Melancholics in Love: Representing WomenOs Depression and Domestic Abuse

by Frances L. Restuccia

Overview

Melancholics in Love: Representing Women’s Depression and Domestic Abuse joins psychoanalytic theories of melancholia and mourning (Freud, Kristeva) with cultural studies and its attention to power relations in cultural practice. It is interested in the borderland between the psychoanalytic and the cultural, where desire is imbricated with power and individual psyches with cultural formations. Drawing from a wide spectrum of literary and autobiographical texts from the past and present, such as Jane Austen's Emma and Tina Turner’s I, Tina, Frances L. Restuccia moves from a psychoanalytic explanation of the formation of women melancholics to the cultural co-construction of battered women. A fascinating, provocative, and highly original study in melancholia and domestic abuse, Melancholics in Love will be of special interest to anyone concerned with social justice for battered women or the politics of representation of violence against women.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780847698295
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	02/09/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	168
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Frances L. Restuccia is associate professor of contemporary literary and cultural theory, English, and women's studies at Boston College.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 1 "A Black Morning" in Jane Austen'sEmma Chapter 3 2 Mortification: Beyond the Persuasion Principle Chapter 4 3 Tales of Beauty: Brookner's, Atwood's, and Drabble's "Feminine Symbolic" Chapter 5 4 Conjurings: Mourning and Abjection inStory of O andReturn to the Château Chapter 6 5 Redirecting Spectacles of Domestic Woman Abuse:I, Tina andDefending Our Lives Chapter 7 6 Literary Representations of Battered Women: Spectacular Domestic Punishment Chapter 8 Afterword Chapter 9 Bibliography Chapter 10 Index Chapter 11 About the Author

Editorial Reviews

Frances Restuccia’s Melancholics in Love is a lucid and persuasive account of the psychic and social formation of abused women. Restuccia develops an original and engaging psychosocial theory of why melancholic women are more likely to fall in love with abusive men. Restuccia’s compelling prose, illuminating examples, and constant view toward real-life domestic abuse make this brilliant theoretical edifice come alive with meaning and compassion. Melancholics in Love weds the best of theory with the best of literary criticism, cultural studies, and applied psychoanalysis. This thought-provoking and powerful book opens a new door for theoretical analysis of domestic abuse.

Kelly Oliver

A sophisticated, meticulous work.

Contemporary Literature

Frances Restuccia's Melancholics in Love: Representing Women's Depression and Domestic Abuse addresses a timely topic of domestic violence and its representations in women's fiction, autobiography, and contemporary culture. By staging a critical negotiation between psychoanalytical theory, in particular Julia Kristeva's discussion of melancholia, and the cultural analysis of modern power inspired by Foucault's work, Restuccia develops her own original reading of the cultural and psychic dynamics of female melancholia, masochism, destructive jouissance, mother/daughter relations, domestic violence and resistance. Written with clarity, lucidity, and precision, Melancholics in Love presents an original contribution to literary studies, feminist theory, and the political implications of the psychoanalytic theories of female subjectivity.

Ewa Ziarek