Gurfinkel . . . demonstrates convincingly that both the figure of the patriarch, and also academic considerations of patriarchy, need to be expanded beyond the notion of male oppression and hostility. In light of her work, the networks of lineage that construct patriarchal relationships can now also be conceived as nurturing, emotional and positive. Yet perhaps most significantly, Gurfinkel’s analysis of late-Victorian and twentieth-century literature also has the effect of making patriarchy a relevant consideration in the twenty-first century, in which the notion of the family is changing rapidly and conventional patriarchs may seem few and far between. . . .Gurfinkel’s work offers a paradigm that can help us understand the Anglo-American present, as well as analyze the British literary past.

Edwardian Culture Network

Helena Gurfinkel offers an insightful new vision of fatherhood through an engagement with English literature, Freudian psychoanalysis and queer theory. . . .Moreover the core theoretical approaches, for example Freud’s theory of the negative Oedipus, are presented in an accessible opening chapter. . . .The book will appeal to both students of literature and critical theory scholars.

New Books Network

Gurfinkel has done thorough research, strongly grounding her argument in the foundational texts of psychoanalysis, queer studies, and masculinity studies. . . .This [is a] thought-provoking and ambitious book, which scholars in the various disciplines it draws on will find a useful contribution to their fields.

English Literature In Transition 1880-1920

…[A] considerable work of scholarship…Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature: Queering Patriarchy represents an admirable attempt to undertake a dialogue with psychoanalysis around issues of patriarchy and maleness…illuminate[s] aspects of the Victorian novel (and its historical struggle with class and gender) and of psychoanalytic theory (to some extent another reaction to the same historical forces) and argue[s] against any essentialist reduction of the multilevel realities within each to rigid forms and precepts.

Lewis Allen Kirshner, clinical professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Outlaw Fathers delights by shattering paradigms. Employing the negative Oedipus complex, Gurfinkel challenges our easy definition of patriarchy by uncovering the queer patriarchy of queer fathers and sons [and] enlarges the category of the marriage plot by adding to the heteronormative definition a canon of queer marriage plots from Anthony Trollope through Samuel Butler to Alan Hollinghurst. This severing of masculinity from aggression and toward nurturing is especially valuable as we see the rise of gay marriage and gay parenting.

Herbert Sussman, emeritus professor of English at Northeastern University

In Outlaw Fathers, Helena Gurfinkel is doing subtly audacious work at the intersection of queer theory and Victorian and modernist studies. In a series of lucidly argued readings of important nineteenth- and twentieth-century British texts, she shows how they elaborate, against the dominant narratives of the Oedipus complex and the marriage plot, the queerer narratives of the negative Oedipus complex and the father-son marriage plot. But she does not just reveal this literary counter-tradition: against a certain hostility toward Freud in Foucauldian queer theory, she contributes incisively and elegantly to a theoretical counter-tradition that, seeing Freud himself as an outlaw father, realizes the queer possibilities of psychoanalysis.

Joseph Litvak, professor and chair of the Department of English at Tufts University