“You saw me cross the bar”: Masculinity, Disability, and the Western in Guy Vanderhaeghe’s The Englishman’s Boy

In The Englishman’s Boy (1996), Guy Vanderhaeghe uses Harry Vincent’s congenital limp as a narrative device to critique the construction of masculinity in historical representations of the expansion of the American West. Throughout the novel, the meaning of Harry’s disability shifts as he strives to find a place in the masculine world of Hollywood, and as both Damon Ira Chance and Shorty McAdoo make their own assumptions about him as a disabled man in their desire for narrative control over the story of the Cypress Hills Massacre. Harry destabilizes categories of stock disabled characters by using his disability to advance his career, by pursuing his desire to be true to Shorty’s story, and by ultimately recognizing the importance of narrative truthfulness.