Jones, Jonathan D. (2003) Orphans : childhood alienation and the idea of the self in Rousseau, Wordsworth and Mary Shelley. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis explores representations of the self in Rousseau's Émile (1762).
Wordsworth's The Prelude (1805) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). It
uses the idea of 'the orphan' not in a strictly literal sense, but in order to explore
representations of the self that stress an individual's autonomy, and thus tend to
minimise the importance of society and cultural inheritance to the formation of
the self. Crucial to understanding this model of the self is the idea found in
Émile of autonomous natural growth: the idea that a child brought up in relative
seclusion in the countryside, and offered the minimum of assistance from its
adult carers, is capable of developing naturally, seemingly under its own volition.
Rousseau believed that such a child would have an authenticity lacking in those
children unduly contaminated by external cultural factors. The model of
autonomous growth proposed by Rousseau relates to the discourse of possessive
individualism and to the idea of the self-made man, beholden to no one, and free
to make his own way in the world. This model of the self influenced
Wordsworth and Mary Shelley, who both respond to and react against
Rousseau's thinking.
The thesis explores the contradictions implicit in this model of self-formation. It
stresses the impossibility of keeping children free from external human factors,
looking at the way that physical and mental development is necessarily
accompanied by a child's acculturation, for example in relation to language
acquisition. It explores the complications that arise from this in relation to
questions of autonomy. The thesis highlights the sense of alienation and the
emotional cost experienced by the child who is brought up to perceive itself as
set apart from 'others', as exemplified by the loneliness felt by the most isolated
of the 'children' under discussion, Victor Frankenstein's creation. In contrast to
the discourse of possessive individualism this study persists in treating the self as
historically situated, and inhabited by the culture that surrounds it.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778. Émile, Wordsworth, William, 1770-1850. Prelude , Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851. Frankenstein, Self (Philosophy) in literature, Autonomy in literature, Children in literature
Official Date:	May 2003
Dates:	Date Event May 2003 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Fletcher, John, 1948- ; Steedman, Carolyn
Sponsors:	Arts and Humanities Research Board (Great Britain) (AHRB)
Extent:	276 p.
Language:	eng

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