Death and the Mother from Dickens to Freud

by Carolyn Dever

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521032555
• ISBN13: 9780521032551
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"