The Victorian Self

What becomes of typologically patterned autobiography in an age when faith in providential history is threatened? Heather Henderson here examines how three representative Victorian autobiographers, John Henry Newman, John Ruskin, and Edmund Gosse, adapted and even subverted typological narrative models in order to tell their stories of doubt and unconversion.The Victorian Self considers these writers against the background of the Christian typological tradition in which the Bible was read as a system of progressive revelation and figures such as Adam, Moses, and David were viewed as types or foreshadowings of Christ. Newman's Apologia, Ruskin 's Praeterita, and Gosse's Father and Son, Henderson shows, make use of both biblical imagery and biblical narrative structure s in idiosyncratic and even parodic ways; all three transform typology's familiar patterns for their own purposes. The Victorian Self analyzes deliberate mis-use of typology as a reaction to the stifling effects of an imprisoning interpretive system. The three works treated by Henderson illustrate the wide range of narrative possibilities this subversion opens up for the Victorian autobiographer.