| This dissertation interrogates the most sacrosanct (and therefore often untouched) narrative of patriarchy: the relationships between fathers and sons. It seeks to re-examine the common perception of patriarchy as the monolithic bastion of conformity and oppression, against which dissenting social and sexual energies are directed. I submit that these energies are already within patriarchy itself. My project combines a psychoanalytic approach with a historical one. Psychoanalysis is more than an insight into a private psyche or family; it affords an acute perspective on the historical development of English nationalism, British imperialism, and the attendant constructions of masculinity. Using the theory of the Oedipus complex, I trace the representations of father-son attachments and untraditional patriarchal identities - female-identified, gay, and biologically female - in several Victorian and twentieth-century British texts. Since the link between patriarchy and nation is implicit in the very word "patria," or "fatherland," I also map out connections between patriarchal subject positions and various articulations of Englishness and Britishness. |
