Cryptic fathers: Paternal loss in Victorian literature (Charles Dickens)

This dissertation queries the prevalence of dead and absent fathers in Victorian literature by examining the construction of the paternal through the mourning of its absence. I find the ideal paternal figure is constructed through that absence or replaced with a fraternal order or shared between a domestic union between men and women to test the social possibilities of fraternal and domestic orders. I use two major theoretical lenses through which to investigate the phenomenon of missing paternal representatives in this literature. Because of the sweeping social change in the Victorian era, the first is a historical study of the major patriarchal figures of this era, the carefully constructed representation of Queen Victoria's monarchy, and the effects of the writers' own biographical experience. I also utilize a psychoanalytic study of the role of the ideal father, what theorists like Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan have argued is the psychological role of the father in constructions of fantasy and literature. To challenge Lacan's “Law” of the father, I rely on the work of psychoanalysts Karl Abraham and Maria Torok in their study of what they refer to as the “psychic crypt” within the subject through which they enact the unfinished business of the dead beloved. The literature of the Victorian period poses alternatives to the patriarchal figures and systems while concurrently mourning their loss and negotiating the difficulty of resolving new and complex social problems outside of the known bounds of patriarchal social structures and paternal privilege.