Department of English

There are few institutions more closely entangled than the novel and the family. Novels have helped make sense of family life every since their appearance in the 1700s. And domestic households, which were also new to this moment, have helped make fiction readers, and individuals who recognise themselves in plots and narratives. But this relationship has also often been a critical and uneasy one. Where better to study the darker sides of family than in the novel? And who better than the novel reader to ask: how do individuals survive their families? In this seminar, we’ll study some classic and some recent novels as representations of and comments on what the family is and what effects it has on life as we know it. We will also look at some historical records of actual family life that help suggest the differences between real life and fiction. And we’ll begin to think about what different meanings emerge from fictional accounts of family life if we place them next to historcial, sociological, and theoretical arguments from the periods in which they were written. Readings include: Mansfield Park, Mill on the Floss, We the Animals, Ghost Walls, and theories of the family by Foucault, Freud, Engels, and Sophie Lewis.