Queer Families, Queer Futuresin Dombey and Son

Abstract

ABSTRACT What did Dickens know about queer theory before it was written? While the debate between the antisocial thesis and queer utopianism continues to yield productive fruit in the realm of critical theory, this article argues for a formal analysis of queerness in Dickens, reading Dombey and Son as a novel about various kinds of queer families in a time of distress and dysfunction. Following Caroline Levine's notion of social forms, this article examines the formal collisions between various kinds of queer families, which both articulate and open up new ways to define “the queer” and what place or function queerness can have within the larger construction of the social. Through primary engagement with Lee Edelman and José Esteban Muñoz, it finds that Dickens saw deeply into the possibilities for queer studies, articulating not one, but many affordances that queerness could provide. By reintegrating Dickens into queer theory, this article also reexamine Dickens's reputation as the novelist of family values, arguing at once that Dickens's domestic ideal works to underscore the irony of its unattainability, while also pushing him towards queer constructions more capable of maintaining such an ideal.