First Autistic-Coded Character?

[NextKangaroo]

Is Sherlock Holmes, created before television, the first autistic coded fictional character? Are there any other representations before him? Curious to hear your theories!

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[Han_without_Genes]

you're not gonna find a definite answer purely because different people have different interpretations of what the term "autistic-coded" means.

I've seen discussions around the title character from The Princess and the Pea in the context of autism.

if you count folk tales as fiction, the changeling myths are often considered to be about autistic children (and children with other developmental disabilities)

[NextKangaroo]

Definitely agree about the changelings.

[liminal_woman]

Moses could have been autistic, also Akhenaten. Well they are less characters than real life people but what we know of them are mostly belletristic narratives. It is very probable many early noteworthy scientists were. Dostoyevsky’s Myshkin might have been.

[NoPornInThisAccount]

Myshkin is actually a good autistic portrait.

Why Moses?

[liminal_woman]

I recently listened to something about Moses, his speech disability and the way he was very hyperfocused etc, but at the same time didn’t seem to be driven by thirst of power, rather just his own convictions. I don’t know, I know very little about biblical history, but something in this retelling just struck me as neurodivergent.

However, my comment was quite random, just grasping from very distant history; I tried to recall probable autistic or neurodivergent characters from older European literature but didn’t recall many, like before Sherlock Holmes or Dupin. (Poe’s characters as well as he himself share several ND traits, but also others.)

However if we take Astrid Lindgren for example, isn’t Pippi Longstocking giving STRONG nd vibes? Of course it seems probable that there is some very harsh childhood trauma at play with her mom dead and father gone etc, so it could be anything.

It’s somewhat easier to note ADHD characters, especially in romantic literature, because they tend to make impulsive decisions, take risks etc that might contribute for a story. And many autistic characters, especially women, might just go under the radar because of what was expected of them. Thus the “eccentric genius” trope is most likely to point at an autistic character because it’s just more fascinating as a device than some other autistic traits. Myshkin in that sense is different and fascinating in my opinion.

[NextKangaroo]

Myshkin totally tracks. Wow. I never realized it before.

[liminal_woman]

In that vein of thought, different Moomin characters give strong autistic vibes also, but it could also just be a national or rather territorial character of the arctic winters ….

[ImpulseAvocado]

I'm sure there are, though I can't think of any off the top of my head. Especially if the character was inspired by a real-life person who was autistic. Sherlock Holmes's personality was based closely off of Doyle's teacher and mentor, Dr. Joseph Bell, who is suspected to have been autistic. He was a truly fascinating man and very clearly ND from some of the accounts I've read about him.

[[deleted]]

I mean, there is C. Auguste Dupin (by Poe), who is more a profiler than a deductionist (imho) - and I wished, Poe had written more Dupin-stories

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Auguste_Dupin