Carlyle's deep attachment to his mother

Chris R. Vanden Bossche, Professor of English, University of Notre Dame

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[Chapter 2, note 24, of the author's Carlyle and the Search for Authority, which the Ohio State University Press published in 1991. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright. not in print version indicates a link to material not in the original print version. GPL]

Froude describes Carlyle's "real passion" for his mother, their mutual "passionate attachment of a quite peculiar kind," and asserts that the "strongest personal passion" that Carlyle "experienced through all his life was his affection for his mother" (EL, 1:35, 47, 239). He also argues that the attachment persisted even after Carlyle's marriage, depicting Carlyle and his mother driving about in a gig, "smoking their pipes together, like a pair of lovers-as indeed they were" (LL, 1: 178). Kaplan concurs and expands Froude's reading (e.g., 24; see also Cabau, 193-235).

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Last modified 5 October 2001