Patriarchal Pressures
Portraits of fathers in the autobiographies of Darwin and Nabokov
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12648335 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eugene Stelzig (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 19-39 |
| Publication date | 2005-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Life Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1448-4528 • E-ISSN: 1751-2964 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10408340308518272 |
| OpenAlex | W2076430952 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 6 |
In this article I examine the ambivalent presentation of fathers by two modern autobiographers whose paternal portraits are marked in different ways by the pressures of patriarchy. While resisting the temptation to reduce these complex father–son relationships to any easy psychological formula (Oedipus complex), I use a broadly humanistic Freudian framework in my psychological and literary analysis of the ambiguous and layered presentations by Darwin and Nabokov of the paternal burden or pressure in their autobiographies. As is evident in their very different accounts, the manner in which Darwin and Nabokov did their life’s work by differentiating themselves from the powerful models of their fathers — Darwin by way of a repressed hostility masquerading as father-worship to the point of hypochondriacal dysfunction, Nabokov by way of an aesthete-intellectual’s ironic self-distancing from the seigneurial ideal of a beloved parent — indicates two very different filial responses, short of a direct or open challenge to the father’s authority, to the Victorian ideal of the family patriarch
Art · Art history · Darwin (ADL · Epistemology · Freudian slip · Ideal (ethics · Literature · Patriarchy · Portrait · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Temptation · Trilogy · French Literature and Criticism · Gender Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Russian Literature and Bakhtin Studies · Social Psychology · Vladimir Nabokov Literary Studies
| Citations per year | 0.05 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2005 - 2005 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |