EBOOK Queer Dickens:Erotics, Families, Masculinities

This book offers a radically new reading of Dickens and his major works. It        demonstrates that, rather than representing a largely conventional, conservative        view of sexuality and gender, he presents a distinctly queer corpus, everywhere        fascinated by the diversity of gender roles, the expandability of notions of the        family, and the complex multiplicity of sexual desire. The book examines the long        overlooked figures of bachelor fathers, maritally resistant men, and male nurses.          Itexplores Dickens's attention to a longing, not to reproduce, but to nurture, his        interest in healing touch, and his articulation, over the course of his career, of        homoerotic desire.Holly Furneaux places Dickens's writing in a broad literary and        social context, alongside authors including Bulwer-Lytton, Tennyson, Braddon,        Collins, and Whitman, to make a case for Dickens's central position in queer        literary history. Examining novels, poetry, life-writing, journalism, and legal and        political debates, Queer Dickens argues that this eminent Victorian can direct us to        the ways in which his culture could, and did, comfortably accommodate homoeroticism        and families ofchoice. Further, it contends that Dickens's portrayals of nurturing        masculinity and his concern with touch and affect between men challenge what we have        been used to thinking about Victorian ideals of maleness.Queer Dickens intervenes in        current debates about the Victorians (neither so punitive nor so prudish as we once        imagined) and about the methodologies of the histories of the family and of        sexuality. It makes the case for a more optimistic, nurturing, and life-affirming        trajectory in queer theory.