Authority and Rebellion in Victorian Autobiography
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10066910 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lee Krenis (University of Rochester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1978 |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 107-130 |
| Publication date | 1978-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of British Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9371 • E-ISSN: 1545-6986 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1086/385731 |
| OpenAlex | W2153020879 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 11 |
It has been a literary (if not strictly historical) commonplace that the later nineteenth century was a time of pervasive rebellion of sons against fathers. For example, Butler's The Way of All Flesh and Gosse's Father and Son are texts often cited as indicative of a broader social phenomenon. “As Irish life runs to secret societies,” observed V. S. Pritchett, “so English life seems to run naturally to parricide movements. We are a nation of father haters.” Yet father-hating did not become conspicuous until the Victorian period, when, in contrast to the reputed submissiveness of the eighteenth-century son, a “growing self-consciousness by the son of his role as liberator” surfaced in fictional and biographical writing. Whether such a rebellion actually took place on any large scale is impossible to determine. Few men record such things, and when they do their real feelings tend to remain concealed or not fully understood. The premise of this study, based on selected examples of autobiography, is that the peculiar desperation of many Victorians to buttress eroding forms of traditional patriarchal authority had its first and perhaps most crucial effects within the family itself, intensifying ordinary generational conflict and its usual quota of rebellion, guilt, and neurosis. Amidst the conventional catalogues of accomplishment, there is a striking pattern of childhood experience within the family that incubated some version of future rebellion and profoundly affected the writers' emotional lives. Open warfare between generations is uncommon; most often rebellion instead employs a disguised language and context for its articulation
Art · Biography · Context (archaeology · Feeling · Irish · Literature · Political science · Politics · Premise · Sociology · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · History · Irish and British Studies · Law · Modernist Literature and Criticism · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,07 |
| Citation span | 1981 - 2023 (43) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |