Abstract
Austen’s novels are structured around permanent or temporary home spaces. During the narrative, characters move from one life space to another—passages that are sometimes marked by various thresholds and connecting spaces such as windows and doors—and these trajectories are related to social and psychological transformations. In Chap. 3 I look at these life spaces in the novels. I examine the characters’ psychological relations to different houses/homes and their development through time. I distinguish four types of homes, which sometimes overlap: childhood/original homes, temporary homes, dream homes, and independent adult homes. These different types of homes reveal different psychological phases of the characters that change with time: most of the heroines grow out of their childhood homes, produce images of their dream homes in their heads while lingering in temporary home spaces, until they are able finally, to found their mature adult homes.
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- 1.
Bachelard, 4.
- 2.
Mirella Billi sees this description of Northanger Abbey as a representation of General Tilney’s inhospitable character “for whom the house is only a status symbol […] meant to impress the visitors” (230). I’m concentrating rather on Catherine’s point of view, and the image of the abbey in her mind.
- 3.
Mrs. Bennet’s view reflects eighteenth-century thinking about the importance of home space “where the house represents the wealth, class and occupation of its owner” (Varey, 19).
- 4.
Saggini and Soccio note, that “with the development of the proto-capitalist society, ‘home’ became ever more associated with the idea of an environment for women, especially of middle-class background, upon which female refinement and taste on the one hand and female virtue and modesty on the other could put their stamp” (3).
- 5.
In his article “Exploring space: Constellations of Mansfield Park” Skinner analyses Fanny’s instances of daydreaming which allows her to experience “intimate space at Mansfield” and thus “to strengthen her psychological ties with her new home” (8–9).
- 6.
In her article “Public and private space in Jane Austen” Johnston juxtaposes Fanny’s first impression after her arrival at Mansfield, when she was “disarmed by the size of Mansfield” (199) and her adult impression of the smallness of her Portsmouth home.
- 7.
Billi sees in Austen’s “praise of the glorious English Navy” (70) and the hint of a possible war that the house of Anne and Frederic Wentworth will be “a ship, freely ploughing the waves at sea” (71). After 1816 (the completion of P) the British Navy participated in various small conflicts and, thus, it is possible that Anne would have spent her time with her husband on a ship. This was the case for Mrs. Croft who lived on a ship with her husband, and in spite of being “confined” she claims that “the happiest part of [her] life has been spent on board a ship” (76).
- 8.
Duckworth suggests that Mr. Parker’s actions are doomed to fail, as prefigured by his carriage crash in the beginning of the novel. He notes:
Mr. Parker has left behind a life (as well as a garden) that was socially formal, yet in tune with the natural rhythms of the country. More important, he has left behind a society that provided protection and support from contingencies, whether natural, like the storm, or social. In flirting with his commercial ventures, he may be inviting “real danger”. It seems probable that had Sanditon been completed the bubble of Mr. Parker’s “speculation” would burst. (215)
He adds, that the word “speculation” appears several times in this part of the text and claims that it must have a pejorative meaning (216).
- 9.
See Le Faye, 113–114.
- 10.
N. Reynolds (2010) gives a brief overview of the symbolic history of windows in art: she notes that the Romantic era’s stress on the view through the window symbolizes “a frustrated longing or a desire to escape” (16).
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Baublyté Kaufmann, R. (2018). Changing Homes: Transformations in Space and Time. In: The Architecture of Space-Time in the Novels of Jane Austen. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90011-7_3
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