Parents and Children in the Mid-Victorian Novel : Traumatic Encounters and the Formation of Family

This book produces an original argument about the emergence of 'trauma' in the nineteenth-century through new readings of Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Collins, Gaskell and Elliot. Madeleine Wood argues that the mid-Victorian novels present their protagonists in a state of damage, provoked and defined by the conditions of the mid-century family: the cross-generational relationship is presented as formative and traumatising. By presenting family relationships as decisive for our psychological state as well as our social identity, the Victorian authors pushed beyond the contemporary scientific models available to them. Madeleine Wood analyses the literary and historical conditions of the mid-century period that led to this new literary emphasis, and which paved the way for the emergence of psychoanalysis in Vienna at the fin de siècle . Analysing a series of theoretical texts, Madeleine Wood shows that psychoanalysis shares the mid-Victorian concern with the unequal relationship between adult and child, focusing her reading through Freud's early writings and Jean Laplanche's 'general theory of seduction'. Preface Acknowledgements Contents 1 Introduction Creation of Childhood Childhood Memory Childhood and Mid-Victorian Psychology Family and Ideology Works Cited 2 A Crisis in Relations: Psychic Wounds, Fantasy, and the Construction of Family Freud, Trauma and Primal Phantasy Laplanche and the ‘Compromised Message’ Mourning and Working-Through Works Cited 3 Emily and Charlotte Brontë—Childhood Passions and Pathologies: Wuthering Heights and Shirley The Primacy of the Child: The Ghostly Encounters of Wuthering Heights Windows and Messages Excommunication Silence and Delirium Exorcism? Family Longing and the Maternal Blessing: Shirley Heart Sickness Paternal Debts Maternal Blessings Eva Works Cited 4 Charles Dickens—Lost Children and ‘Primal Scenes’: The ‘Autobiographical Fragment’, Dombey and Son and Great Expectations Dickens and the ‘Autobiographical Fragment’: Memory and Writing Paul Dombey’s Life, Death and Afterlife: Traumatic Echoes in Dombey and Son Bad Blood Arrested Development Echoes Parental Substitutions and the Ethics of Guilt: Great Expectations Pip or Pig Haunted Class Spectres Works Cited 5 Wilkie Collins—Vampiric Inheritances: No Name and Armadale No Name: Sensation, Inheritance and Female Properties Dead Inheritance Letters Bygrave Trust Armadale: Sacred Confidence Prehistories A Dream From One Lady to Another Works Cited 6 Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot—Mourning and Elegy: North and South and The Mill on the Floss North and South: Mourning and Community Crisis, Dissent, Representation ‘Death and Variations’ Communal Voices The Mill on the Floss: Elegy, Memory and Desire Tragedy Elegy Memory and Desire Works Cited 7 Conclusion Works Cited Works Cited Index 'Madeleine Wood's study of cross-generational trauma in mid-nineteenth-century fiction is both provocative and persuasive in offering fresh new readings of canonical texts. Her focus on the 'afterwardsness' curve of repetition, as fictional parents transmit their own traumas to their children, shocks us into deeper understanding of family secrets and their lasting reverberations.' - Valerie Sanders, Professor of English, University of Hull, UK This book produces an original argument about the emergence of 'trauma' in the nineteenth-century through new readings of Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Collins, Gaskell and Elliot. Madeleine Wood argues that the mid-Victorian novels present their protagonists in a state of damage, provoked and defined by the conditions of the mid-century family: the cross-generational relationship is presented as formative and traumatising. By presenting family relationships as decisive for our psychological state as well as our social identity, the Victorian authors pushed beyond the contemporary scientific models available to them. Madeleine Wood analyses the literary and historical conditions of the mid-century period that led to this new literary emphasis, and which paved the way for the emergence of psychoanalysis in Vienna at the fin de siècle. Analysing a series of theoretical texts, Madeleine Wood shows that psychoanalysis shares the mid-Victorian concern with the unequal relationship between adult and child, focusing her reading through Freud's early writings and Jean Laplanche's 'general theory of seduction'