Dickens and the Despised Mother: A Critical Reading of Three Autobiographical Novels
Author(s): Shale Preston (Author)
Publisher: McFarland & Co
Publication Date: 15 Dec. 2012
Language: English
Print length: 228 pages
ISBN-10: 0786471395
ISBN-13: 9780786471393
Book Description
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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“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 Back Cover
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.
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.
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