This work offers an original interpretation of the mothers of the protagonists in Dickenss autobiographical novels. Taking Julia Kristevas psychoanalytic concept of abjection and Mary Douglass anthropological analysis of pollution as its conceptual framework the book argues that Dickenss primary emotional response towards the mother who abandoned him to work in a blacking warehouse was disgust and suggests that we can trace similar signs of disgust in the narrators of his fictional autobiographies David Copperfield Bleak House and Great Expectations. The author provides a close reading of Dickenss autobiographical fragment and opens up the possibility that Dickenss feelings towards his mother actually bore a significant influence on his fiction. The book closes with a provocative discussion of Dickenss compulsive Sikes and Nancy public readings.