The cultural ideal of motherhood in Victorian Britain seems to be undermined by Victorian novels, which almost always represent mothers as incapacitated, abandoning or dead. Carolyn Dever argues that the phenomenon of the dead or missing mother in Victorian narrative is central to the construction of the good mother as a cultural ideal. Maternal loss is the prerequisite for Victorian representations of domestic life, a fact which has especially complex implications for women. When Freud constructs psychoanalytical models of ...
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The cultural ideal of motherhood in Victorian Britain seems to be undermined by Victorian novels, which almost always represent mothers as incapacitated, abandoning or dead. Carolyn Dever argues that the phenomenon of the dead or missing mother in Victorian narrative is central to the construction of the good mother as a cultural ideal. Maternal loss is the prerequisite for Victorian representations of domestic life, a fact which has especially complex implications for women. When Freud constructs psychoanalytical models of family, gender and desire, he too assumes that domesticity begins with the death of the mother. Analysing texts by Dickens, Collins, Eliot, Darwin and Woolf, as well as Freud, Klein and Winnicott, Dever argues that fictional and theoretical narratives alike use maternal absence to articulate concerns about gender and representation. Psychoanalysis has long been used to analyse Victorian fiction; Dever contends that Victorian fiction has much to teach us about psychoanalysis.
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New. Trade paperback (US). 252 p. Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture . Worked examples or Exercises. Intended for professional and scholarly audience.
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Seller's Description:
New. Trade paperback (US). Contains: Unspecified. Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture . Includes unspecified. Intended for professional and scholarly audience.
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Seller's Description:
New. Trade paperback (US). Contains: Unspecified. Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture . Includes unspecified. Intended for professional and scholarly audience.
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Good in Good jacket. Text is unmarked; pages are bright. Binding leans. The covers are bumped at the corners and at the head and base of the spine; there are corresponding dings on the top edge of the covers. Dust jacket is worn around the edges. 252pp.