Charles Dickens’s novel Little Dorrit (1857) depicts an abundance of surrogate mothers while simultaneously revealing an absence of biological motherhood. The primary female characters become surrogate mothers in their own ways in order to bypass the legal and physical dangers associated with biological motherhood. To do this, they embrace various alternate forms of femininity—the crone, the maiden, the woman warrior, and the seductress. These women negate themselves willingly in actions that would seem to reinforce the gender norms of their time, but their self-negation actually leads to empowerment and sustainability for themselves and for others. Furthermore, a Jungian interpretation of both these female characters and Dickens’s personal relationships reveals that Little Dorrit might have been an attempt to reconcile his desire for the normative maternal with his desire for a strong female presence separate from the domestic realm, thus providing a more nuanced view of Dickens’s ideas on femininity.
","abstract_html":"<p>Charles Dickens’s novel <em>Little Dorrit </em>(1857) depicts an abundance of surrogate mothers while simultaneously revealing an absence of biological motherhood. The primary female characters become surrogate mothers in their own ways in order to bypass the legal and physical dangers associated with biological motherhood. To do this, they embrace various alternate forms of femininity—the crone, the maiden, the woman warrior, and the seductress. These women negate themselves willingly in actions that would seem to reinforce the gender norms of their time, but their self-negation actually leads to empowerment and sustainability for themselves and for others. Furthermore, a Jungian interpretation of both these female characters and Dickens’s personal relationships reveals that <em>Little Dorrit</em> might have been an attempt to reconcile his desire for the normative maternal with his desire for a strong female presence separate from the domestic realm, thus providing a more nuanced view of Dickens’s ideas on femininity.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Love, William David, Jr."],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Master of Arts (MA)","degree_level":"Masters Thesis","degree_discipline":"English","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Alexandra Valint","Nicolle Jordan","Emily Stanback"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2015,"date_issued":"2015-05-01T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2015-05-01T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T05:44:27Z","subjects":["Charles Dickens","Carl Jung","Victorian maternity","archetypes","Literature in English, British Isles","Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/86","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Alexandra Valint","Nicolle Jordan","Emily Stanback"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Love, William David, Jr."]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2015-03-19T07:00:00Z"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["English"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Masters Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Master of Arts (MA)"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Charles Dickens","Carl Jung","Victorian maternity","archetypes","Literature in English, British Isles","Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/86"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["Charles Dickens’s novel Little Dorrit (1857) depicts an abundance of surrogate mothers while simultaneously revealing an absence of biological motherhood. The primary female characters become surrogate mothers in their own ways in order to bypass the legal and physical dangers associated with biological motherhood. To do this, they embrace various alternate forms of femininity—the crone, the maiden, the woman warrior, and the seductress. These women negate themselves willingly in actions that would seem to reinforce the gender norms of their time, but their self-negation actually leads to empowerment and sustainability for themselves and for others. Furthermore, a Jungian interpretation of both these female characters and Dickens’s personal relationships reveals that Little Dorrit might have been an attempt to reconcile his desire for the normative maternal with his desire for a strong female presence separate from the domestic realm, thus providing a more nuanced view of Dickens’s ideas on femininity.
"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["The Self-(un)Made Mother: Jungian Archetypes in Dickens's Little Dorrit"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Alexandra Valint","Nicolle Jordan","Emily Stanback"],"dc:creator":["Love, William David, Jr."],"dc:date.available":["2015-03-19T07:00:00Z"],"dc:description.abstract":["Charles Dickens’s novel Little Dorrit (1857) depicts an abundance of surrogate mothers while simultaneously revealing an absence of biological motherhood. The primary female characters become surrogate mothers in their own ways in order to bypass the legal and physical dangers associated with biological motherhood. To do this, they embrace various alternate forms of femininity—the crone, the maiden, the woman warrior, and the seductress. These women negate themselves willingly in actions that would seem to reinforce the gender norms of their time, but their self-negation actually leads to empowerment and sustainability for themselves and for others. Furthermore, a Jungian interpretation of both these female characters and Dickens’s personal relationships reveals that Little Dorrit might have been an attempt to reconcile his desire for the normative maternal with his desire for a strong female presence separate from the domestic realm, thus providing a more nuanced view of Dickens’s ideas on femininity.
"],"dc:identifier":["https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/86"],"dc:subject":["Charles Dickens","Carl Jung","Victorian maternity","archetypes","Literature in English, British Isles","Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies"],"dc:title":["The Self-(un)Made Mother: Jungian Archetypes in Dickens's Little Dorrit"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["English"],"thesis:degree_level":["Masters Thesis"],"thesis:degree_name":["Master of Arts (MA)"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T05:44:27Z"}