Dickens and the Despised Mother: A Critical Reading of Three Autobiographical Novels

by Shale Preston

Overview

This work offers an original interpretation of the mothers of the protagonists in Dickens's autobiographical novels. Taking Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic concept of abjection and Mary Douglas's anthropological analysis of pollution as its conceptual framework, the book argues that Dickens's primary emotional response towards the mother who abandoned him to work in a blacking warehouse was disgust, and suggests that we can trace similar signs of disgust in the narrators of his fictional autobiographies, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Great Expectations.

The author provides a close reading of Dickens's autobiographical fragment and opens up the possibility that Dickens's feelings towards his mother actually bore a significant influence on his fiction. The book closes with a provocative discussion of Dickens's compulsive Sikes and Nancy public readings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786471393
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	01/25/2013
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Shale Preston is an honorary research fellow in the Department of English at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. She has published articles and book chapters on Dickens and has presented papers on his work at international conferences in Europe, the United States, Asia and Australia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi

Preface 1

Chapter 1 The Autobiographical Fragment 5

Chapter 2 The Etiology of Disgust 36

Chapter 3 Clara Copperfield, Betsey Trotwood and the Construction of the Feminine Sublime in David Copperfield 52

Chapter 4 Miss Barbary, Lady Dedlock and the Disfigurement of Esther Summerson in Bleak House 98

Chapter 5 Georgiana Pirrip, Mrs. Joe and the Case for the Hero's Disgust in Great Expectations 132

Chapter 6 Postscript 167

Chapter Notes 185

Bibliography 201

Index 211

Editorial Reviews

In this enjoyable and cogently argued book, the reader is immersed in a series of well researched debates, while accompanied by a lively, engaged, personal voice, sorting and sifting a variety of points of view in pursuit of fresh textual readings.”—International Dickens Fellowship; “a groundbreaking study of Charles Dickens' autobiographical novels focusing on how he represents motherly figures with disgust”—Reference & Research Book News; “Preston’s Dickens and the Despised Mother yields persuasive new readings of Dickensian mothers that add significantly to important work by Carolyn Dever, Patricia Ingham, Natalie McKnight, and Michael Slater.”—Dickens Studies Annual.

From the Publisher

a groundbreaking study

Reference & Research Book News