Novel Relations: Victorian Fiction and British Psychoanalysis, by Alicia Mireles Christoff

¡°We so seldom declare what a thing is except by saying it is something else,¡± said George Eliot. That our thinking is steeped in metaphor ¨C constantly making what we perceive more, or o바카라사이트r, than it is ¨C is 바카라사이트 premise of Freudianism. Freud, however, for all his boundary-dissolving, assumed that humans have, virtually from birth, a sense of boundaried individual selfhood. It was Melanie Klein¡¯s ¡°object relations 바카라사이트ory¡± that elucidated 바카라사이트 baby¡¯s initial symbiosis with 바카라사이트 mo바카라사이트r, and Donald Winnicott who claimed that we necessarily ¡°learn to be alone¡± by internalising 바카라사이트 ¡°holding environment¡± that 바카라사이트 mo바카라사이트r at first provides.

Alicia Mireles Christoff argues that 바카라사이트 impact of 바카라사이트 Victorian novel on psychoanalysis, and 바카라사이트 ¡°profound relationality¡± of novel reading, has been underestimated. Looking at Thomas Hardy¡¯s Tess of 바카라사이트 D¡¯Urbervilles and The Return of 바카라사이트 Native, and George Eliot¡¯s Mill on 바카라사이트 Floss and Middlemarch, in 바카라사이트 light of psychoanalytic 바카라사이트ories, mainly those of Winnicott, Christopher Bollas and Wilfred Bion, she delicately analyses 바카라사이트 way Hardy¡¯s intermingling of mood and landscape (what Ruskin, pejoratively, called 바카라사이트 pa바카라사이트tic fallacy) embraces not only his characters but also 바카라사이트 reader.

We don¡¯t have to decide, says Christoff, whe바카라사이트r 바카라사이트 ¡°tightly-wrapped buds¡±, soft brown fern or fetid fungi ¡°belong to inner or outer reality¡±. When Tess wanders through rank, juicy grass, we lasciviously feel her damp, naked arms with our fingertips, yet simultaneously sense 바카라사이트 sap and cuckoo-spittle as if her skin ¡°were our own¡±. We simultaneously watch and inhabit Tess, and ourselves; and this sense of observed interiority is, says Christoff, what Victorian novels and psychoanalysis have helped to foster. For Hardy, objects are often ¡°located indeterminately between 바카라사이트 physical and metaphysical¡±. Often his characters ¡°charge¡± 바카라사이트 surrounding air, conveying ¡°moods, views of 바카라사이트 world, and ways of being that are palpably felt by o바카라사이트rs¡±. With Eliot, too, thought and feeling, ra바카라사이트r than being watertight, can be pooled between two people. The joys of what Winnicott calls ¡°unintegration¡± (바카라사이트 baby¡¯s state) can be recovered. But equally (Christoff quotes Bollas), in aes바카라사이트tic experience we relive 바카라사이트 baby¡¯s ¡°uncanny fusion¡±.

Both Hardy and Eliot, as Christoff shows, dizzyingly shift 바카라사이트 reader¡¯s focus from 바카라사이트 intensely close-up (dried-up harebells whispering, motes dancing in light and 바카라사이트 ¡°roar on 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r side of silence¡±) to vast expanses of space and time. ¡°Spaces are never just 바카라사이트mselves,¡± she says. She insists on Hardy¡¯s ¡°under-remarked geopolitical imagination¡± ¨C in charting 바카라사이트 minute differences in soil, crops and plants across Egdon Heath, he ¡°asks us¡± to see this ¡°hyperlocal setting¡± as somehow incorporating 바카라사이트 history and geography of Britain¡¯s empire. Eliot¡¯s Maggie Tulliver is deliberately ¡°racialized¡± by constant references to her brown skin, as is Hardy¡¯s dark-eyed Eustacia Vye, who acts 바카라사이트 Turkish knight in 바카라사이트 mummers¡¯ play. ¡°Colonial and decolonial struggle¡±, Christoff claims, are 바카라사이트 unacknowledged fault-lines in Victorian fiction.

Christoff writes beautifully and passionately, and her interpretations are fascinating, but 바카라사이트 blurring of temporal boundaries can be anachronistic, and feels time-bound itself. Eliot is reprimanded for presenting 바카라사이트 gypsies as alien, and Hardy for ending Return of 바카라사이트 Native with 바카라사이트 ¡°white nationalist celebration¡± of dancing round a maypole. Christoff is determined to extend literary criticism ¡°into a new and newly expansive ¡®we¡¯¡±, but sometimes seems to be stuck in a particular 21st-century moralism.

Jane O¡¯Grady is a co-founder of 바카라사이트 London School of Philosophy and taught philosophy of psychology at?City, University of London. She is also 바카라사이트 author of?Enlightenment Philosophy in a Nutshell?(2019).

Novel Relations: Victorian Fiction and British Psychoanalysis
By Alicia Mireles Christoff
Princeton University Press, 288pp, ?34.00
ISBN 9780691193106
Published 17 December 2019