Elephantine Resilience. The Case of Joseph Merrick

Joseph Merrick, also known as The Elephant Man, is one of the most iconic figures of the Victorian Era. The many studies, biographies and disparate works devoted to his life and story, have made Merrick a symbol of human dignity. Surviving a tragic fate sealed by his severe physical deformities, he managed to escape an existence of pain and humiliation thanks to his extraordinary endurance and adaptability. My paper aims at analyzing Merrick’s story in this perspective, basically considering the accounts of the era (the biography written by Frederick Treves – the surgeon who took care of Merrick and saved him from a humiliating life as a freak –, Merrick’s own brief autobiography, letters and newspaper articles of the time) and the many representations of his life in literature, on stage and on film: the well-researched work by Michael Howell and Peter Ford, Bernard Pomerance’s play, Kenneth Sherman’s poems and David Lynch’s acclaimed movie