“…Her parents saw little reason to renew their ideas, which had lately been ahead of their time and were still not out of date […] The Michaelis’ goodness of heart had a wide field; they were not only good to the poor but kind to the common, tolerant of the intolerant. (Bowen [1935] 1952, 69–70)…”
Section: Karen's Family Home: Seemingly Existential Insidenessmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Karen's sense of insideness is further intensified by her impending marriage with Ray Forrestier, who, as a cousin's cousin, lives in the same society as she does. Ray is one of the typical tall Englishmen “who stand back in train corridors unobtrusively to let foreigners pass to meals or the lavatory, in a dark‐grey suit with a just visible stripe, light‐blue shirt, deep‐blue tie with a just visible stripe, a signet ring of some dull stone” (Bowen, 1952, 227). Moreover, as other Englishmen, he could certainly have “trimmed spade‐shaped nails, a composed unclear romantic evenly colored face with structure behind it, a slight mustache two tones darker—and, if you look down, deeply polished brown shoes” (p. 227).…”
Section: Karen's Family Home: Seemingly Existential Insidenessmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As the sense of place and rootedness gradually diminishes, Karen becomes ambivalent about her class and race. Like her parents, Karen is pleased about the “in‐tuneness” of her marriage, which renders her safe (Bowen, 1952, 130) and enables her to “inhabit [the class] still” (p. 70). Unlike her parents who resist any change, however, she desires “everything of change,” and wishes to “rely on marriage to carry her somewhere else” to run away from her stable class (pp.…”
Section: Karen's Family Home: Seemingly Existential Insidenessmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Aunt Violet's house, Mount Iris, is supposed to be an alternative to the oppressive English country house. To escape from London where “everybody knew everything” and from the confinement of her upper‐middle‐class family life, Karen writes to “the most unconscious of her relations,” Aunt Violet Bent, and comes to her aunt's Irish house to “rescue something at any price” and in search of a real home and comfort (Bowen, 1952, 69). She crosses the Irish Sea, where she feels “calm enough” (p. 68).…”
Section: Gradual Uprootedness Of Karen: the Uncanny House In Irelandmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This resonates with a saying that Bowen liked particularly: “the only place she really felt at home was in the middle of the Irish Sea, between Dun Laoghaire (formerly called Kingstown) and Holyhead” (Jordan, 1992, 66). As she approaches Cork, Karen finds that the land has recovered from the destruction caused by the Irish War of Independence, for it “looked like a hill in Italy faded; it stood in that flat clear light in which you think of the past and did not look like a country subject to racking change” (Bowen, 1952, 71). Dwelling in the house hanging on the hill over the inland sea, her aunt and uncle seem “as safe as young swallows under an eave” (p. 82).…”
Section: Gradual Uprootedness Of Karen: the Uncanny House In Irelandmentioning
In The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen presents the traumatic spatial experience of dislocation and homelessness of a number of characters centered around an upper‐middle‐class woman, Karen Michaelis, who defies the spatial confinement imposed by the dominant ideology regarding women in the interwar period, but ultimately becomes traumatized due to her failed quest for a place of identity, of belonging. The existing scholarship on The House in Paris tends to read the motifs of trauma and place separately. Those critics exploring place mainly concentrate on the Parisian house and tend to regard it as a symbol of the past and entrapment (Kershner, 1986, 407; Lytovka, 2016, 40), while those studying trauma mainly center on the psychological aspects of trauma, investigating either the structure and effects of psychic trauma or the effects of trauma on the narration of the novel (Bennett & Royle, 1995, 43; Gildersleeve, 2014, 50). This essay argues that a fuller understanding of Bowen's writing of women's trauma in the interwar period in The House in Paris must examine how their trauma is related to spatial experience. Linking the temporal experience of trauma—especially forgetting and repetition—with the spatial experience of Karen and the characters around her unfolds the historical and social contexts behind trauma, that is, it is impossible for women to rebel against the national ideology of womanhood embodied by her family home and to find a place of dwelling. For Bowen the voyage of the subjectivity of women in the interwar period merely renders her protagonists traumatized rather than enabling them to find an attachment to place. So detrimental is the effect that it is impossible for them to “work through” their trauma.
“…Her parents saw little reason to renew their ideas, which had lately been ahead of their time and were still not out of date […] The Michaelis’ goodness of heart had a wide field; they were not only good to the poor but kind to the common, tolerant of the intolerant. (Bowen [1935] 1952, 69–70)…”
Section: Karen's Family Home: Seemingly Existential Insidenessmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Karen's sense of insideness is further intensified by her impending marriage with Ray Forrestier, who, as a cousin's cousin, lives in the same society as she does. Ray is one of the typical tall Englishmen “who stand back in train corridors unobtrusively to let foreigners pass to meals or the lavatory, in a dark‐grey suit with a just visible stripe, light‐blue shirt, deep‐blue tie with a just visible stripe, a signet ring of some dull stone” (Bowen, 1952, 227). Moreover, as other Englishmen, he could certainly have “trimmed spade‐shaped nails, a composed unclear romantic evenly colored face with structure behind it, a slight mustache two tones darker—and, if you look down, deeply polished brown shoes” (p. 227).…”
Section: Karen's Family Home: Seemingly Existential Insidenessmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…As the sense of place and rootedness gradually diminishes, Karen becomes ambivalent about her class and race. Like her parents, Karen is pleased about the “in‐tuneness” of her marriage, which renders her safe (Bowen, 1952, 130) and enables her to “inhabit [the class] still” (p. 70). Unlike her parents who resist any change, however, she desires “everything of change,” and wishes to “rely on marriage to carry her somewhere else” to run away from her stable class (pp.…”
Section: Karen's Family Home: Seemingly Existential Insidenessmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Aunt Violet's house, Mount Iris, is supposed to be an alternative to the oppressive English country house. To escape from London where “everybody knew everything” and from the confinement of her upper‐middle‐class family life, Karen writes to “the most unconscious of her relations,” Aunt Violet Bent, and comes to her aunt's Irish house to “rescue something at any price” and in search of a real home and comfort (Bowen, 1952, 69). She crosses the Irish Sea, where she feels “calm enough” (p. 68).…”
Section: Gradual Uprootedness Of Karen: the Uncanny House In Irelandmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…This resonates with a saying that Bowen liked particularly: “the only place she really felt at home was in the middle of the Irish Sea, between Dun Laoghaire (formerly called Kingstown) and Holyhead” (Jordan, 1992, 66). As she approaches Cork, Karen finds that the land has recovered from the destruction caused by the Irish War of Independence, for it “looked like a hill in Italy faded; it stood in that flat clear light in which you think of the past and did not look like a country subject to racking change” (Bowen, 1952, 71). Dwelling in the house hanging on the hill over the inland sea, her aunt and uncle seem “as safe as young swallows under an eave” (p. 82).…”
Section: Gradual Uprootedness Of Karen: the Uncanny House In Irelandmentioning
In The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen presents the traumatic spatial experience of dislocation and homelessness of a number of characters centered around an upper‐middle‐class woman, Karen Michaelis, who defies the spatial confinement imposed by the dominant ideology regarding women in the interwar period, but ultimately becomes traumatized due to her failed quest for a place of identity, of belonging. The existing scholarship on The House in Paris tends to read the motifs of trauma and place separately. Those critics exploring place mainly concentrate on the Parisian house and tend to regard it as a symbol of the past and entrapment (Kershner, 1986, 407; Lytovka, 2016, 40), while those studying trauma mainly center on the psychological aspects of trauma, investigating either the structure and effects of psychic trauma or the effects of trauma on the narration of the novel (Bennett & Royle, 1995, 43; Gildersleeve, 2014, 50). This essay argues that a fuller understanding of Bowen's writing of women's trauma in the interwar period in The House in Paris must examine how their trauma is related to spatial experience. Linking the temporal experience of trauma—especially forgetting and repetition—with the spatial experience of Karen and the characters around her unfolds the historical and social contexts behind trauma, that is, it is impossible for women to rebel against the national ideology of womanhood embodied by her family home and to find a place of dwelling. For Bowen the voyage of the subjectivity of women in the interwar period merely renders her protagonists traumatized rather than enabling them to find an attachment to place. So detrimental is the effect that it is impossible for them to “work through” their trauma.
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