Overview

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 unequalrelationship between adult and child, focusing her reading through Freud’s early writings and Jean Laplanche’s ‘general theory of seduction’. 

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9783030454685

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“The book is rich in supplemental details, including: the Romantic cult of the child as it transforms across the Victorian era; legal touchstones in parent-child relations; and themes related to illness … . It is truly fascinating that this monograph—Wood’s final literary engagement with the clinical diagnoses and problems that are now part of her professional life—focuses on adult responses to childhood traumas, responses that transcend the fictional worlds and enfold the works’ authors.” (Melissa Jenkins, Victorian Studies, Vol. 65 (1), 2022)

Author Information

Dr. Madeleine Wood worked as a Lecturer in nineteenth-century literature until 2016, holding posts at Brunel University, UK, King’s College London, UK, and Queen Mary University of London, UK. Building on her enduring interest in the clinical and therapeutic, she then retrained as a social worker. Madeleine now works for the NSPCC as a Practitioner, supporting children and young people through trauma-informed approaches.

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