Description
Examines the causes of the abject response in canonical novels such as Charles Dickens Oliver Twist, Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre, and Mary Elizabeth Braddons Aurora Floyd and Lady Audleys Secret. In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva outlines her theory of abjection as a simultaneous fascination and horror stemming from sensorial reminders of the subjects primal, psychological relation to the mother. The author suggests that these psychological perspectives can potentially result in acts of physical violence, which are called abject response. By developing Julia Kristevas theory of abjection as a model for reading physical acts of violence against women, the book yields specific answers to its overriding questions: Why was a female body so threatening in nineteenth-century fiction? The answer lies in social constructions of women as powers of horror, which the male subject imbibes and which lead to domestic violence if improperly balanced.
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