Helene Moglen is Professor of English Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among her publications are The Philosophical Irony of Laurence Sterne (1975), Charlotte Bronte The Self Conceived (1976), and Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (California, 1997), which she coedited with Elizabeth Abel and Barbara Christian.

"The Trauma of Gender is a wonderfully crafted text, provocative, insightful, and imaginative. Moglen not only shows us how to read the intrapsychic processes at work in fiction, but offers a careful consideration of the social form that loss, mourning, and desire take in the fictions she considers. Along the way, she develops a nuanced account of the origin of the novel, showing her readers in subtle ways how the beginnings of fiction and the beginnings of fantasy are interwoven. Her text exemplifies psychoanalytic literary criticism at its best, offering a fine and probing study of the social and psychic dimensions of literary works." - Judith Butler, author of Gender Trouble "In this lucid and perceptive study, Helene Moglen looks steadily at the shadow side of canonical eighteenth-century fiction and sees the psychic costs of waxing individualism." - Catherine Gallagher, author of Nobody's Story "These extremely powerful and authoritative new readings of important canonical texts will set a new standard for discussions of the novel as a genre." - Lisa L. Moore, author of Dangerous Intimacies"

• Acknowledgments Introduction: The Gender Politics of Narrative Modes 1. Daniel Defoe and the Gendered Subject of Individualism 2. Clarissa and the Pornographic Imagination 3. (W)holes and Noses: The Indeterminacies of Tristram Shandy 4. Horace Walpole and the Nightmare of History Conclusion: The Relation of Fiction and Theory Notes Works Cited Index