Dickens, Family, Authorship: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Kinship and Creativity by Lynn Cain

Abstract

MLR, 104.1, 2009 179 ticalcontroversies aboutrank and rights, butalso inthemselves presented powerful metaphorsor emblems ofdemocracy. Thompsonuses these paradigmstoproduce informed and illuminating readings of suchtexts asColeridge's 'Ancient Mariner' and theshipwreck episodeinByron's Don Juan. Thompsonhaswrittena verygood book aboutRomanticism whichmakes a significant contribution toourbetter understanding of the Romanticimagination. It isnotveryoftenthat a singleideaormotif-here that ofmisadventure-canbe inserted intosucha thoroughly researched field and have sucha transformative effect. Thesuccessof this book isthatits hypothesis iscontinuously and thoroughly tested inthetexts itdiscusses, and theresults arereadings of Wordsworth andByron (inparticular) that aresimultaneously newand strongly historicized. DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY PHILIP MARTIN Dickens,Family, Authorship: Psychoanalytic Perspectives onKinshipandCreativity. By LYNN CAIN. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2008. xvii+183 pp. ?50. ISBN 970-0 7546-6180-1. LynnCain's book offers somesuggestive and richly referenced readings ofawide range ofDickens'swork.Thoughfocused on the novels producedbetween1843and 1853, MartinChuzzlewit, DombeyandSon, David Copperfield, andBleakHouse, the projectreflects on the wholeofDickens's literary career, andmakes a thorough and interesting useofhiscorrespondence duringthis period,aswellas,toa lesser extent, his journalism. Indeed,someof thestrongest arguments areadvancedthrough a cross-referential treatment of thisrangeofmaterials;in thefirst literary chapter, onMartinChuzzlewit,forexample,I found particularly instructive Cain's identi fication of theaffinities betweenthisnovelandGreatExpectations intheir shared anxieties aboutfather/son relations (p. 22),andher illumination of thealliterative andOedipal connection of 'Pecksniff andPinch',emphasizedin Dickens'sreference tothis pairingina letter toForster(p.42). The psychoanalytic perspectives certainly open up some interesting interpre tations, which respondto an impressively substantial bodyof classicand recent Dickens criticism, which is takenseriously throughout. I particularly enjoyedthe reflections uponDickens'suseofthe gamut ofauthorial metaphors(including archi tecture, music,gastronomy, andbiologicalreproduction) that this methodopensup. Thereis,however, a persistent, uncomfortable sensethat, despitetheacknowledged complexity ofDickens's literary projects, Cain especially valueshiswork forits anticipation of twentieth-century psychoanalytic theory, particularly that ofFreud, Lacan,Klein, andKristeva.Cain is characteristically delightedto identify Bleak House as 'abrilliant anticipation ofIrigaray's assertion that Westerncultureisbased uponmatricide'(p. 153).The emphasison prescience and celebration of the'pre cocious[ness of] the Victorianliterary imagination inanticipating' Freudandother thinkers (p.x) results ina series of(inthemselves valuableand interesting) readings that tendtoignore the waysin which Victoriantexts mightexceedlater theories, and 18o Reviews disregard theinabilities of later psychoanalytic modes toaccountforthe diversity of Dickens's modellings ofkinship. Given that Dickenshadanabhorrence oftheexclu sivity of what isnowdefined as the nuclearfamily unit,therange ofkinshiprelations accountedfor here isdisappointingly narrow;thebook ismainlyconcerned with thevexed inter-generational bondsofparentand child.(ForDickens'spreference forthehouseholdrather thantheromantic couple seeKarenChase andMichael Levenson,7heSpectacle ofIntimacy: A PublicLifeforthe Victorian Family(Prince ton: Princeton University Press,2000),p. 94,and for a presentation of thediversity of the DickensiandomesticseeHelenaMichie, 'From Blood toLaw: TheEmbar rassments ofFamilyinDickens', inPalgrave Advances inCharles DickensStudies, ed.byJohn Bowen andRobertPattern(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005),pp. 131-55.) Havingopenedwith a focus upon the(quasi)patricidal desiresof MartinChuzzle wit'syoung men,Cain turnsinthesecondchaptertoacknowledge theabundance ofmore positivefather/son bonds inDombeyandSon,whicharemainlyexhibited betweennon-biologically related surrogate fathers and their adoptedboys.Cain's discussionresists anover-simplistic refiguring ofadoptivefathers asmotherfigures, and offers an interesting discussionofmasculine tenderness (p. 77).Her analysis does not,however, sufficiently probe theimplications, inpsychoanalytic terms, of this difference between biologicalandadoptive kinformation-which seemsa pity, giventheregularity withwhichDickens'skinship groupsarenotforged byblood. Thisbook offers anotherimportant andvigorousripostetothecritical visionof cosy Dickensiandomesticity (seeespecially p. 21),whichhas stubbornly lingered. Indeed,inthefascination withparent killing and states ofabjection, Cain's project follows a venerable tradition of biographically inflected psychoanalytic readings, which tend to advance, as Robert Newsom notes, 'a significantly darker view of Dickens' (Oxford Reader'sCompanion toDickens,ed. byPaul Schlicke(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 136). On the final page Cain even speaks of his "'dark" works' (p. 159). Ifyou share HippolyteTaine'snineteenth-century assess ment ofDickens, 'The difference between amadman and aman of genius isnot very great'(quotedbySchlickeinthe Companion, p. 134), then Cain'sDickens-whose sociallyreformist agenda,humour, and sentiment are rarely considered butwhose 'suicidal compulsion','depression andaphasia' (p. io) are much inevidence-is the Dickens for you. UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER HOLLY FURNEAUX The Physiology of theNovel: Reading, Neural Science, and the Form of Victorian Fiction.ByNICHOLAS DAMES.Oxford:OxfordUniversity Press. 2007. x+ 277 pp. E50. ISBN 978-o-19-920896-8. Reviewing abookwhichforegrounds the'place ofdrift, inattention [.. .]and speed', and the 'complex ways inwhich reverie and attention oscillate' (p. 255), in the Victorianexperience ofreading novelsisperhapslikely torender reviewers uneasily aware of their own occasional moments of idle distraction, or,more likely amidst a ...