Alfred Deakin's Childhood: Books, a Boy and his Mother

Abstract

Alfred Deakin experienced himself as divided between an inner and outer self. He remembered himself as an unhappy child who sought solace in books and fantasy, creating an inner chamber of day-dreaming and escape. Historians have puzzled over this fruitlessly but on the basis of psychoanalytic theory and new evidence about his mother Sarah I argue that one possible source of Deakin's complex psychology is his mother's depression in the early years of her migration when Deakin was a young child. Also formative for Deakin was his parents' active participation in mid-Victorian literary culture and their unusually strong commitment to their children's education.