Female Narrative Energy in the Writings of Dead White Males: Dickens, Collins and Freud

Abstract

This chapter will reassess the significance of female voices in the writings of three nineteenth-century men: Sigmund Freud, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. I will argue that creating a sustained dialogue between the two novelists and the psychoanalyst opens up a far more radical space than has previously been located in the male-authored Victorian novel. By conceiving of narrative as a powerful possession, as Freud did in his discourse with hysterical women, we can identify new forms of feminine empowerment emerging in male-authored nineteenth-century texts.

For Each of Us Destiny Takes the Form of A Woman, or of Several

— Sigmund Freud writing to Sándor Ferenczi (Freud 1992: 528)