Individuation and Attachment in the Works of Isabelle de Charrière

The Author: Jelka Samsom received an M.A. and a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education at the University of Leyden, the Netherlands, and completed a Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham. She is now working on a study which investigates the links and divergences between late eighteenth-century thought and Romanticism by comparing Isabelle de Charrière’s Caliste, Benjamin Constant’s Adolphe and Mme de Staël’s Corinne. She teaches French at the University of Birmingham.

• Contents: Feminist and Freudian readings of Isabelle de Charrière’s novels of the 1780s – A modern side of the novels – Theoretical background for the analysis of Isabelle de Charrière’s work: Kohut’s Self psychology – Healthy narcissism – Secondary narcissism – Selfobject – Self psychology and late eighteenth-century literature – First part of the Lettres écrites de Lausanne: an essay on mother and child relationship – Lettres neuchâteloises: an essay on attachment, individuation and morality – Lettres de Mistriss Henley: an essay on social identity – Caliste: an essay on the divided self.