Art and the Transitional Object in Vernon Lee’s Supernatural Tales

Patricia Pulham combines psychoanalytic theory with socio-historical criticism in her study of Vernon Lee’s fantastic tales. Using D.W. Winnicott’s ’transitional object’ theory, Pulham argues that the past in Lee’s tales signifies not only an historical but a psychic past. Thus the ’ghosts’ that haunt Lee’s supernatural fiction held complex meanings for her that were fundamental to her intellectual development and allowed her to explore alternative identities that permit the expression of transgressive sexualities.

Patricia Pulham is Senior Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Portsmouth, UK.