Double trouble: Romantic idealism in the novels of Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, and Angela Carter

This study focuses on the connections between Romantic idealism, narcissistic injuries, and inter-generational familial dysfunction in the novels of Mary Shelley, Emily Bronte, and Angela Carter. It explores these authors' use of the double as a critique of Romantic ideals.;Chapter I examines the role of narcissistic injuries and Promethean desires in Shelley's Frankenstein, Mathilda, The Last Man, Valperga, and Falkner. Using Carter's concept of "consolatory myth," it looks at the connections between Romantic idealism and the quest for an idealized other. It investigates the relationship between Percy Shelley's "epipsyche," the Romantic quest, depression, and pathological mourning.;Chapter II focuses on the relationship, in Shelley's novels, between idealized families, narcissistic injuries and the quest for an unobtainable other. I argue that Shelley shows the devastating effects of idealization, not only on the idealized Other, but also on his or her children. This chapter ends with an examination of the alternatives Shelley presents to family idealization.;Chapter III distinguishes between P. Shelley's epipsyche and the double, and explores the relationship between Romantic idealism, the quest for a soulmate, narcissistic rage, and personality fragmentation in Shelley's novels. Chapter IV examines the connections between Shelley's critiques of Romantic idealism and Brontes. I argue that Bronte, like Shelley, utilizes double figures in Wuthering Heights to critique Romantic idealism. But Bronte, unlike Shelley, uses irony. Created by the disjuncture between Bronte's two narrators, this irony brings a dark humor to a novel otherwise replete with violence and abuse.;Finally, Chapter V investigates the similarities between Carter's, Shelley's and Bronte's critiques of Romantic idealism. It reveals that in Love, Heroes and Villains, and The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, Carter also connects the quest for an idealized other with narcissistic injuries and personality fragmentation. Carter, like Bronte, uses irony to make her critiques at once more stinging and more palatable. But unlike either Bronte or Shelley, Carter also uses literalization, in which metaphorical fears and desires are manifested---become actualized---in the material world. By using literalization, Carter makes her irony even more evident.