers, heat packs, a hot bath, being unable to walk up stairs because your knees or your leg muscles are too sore. However, what we get is a first-person narrative in which the protagonist is hardly hindered by her pain, doesn’t self-accommodate, and somehow keeps functioning day-in day-out with little difficulty. She just gets on with things.

I and my friends with EDS came away thinking that unlike Violet, we are indeed “too weak and fragile”, as she puts it, to exist in the world Yarros created. We just could not see ourselves functioning to that level without consequence, like Violet did. Though there is a constant and explicit confrontation of the “you’re weak and fragile” allegations, the problem is that Violet and the narrative combat those allegations by having her ignore the systemic barriers and limitations that she faces, and has her be “just as strong” as everyone else by ignoring her pain and doing what they do, in mostly the same ways (barring the cool saddle and her dragon helping her dismount). 

If the way to prove Violet is not weak and fragile is to be as not-weak and not-fragile in the same ways as everyone else, to ignore her pain and perform as close to able-bodied as possible (if not “better”), then her proof in actuality reinforces the superiority of able bodies. She is not empowered in her own right, in her own body, with her own limitations and needs.

Because her proof of “strength” literally comes from acting able-bodied, because it goes completely unchallenged, and because it works every time, it also doesn’t feel like an intentional exploration of her internalised ableism, which I did find to be pretty relatable and an interesting albeit relatively unexplored element of the book.

Violet is a hero through the traditional brute force strength, sheer force of will, masculine and able-bodied ideal of heroism. She is not a hero because she considers her limitations, takes painkillers before or after sparring, or advocates for training that might actually help rather than hinder her. She’s a hero by doing none of that or by needing none of that, despite the text’s explicit description of her disability symptoms early-on.

I’m happy for the people who felt seen and inspired by this book. Feeling seen by a work of fiction, as a person with a disability, can be a rare thing. Unfortunately, to me, this is not “good rep”, and this narrative does not feel empowering in the slightest. 

Toxic perseverance that isn’t acknowledged as toxic is perpetuating a harmful narrative of toxic perseverance and heroism. Disabilities are diverse, and each person’s experience is unique. I would love to see characters interact with their disabilities and succeed in ways that aren’t so reliant on ignoring or pushing through the pain and limitations they face. Alternatively, they could do that, but we need to see the negative consequences of treating your body like that. At some point, that catches up with you. That’s just reality. That’s representative of real people, real bodies, and real limitations. 

The reality of having a disability is that sometimes you can’t do what everyone else does, in the way that everyone else is doing it. Having limitations is not weak. Not being about to function sometimes is not weak. We do not need to “prove” our strength and push ourselves to perform when that push is detrimental to us. It isn’t weak to admit we cannot do things. And it isn’t weak to need help.

In online spaces, where Fourth Wing has seen a lot of publicity and promotion, I have witnessed hesitancy and defensiveness when anyone brings up taking issue with the representation in this book and other texts like it. There seems to be a strong lean toward a kind of “mandatory optimism”, which I have observed in over a dozen TikToks and tweets citing the author’s own disability as a reason the rep is good, as though a disability makes us immune to accidentally perpetuating ableism, and also saying that “OwnVoices are important”, as though any critique of the text is inherently claiming the opposite. In this vein, many complaints and discussions about the rep have been delegitimized and invalidated.

Ownvoices narratives are important, and disabled voices are rarely given a platform in the mainstream. Disabilities are diverse, as are our opinions. My reading of Fourth Wing is certainly not the reading of many other disabled folks. We are not a monolith, but a community built on similar experiences, and a desire for good representation in media.

If we’re to get it, we need to be able to hear and discuss the long-standing issue of inequity and silencing of disabled experiences, and it’s important that we don’t contribute to said inequity and silencing within our own community.

Optimism is great until it begins to protect the status quo, until it too becomes a kind of toxic perseverance. 

Not all of us can grit our teeth, survive a death college, and ride a dragon.

Any heroism that demands that of me is no heroism I want to strive for.

Thanks again to Ella for joining us today for GeekDis to discuss the ableist narrative of toxic perseverance. Please do take the time to check out her links to learn more about her work.

As previously mentioned please be respectful of Ella’s perspective and remember that the disabled and neurodivergent community is one of many experiences. If you do not agree with Ella’s experience or perspective, that is fair enough, but please respect that she has the right to have it and discuss it.

Before commenting please be aware that Just Geeking By has a comment policy which is available to view here.

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