This book reveals how the periods transforming identities affected by social, economic, religious, and national energies offers rich opportunities in which to analyze the relationship between identity and transformation. At the heart of this study is this question: what is the relationship between Victorian childrens literature, its readers, and their psychic development?  Ruth Y. Jenkins uses Julia Kristevas theory of abjection to uncover the presence of cultural anxieties and social tensions in works by Kingsley, MacDonald, Carroll, Stevenson, Burnett, Ballantyne, Nesbit, Tucker, Sewell, and Rossetti. 

Ruth Y. Jenkins is Professor of English at California State University, Fresno, USA. She is the author of Reclaiming Myths of Power: The Victorian Spiritual Crisis and Women Writers and numerous articles on Victorian literature and culture, childrens literature, feminist, cultural, and writing theory. 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments                                                                                                          

1Introduction: Emerging Identities and the Practice of Possibility                           

2Imagining the Abject in Kingsley, MacDonald, and Carroll: Disrupting Dominant Values and Cultural Identity in Childrens Literature  

3 Gender, Abjection, and Coming of Age: Games, Dolls, and Stories                    

4Constructing the Self: Connection and Separation                                                

5Giving Voice to Abjection: Experience and Empathy                                          

6Engendering Abjections Sublime: Frances Hodgson BurnettsThe Secret Garden      

7Embodying Herethics: RossettisSpeaking Likenesses                                           

ConclusionAbjections Sublime: Imagining Love                                                    

Notes