This book offers a radically new reading of Dickens and his major
works. It demonstrates that, rather than representing a largely
conventional, conservative view of sexuality and gender, he
presents a distinctly queer corpus, everywhere fascinated by the
diversity of gender roles, the expandability of notions of the
family, and the complex multiplicity of sexual desire. The book
examines the long overlooked figures of bachelor fathers, maritally
resistant men, and male nurses. It explores Dickens's attention to
a longing, not to reproduce, but to nurture, his interest in
healing touch, and his articulation, over the course of his career,
of homoerotic desire. Holly Furneaux places Dickens's writing in a
broad literary and social context, alongside authors including
Bulwer-Lytton, Tennyson, Braddon, Collins, and Whitman, to make a
case for Dickens's central position in queer literary history.
Examining novels, poetry, life-writing, journalism, and legal and
political debates, Queer Dickens argues that this eminent Victorian
can direct us to the ways in which his culture could, and did,
comfortably accommodate homoeroticism and families of choice.
Further, it contends that Dickens's portrayals of nurturing
masculinity and his concern with touch and affect between men
challenge what we have been used to thinking about Victorian ideals
of maleness. Queer Dickens intervenes in current debates about the
Victorians (neither so punitive nor so prudish as we once imagined)
and about the methodologies of the histories of the family and of
sexuality. It makes the case for a more optimistic, nurturing, and
life-affirming trajectory in queer theory.
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