Synopses & Reviews
Why does passion bewilder and torment so many Victorian protagonists? And why do so many literary characters experience moments of ecstasy before their deaths? In this original study, Christopher Lane shows why Victorian fiction conveys both the pleasure and anguish of intimacy. Examining works by Bulwer-Lytton, Swinburne, Schreiner, Hardy, James, Santayana, and Forster, he argues that these writers struggled with aspects of psychology that were undermining the utilitarian ethos of the Victorian age.
Lane discredits the conservative notion that Victorian literature expresses only a demand for repression and moral restraint. But he also refutes historicist and Foucauldian approaches, arguing that they dismiss the very idea of repression and end up denouncing psychoanalysis as complicit in various kinds of oppression. These approaches, Lane argues, reduce Victorian literature to a drama about politics, power, and the ego. Striving instead to reinvigorate discussions of fantasy and the unconscious, Lane offers a clear, often startling account of writers who grapple with the genuine complexities of love, desire, and friendship.
Review
"Although psychoanalysis has taken some well-deserved hits recently, Lane demonstrates in this refined and impressive book that certain insights derived from Freud, Lacan, and Foucault— even as they need some retooling—still go a long way toward explaining the politics of gender and identity in Victorian literature, a literature that helped spawn psychoanalysis. Defending his use of a discipline that has come under attack, Lane writes: 'Many literary and cultural critics interpret power, desire, and even fantasy in Victorian culture without considering the psychic relevance of these elements; they try to explain this period solely through its social policies and legal mandates.' Focusing on male sexual expression, Lane thus resists the tendency to read 19th-century manhood as a coherent and unified construction. His critical eye lands not only on Hardy, James, and Forster—required reading for this sort of thing—but also on Bulwer-Lytton, Schreiner, and Swinburne. This volume represents the very best work in the field of male
gender studies: a book that is broad in scope, rich in detail, and revelatory in its conclusions." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: Victorian Asymmetry: The Study of Repression and Desire
1: The Specter of Effeminacy in Bulwer-Lytton's Pelham
2: Love's Vicissitudes in Swinburne's Lesbia Brandon
3: "Gregory's Womanhood" in Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm
4: Hardy and the Claims of Friendship
5: The Impossibility of Seduction in James's Roderick Hudson and The Tragic Muse
6: Santayana and the Problem of Beauty
7: Betrayal and Its Consolations in Forster's Writing
Afterword: The Homosexual in the Text
Notes
Works Cited
Index