Street Urchins, Sociopaths and Degenerates : Orphans of Late-Victorian and Edwardian Fiction

Orphans are ubiquitous in the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and there have been countless critical studies that consider orphans’ metaphoric implications and the manner in which they function as barometers of burgeoning social concerns. But the fin de siècle gothic orphan has been largely overlooked, if not denied outright. In __Street Urchins, Sociopaths and Degenerates__, David Floyd gives these characters their due, comparing and contrasting the orphans of fin de siècle genre fiction with their predecessors in works from first-wave gothic and the majority of Victorian fiction. Among the works he considers are __The Secret Garden__, __A Little Princess__, __Robinson Crusoe__, __Treasure Island__, __Kim__, and __Jude the Obscure__. From the notable emergence of orphan figures in late eighteenth-century literature, through early- and middle-period Victorian fiction and, as this book argues, well into the fin de siecle, this potent literary type is remarkable for its consistent recurrence and its metamorphosis as a register of cultural conditions. The striking ubiquity of orphans in the literature of these periods encourages inquiry into their metaphoric implications and the manner in which they function as barometers of burgeoning social concerns. The overwhelming majority of criticism focusing on orphans centres particularly on the form as an early- to middle-century convention, primarily found in social and domestic works; in effect, the non-traditional, aberrant, at times Gothic orphan of the fin de siecle has been largely overlooked, if not denied outright. This oversight has given rise to the need for a study of this potent cultural figure as it pertains to preoccupations characteristic of more recent instances. This book examines the noticeable difference between orphans of genre fiction of the fin de siecle and their predecessors in works including first-wave Gothic and the majority of Victorian fiction, and the variance of their symbolic references and cultural implications. Orphans are ubiquitous in the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and there have been countless critical studies that consider orphans’ metaphoric implications and the manner in which they function as barometers of burgeoning social concerns. But the fin de siècle gothic orphan has been largely overlooked, if not denied outright. In Street Urchins, Sociopaths and Degenerates , David Floyd gives these characters their due, comparing and contrasting the orphans of fin de siècle genre fiction with their predecessors in works from first-wave gothic and the majority of Victorian fiction. Among the works he considers are The Secret Garden , A Little Princess , Robinson Crusoe , Treasure Island , Kim , and Jude the Obscure . Taking examples from Gothic, island adventure, imperial, and children's literature, this book addresses the remarkable metaphorical disparity between, and cultural implications of, orphans in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth British fiction and in more recent instances.