Constructing the Self: Connection and Separation

Abstract

Analyzing Ballantyne’s Coral Island and Nesbit’s Treasure Seekers, Jenkins illustrates how character-narrators model the experience of subjects in process, offering not just as-if but as-if-I opportunities that result from acknowledgment from a beloved authority. The subject-I narrator models a key aspect of Kristeva’s signifying process, shifting emphasis from the object of transference to the act of transference, which she describes as love. Jenkins shows how both character-narrators negotiate cultural abject as subjects in process, developing internal standards of morality, so they can construct subject positions, successfully separating from the other without total transposition into the Symbolic. Oswald narrates a more self-conscious, literate story than Ralph’s less critical one, but both facilitate imaginative transference.