SOURCE: “Magi and Maidens: The Romance of the Victorian Freud,” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter, 1981, pp. 281-300.

In the following excerpt, Auerbach analyzes the two main characters of Trilby—Svengali as master/mesmerist and Trilby as metamorphosing heroine.

It is commonly assumed that Victorian patriarchs disposed of their women by making myths of them; but then as now social mythology had an unpredictable life of its own, slyly empowering the subjects it seemed to reduce. It also penetrated unexpected sanctuaries. If we examine the unsettling impact upon Sigmund Freud of a popular mythic configuration of the 1890s, we witness a rich, covert collaboration between documents of romance and the romance of science. Fueling this entanglement between the clinician's proud objectivity and the compelling images of popular belief is the imaginative power of that much-loved, much-feared, and much-lied-about creature, the Victorian woman.

Until recently, feminist criticism has depreciated this...