Panaceas and The Lazarus Key: Epilepsy in Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

In Mackenzi Lee’s The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, Henry “Monty” Montague, his sister, and his best friend, Percy, embark on a Grand Tour of Europe in the 1700’s. When Monty makes a reckless decision, they get thrown into a manhunt for a panacea, the scientific term for a cure-all. At first it is a quest to survive, but when Monty discovers that his best friend has epilepsy, seeking the cure-all becomes personal all too quickly. Despite Monty’s insistence on finding and using a cure-all, Percy insists that he does not need or want a cure, despite his looming future in an asylum. Over the course of the novel, Lee brings the readers and the stubborn main character to see disability in a more positive light: as something that is manageable and not the end of the world. Using narrative prosthesis, this project seeks to explore epilepsy’s role in Gentleman’s Guide and how it interacts with intersections of race, class, and sexuality.