The Catastrophic Grief of De Quincey's 'Lost Girls': The Subversive Females of Confessions and Suspiria

Authors

  • Tamie Dolny University of Toronto Department of English University of Toronto Faculty of Law

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25071/2369-7326.40257

Abstract

Depicted as hallucinations, hauntings, ghosts and dreams, the females of De Quincey's most controversial prose texts function as proto-feminist entities, where they usurp patriarchal linguistic structures by creating entirely new language systems. De Quincey's delirious dream sequences present a trifecta of female emotive power: analyzed through the feminist lens of de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex," this essay demonstrates how De Quincey's 'lost girls' exceed Gothic supernatural conventions to control the agency of a female-dominated dreamscape.

Author Biography

Tamie Dolny, University of Toronto Department of English University of Toronto Faculty of Law

I am currently a JD student at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and hold an MA from the same institution in English Literature. My academic interests revolve around poetics, feminist theory, and Victorian literature. My academic work has previously been published in TRANSverse, UofT's comparative literature peer-reviewed journal.

References

Agnew, Lois. Thomas De Quincey: British Rhetoric's Romantic Turn. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2012. Print.

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Crawford, Joseph. "The Haunting of Thomas De Quincey." Cambridge Quarterly 40.3 (2011): 224-242. Print. https://doi.org/10.1093/camqtly/bfr016

Davies, Hugh Sykes. Thomas De Quincey. London: Mildner and Sons, 1964. Print.

De Beauvoir, Simone. "Myth and Reality." The Second Sex. 1949. New York: Vintage, 1989. 253-63. Print.

De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an English Opium Eater. 1821. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Related Writings. Ed. Joel Faflak. Peterborough: Broadview, 2009. 49-132. Print.

De Quincey, Thomas. Suspiria de Profundis. 1845. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Related Writings. Ed. Joel Faflak. Peterborough: Broadview, 2009. 133-230. Print.

Smith, Julianne. "Private Practice: Thomas De Quincey, Margaret Oliphant, and the Construction of Women's Rhetoric in the Victorian Periodical Press." Rhetoric Review 23.1 (2004): 40-56. Print. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327981rr2301_3

Terada, Rei. "Living a Ruined Life: De Quincey Beyond the Worst." European Romantic Review 20.2 (2009): 177-86. Print. https://doi.org/10.1080/10509580902840459

Wallen, Martin. "Body Linguistics in Schreber's Memoirs and De Quincey's Confessions." Mosaic 24 (1991): 93-108. Print.

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Published

2016-10-11

How to Cite

Dolny, T. (2016). The Catastrophic Grief of De Quincey’s ’Lost Girls’: The Subversive Females of Confessions and Suspiria. Pivot: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies and Thought, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.25071/2369-7326.40257

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2016): Visionary Texts, Past and Present: (Re)visionings and (Re)imaginings

Section

Critical Articles