Haphazard Families: Romanticism, Nation, and the Prehistory of Modern Adoption (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780814259085)

There are no provisions for adoption in English common law, and adoption wasn't legally formalized in England and Wales until 1926. But a century earlier, untimely adoptions navigated the new exceptionalism of childhood in Romanticism. In Haphazard Families, Eric C. Walker explores the history of the adopted child in Romantic-era England. Taking up the stories of both fictional and historical adoptees, he demonstrates how these children, diminished to nonpersons, shouldered the burden of social constructs of nation, family, gender, and class. Walker further demonstrates how Rousseau's infamous failure to follow his own ideals of parenthood shaped British reactions in famous texts such as Frankenstein and Emma. Incorporating perspectives from Romantic scholarship and critical adoption studies and examining the stories of adopted children associated with Queen Caroline, Anna Letitia Barbauld, Jane Austen, the Wordsworth siblings, Mary Shelley, Charles and Mary Lamb, Letitia Landon, and others, Haphazard Families considers how Romantic constructions of childhood supply foundational structures of modern adoptee subjectivity

Author: Eric C. Walker
ISBN-10: 0814259081
ISBN-13: 9780814259085
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/29/2024
Pages: 246
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.82lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.57d