Table Of ContentMediated Fictions 7 7 Mediated Fictions 7
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Dreams, Nightmares and Empty Signifiers contradictory political stances ascribed a
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representations of one of the most iconic readings by approaching it as an element s
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topoi in English literature and culture – of the semiosphere with dynamic shifts U
the country house. The book analyses of discourses, values and meanings.
nine contemporary novels, including Presenting the country-house topos as
The English Country House
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, part of broadly conceived literary tradi- s
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Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Sarah Waters’s tion, Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga boldly e in the Contemporary Novel
The Little Strangerand Alan Holling- redefines the theoretical paradigms so far fi
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hurst’s The Stranger’s Child, by situating dominant in the critical discourse. n
them in a broader context of manorial g
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literary tradition. Analysing the different Jadwiga We˛grodzka S
traditions of the novel of manners, gothic University of Gdan´sk y
fiction and postmodern metafiction, the pt
book identifies three principal variants of m
the manorial topos, which expound the E
country house as the locus of varied, often The Author d
contradictory meanings. Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga is Assistant n
Professor of English Literature and Culture a
Configured against a rich background of at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in s
the existing theoretical and critical reflec- Lublin. She is the author of a book study re
tion, the book Dreams, Nightmares and on Virginia Woolf’s novels (2006). Her a
Empty Signifiersby Urszula Terentowicz- main research interests are modernist and m
Fotyga successfully attempts to integrate postmodernist fiction, semiotics of space t
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the often ambivalent ideologies and and urban theory and representation. g
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ISBN 978-3-631-65715-7
Mediated Fictions 7 7 Mediated Fictions 7
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F
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wic Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga
Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga
o
t
n
Dreams, Nightmares and Empty Signifiers e
r Dreams, Nightmares
e
T
Dreams, Nightmares and Empty Signifiers contradictory political stances ascribed a
is the first study of contemporary literary to the country house in various critical zul and Empty Signifiers
representations of one of the most iconic readings by approaching it as an element s
r
topoi in English literature and culture – of the semiosphere with dynamic shifts U
the country house. The book analyses of discourses, values and meanings.
nine contemporary novels, including Presenting the country-house topos as
The English Country House
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, part of broadly conceived literary tradi- s
r
Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Sarah Waters’s tion, Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga boldly e in the Contemporary Novel
The Little Stranger and Alan Holling- redefines the theoretical paradigms so far fi
i
hurst’s The Stranger’s Child, by situating dominant in the critical discourse. n
them in a broader context of manorial g
i
literary tradition. Analysing the different Jadwiga We˛grodzka S
traditions of the novel of manners, gothic University of Gdan´sk y
fiction and postmodern metafiction, the pt
book identifies three principal variants of m
the manorial topos, which expound the E
country house as the locus of varied, often The Author d
contradictory meanings. Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga is Assistant n
Professor of English Literature and Culture a
Configured against a rich background of at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in s
the existing theoretical and critical reflec- Lublin. She is the author of a book study re
tion, the book Dreams, Nightmares and on Virginia Woolf’s novels (2006). Her a
Empty Signifiers by Urszula Terentowicz- main research interests are modernist and m
Fotyga successfully attempts to integrate postmodernist fiction, semiotics of space t
h
the often ambivalent ideologies and and urban theory and representation. g
i
N
,
s
m
a
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Dreams, Nightmares and Empty Signifiers
MEDIATED FICTIONS
STUDIES IN VERBAL AND VISUAL NARRATIVES
Series Editors: Artur Blaim and Ludmiła Gruszewska-Blaim
Editorial Board
Antonis Balasopoulos
Joanna Durczak
David Malcolm
Fátima Vieira
VOLUME 7
Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga
Dreams, Nightmares and Empty
Signifiers
The English Country House in the Contemporary Novel
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is
available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
This publication was financially supported by Maria Curie-Skłodowska
University, Lublin, Poland
Cover illustration printed with the kind permission of Jerzy Durczak
Reviewed by Jadwiga W grodzka
ę
ISSN 2194-5918
ISBN 978-3-631-65715-7 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-05006-6 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-05006-6
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2015
All rights reserved.
Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH.
Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙
Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any
utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
www.peterlang.com
Contents
Introduction .........................................................................................7
Part 1: Country-House Dreaming ..................................................35
CHAPTER ONE
“The Land Where Dreams Come True”: Julian Fellowes’s
Snobs ...................................................................................................43
CHAPTER TWO
The Palace of Art: Alan Hollinghurst’s
The Line of Beauty ...........................................................................61
CHAPTER THREE
Subverting the Myth: Kazuo Ishiguro’s
The Remains of the Day ..................................................................81
Conclusion .........................................................................................99
Part 2: Country-House Nightmares .............................................103
CHAPTER FOUR
“The other, odder, rarer realm”: Sarah Waters’s
The Little Stranger ..........................................................................115
CHAPTER FIVE
“Everything had stopped when he stopped
being able to imagine it”: Helen Dunmore’s
A Spell of Winter .............................................................................135
5
CHAPTER SIX
“Evil plots do not happen here”: Sarah Waters’s
Fingersmith ......................................................................................151
Conclusion .......................................................................................166
Part Three: The Country House as (Meta) fiction ...................169
CHAPTER SEVEN
“The emptiness, so soon to be filled”: Toby Litt’s
Finding Myself .................................................................................183
CHAPTER EIGHT
“The worrying air of cliché and unreality”:
Alan Hollinghurst’s
The Stranger’s Child .......................................................................199
CHAPTER NINE
An Artificial Place on an Artificial Island: Ian McEwan’s
Atonement ........................................................................................219
Conclusion .......................................................................................236
General Conclusion ........................................................................239
Works Cited .....................................................................................245
Index .................................................................................................265
6
Introduction
Signs are small measurable things,
but interpretations are illimitable.
George Eliot Middlemarch
The country house is one of the most familiar symbols of the English na-
tional imaginary. As grand and imposing architectural landmarks, country
houses have attracted millions of visitors over the centuries; as captivat-
ing settings in literature and film they have become an important part
of the national memory and self-representation. All cultures have their
unique symbols – artefacts, places, motifs and characters whose meanings
and cultural functions prove more significant than those of other, more
ordinary and conventional signs. Symbols travel across times and texts,
their semiotic encounters tend to be exceptionally varied and, as a result,
their role in the culture’s memory is more significant (Lotman 102–4).
The English country house is clearly one of such defining symbols.1 Al-
though in the last one hundred and fifty years its social and political role
has diminished, it continues to function as a central topos of the national
imaginary, an important part of the practical and the symbolic aspects of
the everyday. The clichés of the present day, Peter Mandler argues, portray
stately homes as the “country’s greatest contribution to Western civiliza-
tion […] the quintessence of Englishness,” an expression of “the English
love of domesticity, continuity and tradition” (Fall and Rise 1). But the
concept, Jeremy Musson writes, is only deceptively familiar (7). Entangled
1 As Robert Hewison argues, when speaking of country-house iconography, it
is more appropriate to speak of English rather than British imagination (52).
The different social, political, and cultural context in which the manorial order
developed in other parts of the United Kingdom means that, for example, the
Irish Big House novel needs to be discussed within a different conceptual and
contextual framework (See, Kreilkamp, Rauchbauer, Genet, Kelsall Literary
Representations). In the present study the focus will be on the English coun-
try house, defined in terms of the setting of the action. Such novels as Esther
Freud’s Gaglow, featuring a German manor, or Martin Amis’s The Pregnant
Wife, set in Italy will not be analysed.
7
in diverse strands of a long history, it can convey contrastingly different
meanings and evoke very different contexts.
The very term “country house” poses some initial difficulties. Often
used interchangeably with the notions of the “great house,” “historic
house”, “treasure house” or “stately home,” it eludes clear-cut classifica-
tions.2 Musson defines the country house broadly as “the major residence
of a landowner or the centre of a country estate” (7). David Littlejohn
suggests a more detailed classification and describes the country house as:
a large private residence originally intended to serve as one family’s home for
at least several generations; a house of 20 rooms or more, which rules out most
farmhouses and vicarages, however old or picturesque; a house that, ideally, still
contains furniture and art works handed down in the family, and contributes to
the support of the local church, village, and countryside; a house that is set in its
own surrounding gardens and parklands and is (or at least originally was) in part
supported by its own agricultural estate of a thousand or more acres. (309–10)
The key elements in Littlejohn’s definition are the significant size of the
house and its different ways of functioning: as a family home, as the centre
of a large working estate and as the hub of the local community. These dif-
ferent functions reflect the complex social structure of the country house,
its interlacing roles, relationships and places and explain why the manorial
landscape came to symbolize the social microcosm, “a model for humane
relationships on a larger social scale” (Wayne 173).
As many writers and critics have demonstrated, the country house rep-
resents a unique combination of built form, social structure and particular
style of living. It stands for “a synthesis of architectural quality, social
intention and a way of life based on the ownership of land” (Cornforth
Country Houses in Britain 3). The precedence of social and cultural func-
tions over the actual architectural form is emphasized by John Cornforth,
who argues that both castles and palaces should be seen as country houses,
provided they are or were both centres of estates and family homes:
2 John Cornforth in The Country Houses of England 1948–1998 uses the con-
cept of the country house “to mean houses that have kept their historical-
ly associated contents, gardens, parks, and often their estates, while ‘historic
houses’ is used for the much larger category of houses that do not have histori-
cally associated contents and not necessarily gardens and parks or supporting
land” (3).
8
