Law Commons^™

Nature, Nurture, Narrative, Law: The Wellesley Case, Oliver Twist, And The Victorian Anxiety About Parentage, Sarah Abramowicz

Studio for Law and Culture

Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist heralded the popularity in Victorian England of a new type of novel, the novel of child development, that traced the experience of displaced child protagonists as they found their place in the world by working out their relationships with a series of parents and parent-figures. At the same time, the newly prominent field of English child custody law began to articulate why and how parentage matters for a developing child. An examination of one of the first highly publicized English custody disputes, Wellesley v. Beaufort, brings out some of the concerns about parentage at work …

Staging The Family, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

For many critical aspects of family life, all the world truly is a stage. When a parent scolds a child on the playground, all eyes turn to watch and judge. When an executive’s wife hosts a work party, the guests are witness to traditional gender roles. And when two fathers attend a back-to-school night for their child, other parents take note of this relatively new family configuration. Family is popularly considered intimate and personal, but in reality much of family life is lived in the public eye.

These performances of family and familial roles do not simply communicate messages to …