Overview

Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature: Queering Patriarchy traces the representations of outlaw fathers, or queer patriarchs, and their relationships with their queer sons, in a particular literary tradition: mid-to-late-Victorian and twentieth-century British fiction and memoir. Specifically, I look at such representations in Anthony Trollope’s Doctor Thorne (1858) and The Prime Minister (1875-76) (while also drawing on An Autobiography (1883) and The Duke’s Children (1880)); Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh (published in 1901), Henry James’s “The Lesson of the Master” (1888), J. R. Ackerley’s My Father and Myself (written in the 1930s and published in 1968), E. M. Forster’s “Little Imber” (1961) (with an occasional detour into The Longest Journey (1907), Howards End (1909), and Maurice (published in 1971)), and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Spell (1998). In the coda, I consider the implications of including transgender, transnational female-to-male fathers of color in the ranks of queer patriarchy and discuss two contemporary novels, Jackie Kay’s Trumpet (1998, Scotland) and Patricia Powell’s The Pagoda (1998, Jamaica and the United States), as well as—briefly—an episode an episode of the television show The L-Word (2008) and the documentary U-People (2007). The term “queer patriarchy” has two components. The first one is a non-traditional, primarily—but not exclusively—non-heterosexual, pervasively present, and culturally important, paternal subjectivity. The second one is the bond between such queer paternal figures and their sons, biological and non-biological. This study pays attention primarily to the relationship between psyche, language, and ideology, but it will join a larger conversation about the changing roles of men in general and fathers in particular, which is taking place outside of the field of literary studies.

Full Product Details

Author:   Helena Gurfinkel
Publisher:   Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Imprint:   Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.494kg
ISBN:  

9781611476378

ISBN 10:   1611476372
Pages:   236
Publication Date:   27 March 2014
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Contents Dedication Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Introduction: From the Law of the Father to the Outlaw Father Chapter I: Theoretical Genealogies The “Negative” Oedipus: Origins and Interpretations Theoretical Mothers Psychoanalysis, History, Materiality Fathers, Others, and Lacan Queer family, Queer Negativity, Queer Sociality Chapter II: “The Intercourse between the Squire and His Son”: The Father-Son Marriage Plot and the Creation of the English Gentleman in Anthony Trollope’s Novels Gentlemanliness and Masculinity An Autobiography of the Wolf Man: Trollope and Freud Fathers and Sons: The Queer Marriage Plot of Doctor Thorne “The Great Wharton Alliance”: The Redemption of Queer Patriarchy in The Prime Minister “His Word…Had Never Lost Its Authority”: Upward Mobility and the Return of the Positive Oedipus Chapter III: Sons as Lovers: Queer Kunstlerroman in Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, Henry James’s “The Lesson of the Master,” and J.R. Ackerley’s My Father and Myself “Freud Had Got Away with More than I Intended”: Queer Künstlerroman and Psychoanalysis “The Dark Scowl, Which Would Come over His Father’s Face”: Samuel Butler’s Masochistic Künstlerroman “…You Should Do Me”: Passing and Submission in Henry James’s “The Lesson of the Master” “This So-Called Memoir, Which Remembers So Little”: J. R. Ackerley’s Marginal Modernist Portrait of an Artist Chapter IV: “A Father’s Place Is in the Kitchen, Dear”: Male Domesticity and Motherhood in E.M. Forster’s “Little Imber” and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Spell “The Gay Daddy”: Psychoanalysis and Gay Male Parenthood “Males Had Won”: Sexual Utopia in “Little Imber” Building Theoretical Structures: Gender, Architecture, Psychoanalysis From Cottaging to “Love in a Cottage:” Gay Male Domesticity in The Spell Banished from the Father’s House: The Dark Side of Domesticity Gay Male Motherhood and Contemporary Anti-Procreative Anti-Utopias Coda: “The P-Word”: Queer Patriarchy beyond Maleness and Nation The Phallus and the Ship: Diasporic Patriarchy and the Transgender Father of Color Bibliography Index About the Author

Reviews

...[A] considerable work of scholarship...Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature: Queering Patriarchy represents an admirable attempt to undertake a dialogue with psychoanalysis around issues of patriarchy and maleness...illuminate[s] aspects of the Victorian novel (and its historical struggle with class and gender) and of psychoanalytic theory (to some extent another reaction to the same historical forces) and argue[s] against any essentialist reduction of the multilevel realities within each to rigid forms and precepts. -- Lewis Allen Kirshner, clinical professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School Outlaw Fathers delights by shattering paradigms. Employing the negative Oedipus complex, Gurfinkel challenges our easy definition of patriarchy by uncovering the queer patriarchy of queer fathers and sons [and] enlarges the category of the marriage plot by adding to the heteronormative definition a canon of queer marriage plots from Anthony Trollope through Samuel Butler to Alan Hollinghurst. This severing of masculinity from aggression and toward nurturing is especially valuable as we see the rise of gay marriage and gay parenting. -- Herbert Sussman, emeritus professor of English at Northeastern University In Outlaw Fathers, Helena Gurfinkel is doing subtly audacious work at the intersection of queer theory and Victorian and modernist studies. In a series of lucidly argued readings of important nineteenth- and twentieth-century British texts, she shows how they elaborate, against the dominant narratives of the Oedipus complex and the marriage plot, the queerer narratives of the negative Oedipus complex and the father-son marriage plot. But she does not just reveal this literary counter-tradition: against a certain hostility toward Freud in Foucauldian queer theory, she contributes incisively and elegantly to a theoretical counter-tradition that, seeing Freud himself as an outlaw father, realizes the queer possibilities of psychoanalysis. -- Joseph Litvak, professor and chair of the Department of English at Tufts University

Gurfinkel ... demonstrates convincingly that both the figure of the patriarch, and also academic considerations of patriarchy, need to be expanded beyond the notion of male oppression and hostility. In light of her work, the networks of lineage that construct patriarchal relationships can now also be conceived as nurturing, emotional and positive. Yet perhaps most significantly, Gurfinkel's analysis of late-Victorian and twentieth-century literature also has the effect of making patriarchy a relevant consideration in the twenty-first century, in which the notion of the family is changing rapidly and conventional patriarchs may seem few and far between...Gurfinkel's work offers a paradigm that can help us understand the Anglo-American present, as well as analyze the British literary past. Edwardian Culture Network Helena Gurfinkel offers an insightful new vision of fatherhood through an engagement with English literature, Freudian psychoanalysis and queer theory...Moreover the core theoretical approaches, for example Freud's theory of the negative Oedipus, are presented in an accessible opening chapter...The book will appeal to both students of literature and critical theory scholars. New Books Network ...[A] considerable work of scholarship...Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature: Queering Patriarchy represents an admirable attempt to undertake a dialogue with psychoanalysis around issues of patriarchy and maleness...illuminate[s] aspects of the Victorian novel (and its historical struggle with class and gender) and of psychoanalytic theory (to some extent another reaction to the same historical forces) and argue[s] against any essentialist reduction of the multilevel realities within each to rigid forms and precepts. -- Lewis Allen Kirshner, clinical professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School Outlaw Fathers delights by shattering paradigms. Employing the negative Oedipus complex, Gurfinkel challenges our easy definition of patriarchy by uncovering the queer patriarchy of queer fathers and sons [and] enlarges the category of the marriage plot by adding to the heteronormative definition a canon of queer marriage plots from Anthony Trollope through Samuel Butler to Alan Hollinghurst. This severing of masculinity from aggression and toward nurturing is especially valuable as we see the rise of gay marriage and gay parenting. -- Herbert Sussman, emeritus professor of English at Northeastern University In Outlaw Fathers, Helena Gurfinkel is doing subtly audacious work at the intersection of queer theory and Victorian and modernist studies. In a series of lucidly argued readings of important nineteenth- and twentieth-century British texts, she shows how they elaborate, against the dominant narratives of the Oedipus complex and the marriage plot, the queerer narratives of the negative Oedipus complex and the father-son marriage plot. But she does not just reveal this literary counter-tradition: against a certain hostility toward Freud in Foucauldian queer theory, she contributes incisively and elegantly to a theoretical counter-tradition that, seeing Freud himself as an outlaw father, realizes the queer possibilities of psychoanalysis. -- Joseph Litvak, professor and chair of the Department of English at Tufts University

Author Information

Helena Gurfinkel is associate professor of English at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

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