Wrestling with Abjection: Waste, The Corpse and Smell in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend

• Main Authors: NOLAN, LUKE, 林皓輿
• Other Authors: WALL, THOMAS
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/bdpna5

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 應用英文系 === 107 === This thesis focuses on three key linked issues in Dickens’ novel Our Mutual Friend. The novel is littered with references to waste and death, and both are intimately related within the story. Smell is inextricably linked to both waste and death as both are creators of foul smells, something which western culture in particular has long tried to distance itself from. This thesis discusses these issues in relation both to the novel itself and to London at the time in which the novel is set. London was the world’s largest city by population in the 1860’s and as a leading centre of capitalism it was a city in which the usability of waste was a key issue. The aforementioned topics will help shape my discussion of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection within the novel and in Victorian London. Social hierarchies in Our Mutual Friend and in London help shape people’s experiences of waste, death and smells and they also shape the intensity with which people feel abjection. Bourgeois subjectivity shaped public opinion and this also shaped how abjection was felt across the classes. Given that abjection is classified as a lack of familiarity, it is no surprise that abjection caused by waste, death and smells is felt more keenly by the bourgeois class than by the lower classes. The bourgeois are spatially and financially separated from frequent confrontations with the abject, whereas the poor are not, and thus for the poor it becomes easier to overcome abjection through their increased familiarity with it.