Galia Benzima
Narratives of child neglect in romantic and Victorian culture
Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills/ Basingstoke/ Hampshire/ New York, 2012, ix+257 pp
ISBN: 9780230293922
Contextualizing the topos of the neglected child within a variety of discourses, this book challenges the assumption that the early nineteenth century witnessed a clear transition from a Puritan to a liberating approach to children and demonstrates that oppressive assumptions survive in major texts considered part of the Romantic cult of childhood.
Concepts of childhood and adult responsibility: Locke, Rousseau, More, and Edgeworth
Redeeming or silencing the child’s voice: Blake and Wordsworth
Child neglect as social vice: Trollope, Tonna, and working-class subjectivity
The split image of the neglected child: Dickens
Aged children and the inevitability of being neglected: Hardy.
Galia Benziman is Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the Open University of Israel and specializes in British Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century. Formerly a Fulbright and Dan David Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of California Dickens Project, USA.
