# “Home, Sweet Home”: Places of Belonging in Anglophone Narratives

Elisabeth Bouzonviller

► To cite this version:

Elisabeth Bouzonviller. “Home, Sweet Home”: Places of Belonging in Anglophone Narratives. Universidade do Algarve Editora. Universidade do Algarve Editora, 2022. 978-989-9023-79-6. 10.34623/r2md-mw86. hal-04607342

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# “Home, Sweet Home”: Places of Belonging in Anglophone Narratives

Elisabeth Bouzonviller

► To cite this version:

Elisabeth Bouzonviller. “Home, Sweet Home”: Places of Belonging in Anglophone Narratives. Universidade do Algarve Editora. Universidade do Algarve Editora, 2022. 978-989-9023-79-6. 10.34623/r2md-mw86. hal-04607342

HAL Id: hal-04607342

https://hal.science/hal-04607342v1

Submitted on 10 Jun 2024

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access
archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci-
entific research documents, whether they are pub-
lished or not. The documents may come from
teaching and research institutions in France or
abroad, or from public or private research centers.

L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est
destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de
recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
publics ou privés.

Public Domain
Elisabeth Bouzonviller (Ed.)

# “HOME, SWEET HOME”:

## PLACES OF BELONGING IN ANGLOPHONE NARRATIVES

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

UAlg

UNIVERSIDADE DO ALGARVE

EDITORA
Elisabeth Bouzonviller (Ed.)

# “HOME, SWEET HOME”:

## PLACES OF BELONGING IN ANGLOPHONE NARRATIVES

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /></figure>

UAlg

UNIVERSIDADE DO ALGARVE

EDITORA
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /></figure>
# “HOME, SWEET HOME”:

## PLACES OF BELONGING IN ANGLOPHONE NARRATIVES
# “HOME, SWEET HOME”:

## PLACES OF BELONGING IN ANGLOPHONE NARRATIVES
**Title:** "Home, Sweet Home": Places of Belonging in Anglophone Narratives

**Editor:** Elisabeth Bouzonviller

**Editorial Board:**

Nicolas Boileau (Aix-Marseille Université)

Marilyne Brun (Université de Lorraine)

Sophie Chapuis (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Catherine Delesalle-Nancey (Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3)

Christine Dualé (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Anne Garrait-Bourrier (Université Clermont Auvergne)

Marie-Agnès Gay (Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3)

Deirdre Gilfedder-Doyle (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL)

Sophie Jorrand (Université de la Réunion)

Anne-Sophie Letessier (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Claire Maniez (Université Grenoble-Alpes)

Claire Omhovere (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)

Samia Ounoughi (Université Grenoble-Alpes)

Claudine Raynaud (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)

Marie-Odile Salati (Université Savoie Mont Blanc)

François Specq (ENS Lyon)

Aliette Ventéjoux (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

**Publisher:** Universidade do Algarve Editora

1st Edition

**Place of Edition:** Faro

**Year of Publication:** 2022

**Graphic Design and Pagination:** João Correia

**Cover Image Credits:** Elisabeth Bouzonviller

**Printing:** Secção de Reprodução Documental da Universidade do Algarve

**ISBN:** 978-989-9023-80-2 (printed version)

**Legal Deposit:** 494533/22

**ISBN:** 978-989-9023-79-6 (electronic version)

**DOI:** https://doi.org/10.34623/r2md-mw86

**Available at:** http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/17513

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

UAlg

UNIVERSIDADE DO ALGARVE

EDITORA

© Universidade do Algarve

Campus de Gambelas

8005-139 Faro

Portugal

All rights reserved
**Title:** "Home, Sweet Home": Places of Belonging in Anglophone Narratives

**Editor:** Elisabeth Bouzonviller

**Editorial Board:**

Nicolas Boileau (Aix-Marseille Université)

Marilyne Brun (Université de Lorraine)

Sophie Chapuis (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Catherine Delesalle-Nancey (Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3)

Christine Dualé (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Anne Garrait-Bourrier (Université Clermont Auvergne)

Marie-Agnès Gay (Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3)

Deirdre Gilfedder-Doyle (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL)

Sophie Jorrand (Université de la Réunion)

Anne-Sophie Letessier (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Claire Maniez (Université Grenoble-Alpes)

Claire Omhovere (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)

Samia Ounoughi (Université Grenoble-Alpes)

Claudine Raynaud (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)

Marie-Odile Salati (Université Savoie Mont Blanc)

François Specq (ENS Lyon)

Aliette Ventéjoux (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

**Publisher:** Universidade do Algarve Editora

1st Edition

**Place of Edition:** Faro

**Year of Publication:** 2022

**Graphic Design and Pagination:** João Correia

**Cover Image Credits:** Elisabeth Bouzonviller

**Printing:** Secção de Reprodução Documental da Universidade do Algarve

**ISBN:** 978-989-9023-80-2 (printed version)

**Legal Deposit:** 494533/22

**ISBN:** 978-989-9023-79-6 (electronic version)

**DOI:** https://doi.org/10.34623/r2md-mw86

**Available at:** http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/17513

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /></figure>

UAlg

UNIVERSIDADE DO ALGARVE

EDITORA

© Universidade do Algarve

Campus de Gambelas

8005-139 Faro

Portugal

All rights reserved
"'Home is not a little thing.'"

(Toni Morrison *Paradise* 213)

"Home is something that is carried with us
everywhere, like the shell of a turtle. Home
is at the centre of our lives. It is about
people, land, culture, and what we dream."

(Sandra Laronde III)

"My own favorite [word] since childhood is just 'Home.' I love the way its stately gate of an 'H' swings open onto the shielded domesticity of roundnesses, the way Home's little 'e' stands, back-looking, bye-saying, like the household's child sent out to wave company safe into the night."

(Allan Gurganus 221)
"'Home is not a little thing.'"

(Toni Morrison *Paradise* 213)

"Home is something that is carried with us
everywhere, like the shell of a turtle. Home
is at the centre of our lives. It is about
people, land, culture, and what we dream."

(Sandra Laronde III)

"My own favorite [word] since childhood is
just 'Home.' I love the way its stately gate
of an 'H' swings open onto the shielded
domesticity of roundnesses, the way
Home's little 'e' stands, back-looking,
bye-saying, like the household's child sent
out to wave company safe into the night."

(Allan Gurganus 221)
In memory of my home in Aix-Les-Bains
where I grew up among family and friends and
unconsciously developed a strong sense of
Alpine belonging, rediscovered only when away
from my childhood mountains.

Once again to Charlotte...
In memory of my home in Aix-Les-Bains
where I grew up among family and friends and
unconsciously developed a strong sense of
Alpine belonging, rediscovered only when away
from my childhood mountains.

Once again to Charlotte...
Acknowledgements

This volume includes a selection of papers presented at an international
seminar, organized at Jean Monnet University with the support of the CELEC
research center, and other contributions in the wake of the seminar from
authors who wished to express an interest in the fruitful topic of "Home,
sweet home." I am grateful to all of them for sharing their literary knowledge
about different spheres of the English-speaking world and contributing to
this collection of essays. I am also thankful to the new ECLLA research
center for enabling this volume to be published. And finally, many thanks to
Marie-Agnès Gay for her scrupulous proofreading and invaluable support.
Acknowledgements

This volume includes a selection of papers presented at an international
seminar, organized at Jean Monnet University with the support of the CELEC
research center, and other contributions in the wake of the seminar from
authors who wished to express an interest in the fruitful topic of "Home,
sweet home." I am grateful to all of them for sharing their literary knowledge
about different spheres of the English-speaking world and contributing to
this collection of essays. I am also thankful to the new ECLLA research
center for enabling this volume to be published. And finally, many thanks to
Marie-Agnès Gay for her scrupulous proofreading and invaluable support.
Editorial board

Nicolas BOILEAU (Aix-Marseille Université)

Marilyne BRUN (Université de Lorraine)

Sophie CHAPUIS (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Catherine DELESALLE-NANCEY (Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3)

Christine DUALÉ (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Anne GARRAIT-BOURRIER (Université Clermont Auvergne)

Marie-Agnès GAY (Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3)

Deirdre GILFEDDER-DOYLE (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL)

Sophie JORRAND (Université de la Réunion)

Anne-Sophie LETESSIER (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Claire MANIEZ (Université Grenoble-Alpes)

Claire OMHOVERE (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)

Samia OUNOUGHI (Université Grenoble-Alpes)

Claudine RAYNAUD (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)

Marie-Odile SALATI (Université Savoie Mont Blanc)

François SPECQ (ENS Lyon)

Aliette VENTÉJOUX (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)
Editorial board

Nicolas BOILEAU (Aix-Marseille Université)

Marilyne BRUN (Université de Lorraine)

Sophie CHAPUIS (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Catherine DELESALLE-NANCEY (Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3)

Christine DUALÉ (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Anne GARRAIT-BOURRIER (Université Clermont Auvergne)

Marie-Agnès GAY (Université Jean Moulin, Lyon 3)

Deirdre GILFEDDER-DOYLE (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL)

Sophie JORRAND (Université de la Réunion)

Anne-Sophie LETESSIER (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)

Claire MANIEZ (Université Grenoble-Alpes)

Claire OMHOVERE (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)

Samia OUNOUGHI (Université Grenoble-Alpes)

Claudine RAYNAUD (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)

Marie-Odile SALATI (Université Savoie Mont Blanc)

François SPECQ (ENS Lyon)

Aliette VENTÉJOUX (Université Jean Monnet, St-Etienne)
# Table of Contents

<table><tr><td>Acknowledgements</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Editorial board</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Table of contents</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Notes on contributors</td><td>9</td></tr></table>

## INTRODUCTION

<table><tr><td>Reading Homes on the Map and Beyond<br/>Elisabeth Bouzonviller</td><td>13</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 1

<table><tr><td>Robinson Crusoe at Home in a Desert Island: Dislocation and the Sense of Home in Defoe's *Robinson Crusoe* (1719)<br/>Emmanuelle Peraldo</td><td>45</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 2

<table><tr><td>Thoreau Living at Walden and Writing *Walden* in a Home of His Own:<br/>The Roots, the Village, and the Cosmos<br/>David Latour.</td><td>63</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 3

<table><tr><td>Rented Accommodation: Houses in Novels by Hawthorne and James,<br/>Fitzgerald and West<br/>William Blazek.</td><td>89</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 4

<table><tr><td>Houses and Rooms: Virginia Woolf's Architectural Metaphors of the Self<br/>Floriane Reviron-Piégay</td><td>115</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 5

<table><tr><td>Home Bittersweet Home. Hemingway and the Maternal Sovereign<br/>Rédouane Abouddahab</td><td>139</td></tr></table>
# Table of Contents

<table><tr><td>Acknowledgements</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><td>Editorial board</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Table of contents</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Notes on contributors</td><td>9</td></tr></table>

## INTRODUCTION

<table><tr><td>Reading Homes on the Map and Beyond<br/>Elisabeth Bouzonviller</td><td>13</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 1

<table><tr><td>Robinson Crusoe at Home in a Desert Island: Dislocation and the Sense of Home in Defoe's *Robinson Crusoe* (1719)<br/>Emmanuelle Peraldo</td><td>45</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 2

<table><tr><td>Thoreau Living at Walden and Writing *Walden* in a Home of His Own:<br/>The Roots, the Village, and the Cosmos<br/>David Latour.</td><td>63</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 3

<table><tr><td>Rented Accommodation: Houses in Novels by Hawthorne and James,<br/>Fitzgerald and West<br/>William Blazek.</td><td>89</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 4

<table><tr><td>Houses and Rooms: Virginia Woolf's Architectural Metaphors of the Self<br/>Floriane Reviron-Piégay</td><td>115</td></tr></table>

## CHAPTER 5

<table><tr><td>Home Bittersweet Home. Hemingway and the Maternal Sovereign<br/>Rédouane Abouddahab</td><td>139</td></tr></table>
## Notes on contributors

**Rédouane Abouddahab** is Professor of American studies at the University of Le Mans; he taught previously at the University of Lyon. His research focuses on American literature, art and culture, which he studies mainly from a psychoanalytic perspective. His published works include: *Figures of the Migrant: The Roles of Literature and the Arts in Representing Migration* (co-edited with S. Brownlie, Routledge 2021), *Interprétariat, traduction et interculturalité* (*Socio-criticism* vol. 33, co-edited with C. Cunill, University of Granada 2018), *L'Écriture-limite. Poétique des nouvelles de Hemingway* (Merry World 2012), *Fiction, Crime, and the Feminine* (co-edited with J. Paccaud-Huguet, Cambridge Scholars 2011), *Leurres de l'identité, lueurs du désir. L'écriture comme création trans-identitaire* (Merry World 2011) and *Textes d'Amérique : écrivains et artistes américains, entre américanité et originalité* (Presses Universitaires de Lyon 2008).

**Salhia Ben-Messahel** is Professor of English and postcolonial Literatures at the University of Toulon (France) and Chair of the Australian Association of Studies of Australia. Her research work focuses on Australian fiction, postcolonial literature and cultural studies. She has published several books and articles on Australian fiction. Her most recent publications include the monograph *Globaletics and Radicant Aesthetics in Australian Fiction* and the collection of critical essays *Colonial Extensions, Postcolonial Decentrings*, both released in 2017. Her current project focuses on discourse and the creation of alter-spaces in Australian literature.

**Corinne Bigot** is Senior Lecturer in postcolonial literature at Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France. Her research focuses on Canadian women writers, and diasporic women writers. Many of her published essays and books are devoted to the Canadian short story writer Alice Munro. She is currently working on diasporic women writers, focusing on the practice of everyday life writing. She is a co-editor of *Women's Life Writing and the Practice of Reading* (Palgrave Macmillan 2018). She is with Prof. Françoise Kràl and Dr Sam Coombes a founder member of the research group Diaspolinks, and
## Notes on contributors

**Rédouane Abouddahab** is Professor of American studies at the University of Le Mans; he taught previously at the University of Lyon. His research focuses on American literature, art and culture, which he studies mainly from a psychoanalytic perspective. His published works include: *Figures of the Migrant: The Roles of Literature and the Arts in Representing Migration* (co-edited with S. Brownlie, Routledge 2021), *Interprétariat, traduction et interculturalité* (*Socio-criticism* vol. 33, co-edited with C. Cunill, University of Granada 2018), *L'Écriture-limite. Poétique des nouvelles de Hemingway* (Merry World 2012), *Fiction, Crime, and the Feminine* (co-edited with J. Paccaud-Huguet, Cambridge Scholars 2011), *Leurres de l'identité, lueurs du désir. L'écriture comme création trans-identitaire* (Merry World 2011) and *Textes d'Amérique : écrivains et artistes américains, entre américainité et originalité* (Presses Universitaires de Lyon 2008).

**Salhia Ben-Messahel** is Professor of English and postcolonial Literatures at the University of Toulon (France) and Chair of the Australian Association of Studies of Australia. Her research work focuses on Australian fiction, postcolonial literature and cultural studies. She has published several books and articles on Australian fiction. Her most recent publications include the monograph *Globaletics and Radicant Aesthetics in Australian Fiction* and the collection of critical essays *Colonial Extensions, Postcolonial Decentrings*, both released in 2017. Her current project focuses on discourse and the creation of alter-spaces in Australian literature.

**Corinne Bigot** is Senior Lecturer in postcolonial literature at Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France. Her research focuses on Canadian women writers, and diasporic women writers. Many of her published essays and books are devoted to the Canadian short story writer Alice Munro. She is currently working on diasporic women writers, focusing on the practice of everyday life writing. She is a co-editor of *Women's Life Writing and the Practice of Reading* (Palgrave Macmillan 2018). She is with Prof. Françoise Kràl and Dr Sam Coombes a founder member of the research group Diaspolinks, and
co-edited with them a special issue of *The Journal of Postcolonial Writing* (vol 55, 2019) on “Diasporic Trajectories.” Her essays on diasporic culinary memoirs have been published in *The Journal of Postcolonial Writing*, and in edited volumes such as *Ethnicity and Kinship in North American and European Literatures* (Routledge 2021) and the forthcoming volume, *Text and Image in Women's Life Writing* (Palgrave 2021).

**William Blazek** is Professor of American Literature and Modern Culture at Liverpool Hope University in England. He is Vice-President of the international F. Scott Fitzgerald Society and is a founding co-editor of *The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review*. In addition to writings on Fitzgerald, his publications include work on Anglo-American modernism, First World War literature, and cultural history. He co-edited the essay collections *American Mythologies: Essays on Contemporary Literature* (with Michael K. Glenday 2005), *Twenty-First-Century Readings of Tender Is the Night* (with Laura Rattray 2007), and *F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned: New Critical Essays* (with Kirk Curnutt and David W. Ullrich 2022).

**Elisabeth Bouzonviller** is Professor of American literature at Jean Monnet University in St Etienne, France. She is the author of *Francis Scott Fitzgerald ou la plénitude du silence* (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion 2000), *Francis Scott Fitzgerald, écrivain du déséquilibre* (Belin 2000) and *Louise Erdrich. Métissage et écriture, histoires d'Amérique* (Presses Universitaires de St Etienne 2014). She is a member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society and regularly contributes to its *Review and Newsletter*. She also contributed to *A Distant Drummer: Foreign Perspectives on F. Scott Fitzgerald* (Peter Lang 2007) and *Fitzgerald in Context* (Cambridge University Press 2013). She has recently co-edited *Mémoire, traces, empreintes* (Orbis Tertius 2020) and is currently writing a preface for a new translation of *The Great Gatsby* (Gallmeister).

**David Latour** is Associate Professor of English at the faculty of medicine in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and belongs to the REMELICE laboratory of the University of Orléans. In 2014, he defended his PhD dissertation on “L'Éthique écologique chez H.D. Thoreau”
co-edited with them a special issue of *The Journal of Postcolonial Writing* (vol 55, 2019) on “Diasporic Trajectories.” Her essays on diasporic culinary memoirs have been published in *The Journal of Postcolonial Writing*, and in edited volumes such as *Ethnicity and Kinship in North American and European Literatures* (Routledge 2021) and the forthcoming volume, *Text and Image in Women's Life Writing* (Palgrave 2021).

**William Blazek** is Professor of American Literature and Modern Culture at Liverpool Hope University in England. He is Vice-President of the international F. Scott Fitzgerald Society and is a founding co-editor of *The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review*. In addition to writings on Fitzgerald, his publications include work on Anglo-American modernism, First World War literature, and cultural history. He co-edited the essay collections *American Mythologies: Essays on Contemporary Literature* (with Michael K. Glenday 2005), *Twenty-First-Century Readings of Tender Is the Night* (with Laura Rattray 2007), and *F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned: New Critical Essays* (with Kirk Curnutt and David W. Ullrich 2022).

**Elisabeth Bouzonviller** is Professor of American literature at Jean Monnet University in St Etienne, France. She is the author of *Francis Scott Fitzgerald ou la plénitude du silence* (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion 2000), *Francis Scott Fitzgerald, écrivain du déséquilibre* (Belin 2000) and *Louise Erdrich. Métissage et écriture, histoires d'Amérique* (Presses Universitaires de St Etienne 2014). She is a member of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society and regularly contributes to its *Review and Newsletter*. She also contributed to *A Distant Drummer: Foreign Perspectives on F. Scott Fitzgerald* (Peter Lang 2007) and *Fitzgerald in Context* (Cambridge University Press 2013). She has recently co-edited *Mémoire, traces, empreintes* (Orbis Tertius 2020) and is currently writing a preface for a new translation of *The Great Gatsby* (Gallmeister).

**David Latour** is Associate Professor of English at the faculty of medicine in Clermont-Ferrand, France, and belongs to the REMELICE laboratory of the University of Orléans. In 2014, he defended his PhD dissertation on “L'Éthique écologique chez H.D. Thoreau”
at the University of Aix-en-Provence. His main field of research is American "nature writing" at large, and more specifically ecopoetics, zoopoetics, transcendentalism, ecocritical theory, environmental ethics, animal studies and vegan studies. He has presented many papers at various conferences in these fields, some of which are in the process of being published. His latest publication is "Le Goût amér du miel : penser un avenir commun pour l'abeille, l'homme et la planète" (Societies, vol. 148, 2020).

**Alice Michel** currently holds a teaching position at the University of Orléans, France. Her research interests include women's popular fiction and journalism, Australian literature and culture, and the sociology of literature. Her doctoral thesis, completed in 2017, focused on colonial experience and women writers in colonial Australia, more specifically Ada Cambridge and Mary Fortune. Other articles on Ada Cambridge include "Convergence and Divergence in Ada Cambridge's *A Woman Friendship*," published in *Commonwealth Essays and Studies* in 2018.

**Catherine Morgan-Proux** has been a lecturer since 2001 in the Faculty of Arts, Culture and Humanities at Université Clermont Auvergne, where she teaches tourism studies and book studies. She is a member of the research group *Centre de Recherches sur les Littératures et la Sociopoétique* and has published articles on travel literature and gender. In 2019 she was awarded a two-month fellowship at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. to conduct a research project focussing on 20th century representations of women and the road. She enjoys dual nationality, French and British, and lives in Clermont Ferrand, France, where she is actively involved in the partnership between Université Clermont Auvergne and the annual cultural event *Le Rendez-vous du Carnet de Voyage* which showcases travel writer-artists.

**Emmanuelle Peraldo** is Professor in British literature at Université Côte d'Azur, Nice, France, and a member of the *Centre Transdisciplinaire d'Épistémologie de la Littérature et des Arts Vivants*. Her PhD, obtained in 2008, was on Defoe and the writing of History (Champion 2010). Since then, she has been working on the link between geography and literature in the 18th century (which was the title of her
at the University of Aix-en-Provence. His main field of research is American "nature writing" at large, and more specifically ecopoetics, zoopoetics, transcendentalism, ecocritical theory, environmental ethics, animal studies and vegan studies. He has presented many papers at various conferences in these fields, some of which are in the process of being published. His latest publication is "Le Goût amér du miel : penser un avenir commun pour l'abeille, l'homme et la planète" (Societies, vol. 148, 2020).

**Alice Michel** currently holds a teaching position at the University of Orléans, France. Her research interests include women's popular fiction and journalism, Australian literature and culture, and the sociology of literature. Her doctoral thesis, completed in 2017, focused on colonial experience and women writers in colonial Australia, more specifically Ada Cambridge and Mary Fortune. Other articles on Ada Cambridge include "Convergence and Divergence in Ada Cambridge's *A Woman Friendship*," published in *Commonwealth Essays and Studies* in 2018.

**Catherine Morgan-Proux** has been a lecturer since 2001 in the Faculty of Arts, Culture and Humanities at Université Clermont Auvergne, where she teaches tourism studies and book studies. She is a member of the research group *Centre de Recherches sur les Littératures et la Sociopoétique* and has published articles on travel literature and gender. In 2019 she was awarded a two-month fellowship at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. to conduct a research project focussing on 20th century representations of women and the road. She enjoys dual nationality, French and British, and lives in Clermont Ferrand, France, where she is actively involved in the partnership between Université Clermont Auvergne and the annual cultural event *Le Rendez-vous du Carnet de Voyage* which showcases travel writer-artists.

**Emmanuelle Peraldo** is Professor in British literature at Université Côte d'Azur, Nice, France, and a member of the *Centre Transdisciplinaire d'Épistémologie de la Littérature et des Arts Vivants*. Her PhD, obtained in 2008, was on Defoe and the writing of History (Champion 2010). Since then, she has been working on the link between geography and literature in the 18th century (which was the title of her
habilitation to supervise research), and more particularly in Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift, and she has published extensively on *Robinson Crusoe* and *Gulliver's Travels*. Her interests lie in the field of travel writing, ecocriticism, geocriticism and her approach is often transdisciplinary. She is President of the Society for Anglophone Travel Writing (SELVA) and Chair of the English Department at Université Côte d'Azur.

**Floriane Reviron-Piégay** is Senior Lecturer in 19th and 20th century English literature at the University of St Etienne, France. She has written a Ph. D. about the "New Biography," a study of Virginia Woolf's and of Lytton Strachey's revolution of Victorian biography. Since then, she has written a number of articles about the Bloomsbury Group, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys. She is working on the transition from the Victorian Age to Modernism and on the relationships between fiction, auto/biography, diaries, correspondences and travel narratives. She is the editor of *Englishness Revisited* (Cambridge Scholars Press 2009) and of the first volume of the online journal *Voix Contemporaines* devoted to "Family Auto/biographies" (2019). She has recently coordinated a collective work on memory: *Mémoires, traces, empreintes* (Orbis Tertius 2020) and the 10th issue of the journal *Les Grandes Figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts* entitled "Vies romantiques, vies d'exception" (2021). Her latest articles are devoted to Isabella Bird-Bishop's travel narratives and in particular to their links with anthropology and photography.
habilitation to supervise research), and more particularly in Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift, and she has published extensively on *Robinson Crusoe* and *Gulliver's Travels*. Her interests lie in the field of travel writing, ecocriticism, geocriticism and her approach is often transdisciplinary. She is President of the Society for Anglophone Travel Writing (SELVA) and Chair of the English Department at Université Côte d'Azur.

**Floriane Reviron-Piégay** is Senior Lecturer in 19th and 20th century English literature at the University of St Etienne, France. She has written a Ph. D. about the "New Biography," a study of Virginia Woolf's and of Lytton Strachey's revolution of Victorian biography. Since then, she has written a number of articles about the Bloomsbury Group, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and Jean Rhys. She is working on the transition from the Victorian Age to Modernism and on the relationships between fiction, auto/biography, diaries, correspondences and travel narratives. She is the editor of *Englishness Revisited* (Cambridge Scholars Press 2009) and of the first volume of the online journal *Voix Contemporaines* devoted to "Family Auto/biographies" (2019). She has recently coordinated a collective work on memory: *Mémoires, traces, empreintes* (Orbis Tertius 2020) and the 10th issue of the journal *Les Grandes Figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts* entitled "Vies romantiques, vies d'exception" (2021). Her latest articles are devoted to Isabella Bird-Bishop's travel narratives and in particular to their links with anthropology and photography.
Introduction

READING HOMES ON THE MAP AND BEYOND

Elisabeth Bouzonviller

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in," says Warren in Robert Frost's poem "The Death of the Hired Man" (38). It is the place where one can always try to work his/her way back, along the prodigal son pattern; it may also be the place one clings to, or rediscovers, after he/she has, willingly or not, been deprived of it. Whether it be a house, a town, a piece of land, a region or a whole country, home is a random or chosen place of enrooting and "a showcase of human experience" (Zhang 15).

After months of repetitive lockdowns worldwide due to the unprecedented situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, pondering the issue of houses and home seems almost a zeitgeist approach as people throughout the globe have been repeatedly confronted to a life limited to this familiar restricted spatial framework. While the present situation may have highlighted—sometimes strained—the relationship we have with our homes, it has, above all, forcibly emphasized its major importance in human experience and therefore in the cultural productions aiming at representing it.

Each year in late December, North American viewers can watch endless successions of Christmas TV movies which are all based on a similar pattern. A young urban professional goes back home for Christmas and, despite initial prejudice, reestablishes fruitful links with the place and community, thus proving the value of roots, whether they be personal or geographical. Love is of course always part of the bargain and found in the provincial location that, in the end, manages to anchor back the one who had strayed away and almost lost his/her soul in the big city. Despite their lack of originality, those repetitive melodramatic scenarios clearly
Introduction

READING HOMES ON THE MAP AND BEYOND

Elisabeth Bouzonviller

"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in," says Warren in Robert Frost's poem "The Death of the Hired Man" (38). It is the place where one can always try to work his/her way back, along the prodigal son pattern; it may also be the place one clings to, or rediscovers, after he/she has, willingly or not, been deprived of it. Whether it be a house, a town, a piece of land, a region or a whole country, home is a random or chosen place of enrooting and "a showcase of human experience" (Zhang 15).

After months of repetitive lockdowns worldwide due to the unprecedented situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, pondering the issue of houses and home seems almost a zeitgeist approach as people throughout the globe have been repeatedly confronted to a life limited to this familiar restricted spatial framework. While the present situation may have highlighted—sometimes strained—the relationship we have with our homes, it has, above all, forcibly emphasized its major importance in human experience and therefore in the cultural productions aiming at representing it.

Each year in late December, North American viewers can watch endless successions of Christmas TV movies which are all based on a similar pattern. A young urban professional goes back home for Christmas and, despite initial prejudice, reestablishes fruitful links with the place and community, thus proving the value of roots, whether they be personal or geographical. Love is of course always part of the bargain and found in the provincial location that, in the end, manages to anchor back the one who had strayed away and almost lost his/her soul in the big city. Despite their lack of originality, those repetitive melodramatic scenarios clearly
suggest that the notion of home refers to a spatial, social and emotional
issue. Echoing this unavoidable geographical and intimate attachment, this
volume focuses on narratives in English in which homes may be houses,
but also land and other concrete or abstract places of belonging.

Besides, the notion of home is not only the combination of the
geographical and emotional, which entails the transformation of space
into place, it is also subjugated to the time issue. John Thieme notices,
indeed, that “[r]eturning to the scene of our childhood, we visit another
place because of its metamorphosis through time” (1). Time impacts place
as “the identities of places are inextricably linked with the moments in
which they are perceived” [...] (Thieme 215); thus, one’s “home, sweet
home” is much more elusive than a simple spatial reference and if it
can be a matter of geography and architecture, it is also linked to such
time-related topics as memory and identity.

While “[e]verything is in flux and the identity of places is constantly
in motion” (Thieme 1), home is the result of a spatial transformation
through occupation and perception. Space is, indeed, transformed
through habitation and representation—the latter including literature,
which is the medium at stake in this volume. Bill Ashcroft posits that
“[h]abitation describes a way of being in place, a way of being which
defines and transforms place” (15). Thus, home, a place close to one’s
heart, is space transformed through a peculiar, intimate experience since
“[...] undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and
endow it with value [...]” (Tuan 6). In the first essay offered in this volume,
Emmanuelle Peraldo focuses on Defoe’s *Robinson Crusoe* and explores
how a desert island may become home to the stranded traveler through
his capacity of adaptation, whereas he felt a complete lack of homeliness
in his original place of residence despite its being familiar. His sense of
home is thus closely linked with appropriation and transformation, which
conjure up colonial and ecological concerns.

While ancient Greek society already divided human space between
the public and private spheres through contrasted references to the home
and the city with the terms *oikos* and *polis*, Western societies particularly
emphasized this dichotomy during the 19th century. This was the time when
the expression “Home, sweet home” became popular in English-speaking
suggest that the notion of home refers to a spatial, social and emotional
issue. Echoing this unavoidable geographical and intimate attachment, this
volume focuses on narratives in English in which homes may be houses,
but also land and other concrete or abstract places of belonging.

Besides, the notion of home is not only the combination of the
geographical and emotional, which entails the transformation of space
into place, it is also subjugated to the time issue. John Thieme notices,
indeed, that “[r]eturning to the scene of our childhood, we visit another
place because of its metamorphosis through time” (1). Time impacts place
as “the identities of places are inextricably linked with the moments in
which they are perceived” [...] (Thieme 215); thus, one’s “home, sweet
home” is much more elusive than a simple spatial reference and if it
can be a matter of geography and architecture, it is also linked to such
time-related topics as memory and identity.

While “[e]verything is in flux and the identity of places is constantly
in motion” (Thieme 1), home is the result of a spatial transformation
through occupation and perception. Space is, indeed, transformed
through habitation and representation—the latter including literature,
which is the medium at stake in this volume. Bill Ashcroft posits that
“[h]abitation describes a way of being in place, a way of being which
defines and transforms place” (15). Thus, home, a place close to one’s
heart, is space transformed through a peculiar, intimate experience since
“[...] undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and
endow it with value [...]” (Tuan 6). In the first essay offered in this volume,
Emmanuelle Peraldo focuses on Defoe’s *Robinson Crusoe* and explores
how a desert island may become home to the stranded traveler through
his capacity of adaptation, whereas he felt a complete lack of homeliness
in his original place of residence despite its being familiar. His sense of
home is thus closely linked with appropriation and transformation, which
conjure up colonial and ecological concerns.

While ancient Greek society already divided human space between
the public and private spheres through contrasted references to the home
and the city with the terms *oikos* and *polis*, Western societies particularly
emphasized this dichotomy during the 19th century. This was the time when
the expression “Home, sweet home” became popular in English-speaking
countries and meant to celebrate the happiness of a return home and
the fond feelings for this cherished place often synonymous with family
life away from the turmoil of urban and public life. The phrase, with its
specific and now forgotten punctuation, was initially part of the lyrics
of a song written by American actor John Howard Payne (1791-1852).<fnref n="1" />
Payne made a career on stage in London and sold some plays in 1823
to the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, Charles Kemble. After some
alterations, including the addition of the song which had originally been
a youthful four-stanza poem (Sylvester 224), one of these plays became
the operetta *Clari, or the Maid of Milan* and was first performed at
Kemble's theater that same year. In 1852, musician Henry Bishop, who
had composed the melody for Payne's lyrics, circulated the song again,
which became very popular, in particular in the United States. About a
decade later, during the Civil War, the successful song is even rumored
to have been banned from Union Army camps for being too reminiscent
of home and family, which might have induced desertion.

The importance of homes and houses in North American life has
always been in keeping with the founding myths at the root of the nation.
President Jefferson himself dreamed of a nation of farmers sheltered
from the vices bred by crowded urban and industrial centers.<fnref n="2" /> His ideal
echoed J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's idyllic family and rural way of
life as presented in his *Letters from an American Farmer*. "I never return
home without feeling some pleasing emotion [...]," wrote the emigrated
gentleman farmer (Crèvecoeur paragraph 4). Beforehand, through

<footnote n="1">¹ Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there
Which seek thro' the world, is ne'er met elsewhere
Home! Home!
Sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home
There's no place like home!
An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain
Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again
The birds singing gaily that came at my call
And gave me the peace of mind dearer than all
Home, home, sweet, sweet home
There's no place like home, there's no place like home! (Payne)</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² "Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God [...]," "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body" (Jefferson 175).</footnote>
countries and meant to celebrate the happiness of a return home and
the fond feelings for this cherished place often synonymous with family
life away from the turmoil of urban and public life. The phrase, with its
specific and now forgotten punctuation, was initially part of the lyrics
of a song written by American actor John Howard Payne (1791-1852).<fnref n="1" />
Payne made a career on stage in London and sold some plays in 1823
to the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, Charles Kemble. After some
alterations, including the addition of the song which had originally been
a youthful four-stanza poem (Sylvester 224), one of these plays became
the operetta *Clari, or the Maid of Milan* and was first performed at
Kemble's theater that same year. In 1852, musician Henry Bishop, who
had composed the melody for Payne's lyrics, circulated the song again,
which became very popular, in particular in the United States. About a
decade later, during the Civil War, the successful song is even rumored
to have been banned from Union Army camps for being too reminiscent
of home and family, which might have induced desertion.

The importance of homes and houses in North American life has
always been in keeping with the founding myths at the root of the nation.
President Jefferson himself dreamed of a nation of farmers sheltered
from the vices bred by crowded urban and industrial centers.<fnref n="2" /> His ideal
echoed J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's idyllic family and rural way of
life as presented in his *Letters from an American Farmer*. "I never return
home without feeling some pleasing emotion [...]," wrote the emigrated
gentleman farmer (Crèvecoeur paragraph 4). Beforehand, through

<footnote n="1">¹ Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there
Which seek thro' the world, is ne'er met elsewhere
Home! Home!
Sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home
There's no place like home!
An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain
Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again
The birds singing gaily that came at my call
And gave me the peace of mind dearer than all
Home, home, sweet, sweet home
There's no place like home, there's no place like home! (Payne)</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² "Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God [...]," "The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body" (Jefferson 175).</footnote>
centuries, as Crèvecoeur recalls,<fnref n="3" /> the dream of owning a house—even a
modest one—and leading a pastoral life of independence had indeed been
hopeless for Europeans, for whom property had been associated with
a certain social rank, and even unattainable titles of nobility, which the
young American republic paid attention to forbid in its Constitution.<fnref n="4" /> The
possibility to acquire a home in the New World, even a simple log cabin
on a piece of land conquered at the expense of what was perceived as
empty wilderness, was one of the prospects and motivations that fed
the western movement of the Frontier. David Latour considers one of
America's most famous basic homes, although not one on the Frontier,
when studying Henry David Thoreau's canonical self-narrative. Settled in a
cabin by Walden Pond, the transcendentalist writer reflected on his relation
to the world from an original, intimate enrooting of his own choosing, a
home stripped down to the bare minimum to favor a simplified lifestyle.
Latour demonstrates that, far from being a Diogenes, Thoreau remained
in touch with the world on his own terms from his surprising porous
home enabling communication with his natural and social environment,
even with the entire cosmos. According to Latour, reading about this
temporary home encourages everyone to build “a cabin of one’s own”
favoring one’s knowledge and imagination.

During the 19th century, the ideal of owning a home of one's own gave birth to scores of literary works of varied literary value. Horatio Alger popularized the "rags to riches" pattern,<fnref n="5" /> which contributed to a national discourse based on conquest and the hope to have access to property through self-reliance and hard work within the prosperous young nation, although it entailed dispossession and displacement for many African Americans and Native Americans.

In Europe, Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 until her death in 1901,
and her reign, which witnessed major social changes induced by the
industrial revolution, corresponded to a period during which domesticity,

<footnote n="3">³ “[...] no wonder that so many Europeans who have never been able to say that such portion of land was theirs, cross the Atlantic to realise that happiness” (Crèvecoeur paragraph 4).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Article I, section 9.8.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Horatio Alger (1832–1899) published juvenile novels and became successful thanks, in particular, to his 1868 *Ragged Dick*. In the long run, a trip to California led him to adopt the West as a new environment for his stories of success closely linked with the American Dream.</footnote>
centuries, as Crèvecoeur recalls,<fnref n="3" /> the dream of owning a house—even a
modest one—and leading a pastoral life of independence had indeed been
hopeless for Europeans, for whom property had been associated with
a certain social rank, and even unattainable titles of nobility, which the
young American republic paid attention to forbid in its Constitution.<fnref n="4" /> The
possibility to acquire a home in the New World, even a simple log cabin
on a piece of land conquered at the expense of what was perceived as
empty wilderness, was one of the prospects and motivations that fed
the western movement of the Frontier. David Latour considers one of
America's most famous basic homes, although not one on the Frontier,
when studying Henry David Thoreau's canonical self-narrative. Settled in a
cabin by Walden Pond, the transcendentalist writer reflected on his relation
to the world from an original, intimate enrooting of his own choosing, a
home stripped down to the bare minimum to favor a simplified lifestyle.
Latour demonstrates that, far from being a Diogenes, Thoreau remained
in touch with the world on his own terms from his surprising porous
home enabling communication with his natural and social environment,
even with the entire cosmos. According to Latour, reading about this
temporary home encourages everyone to build “a cabin of one’s own”
favoring one’s knowledge and imagination.

During the 19th century, the ideal of owning a home of one's own gave birth to scores of literary works of varied literary value. Horatio Alger popularized the "rags to riches" pattern,<fnref n="5" /> which contributed to a national discourse based on conquest and the hope to have access to property through self-reliance and hard work within the prosperous young nation, although it entailed dispossession and displacement for many African Americans and Native Americans.

In Europe, Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 until her death in 1901,
and her reign, which witnessed major social changes induced by the
industrial revolution, corresponded to a period during which domesticity,

<footnote n="3">³ “[...] no wonder that so many Europeans who have never been able to say that such portion of land was theirs, cross the Atlantic to realise that happiness” (Crèvecoeur paragraph 4).</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴ Article I, section 9.8.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵ Horatio Alger (1832–1899) published juvenile novels and became successful thanks, in particular, to his 1868 *Ragged Dick*. In the long run, a trip to California led him to adopt the West as a new environment for his stories of success closely linked with the American Dream.</footnote>
as celebrated in the aforementioned song, was considered as the sphere
of women. In the wake of industrialization, work locations shifted, leaving
many women at home while men went away to find employment and
wages, although many working-class women had to look for employment
outside of home too. From a Marxist point of view, the rise of capitalism
has been perceived as responsible for this separate spheres pattern while
it made of the home a private place devoid of the means of production,
which had been "natural" so far and were then replaced by those "created
by civilization" (Marx and Engels 93). For many, home became a shelter
from the turbulent, merciless world of industry, commerce, finance and
politics, a "home, sweet home." In Elizabeth Gaskell's *Sylvia's Lovers*<fnref n="6" /> the
father of the family exclaims: "'Cold! [...] what do ye stay-at-homes know
about cold [...]?'", thus clearly pointing out the sole realm of influence his
wife and daughter are entitled to (108).

As the new nuclear middle-class family required the careful attention
of mothers meant to protect their loved ones through their devoted care,
women lost ground in the public sphere and focused on the comforts of
home and private matters such as religion, morality, marriage, maternity,
care and fashion, as well as domestic skills such as sewing, cooking,
cleaning or decorating, whether directly or through domestic servants.
Books on housekeeping abounded and tried to teach upper and middle
class wives how to be "angels in the house,"<fnref n="7" /> like Isabella Beeton's
successful *Book of Household Management*<fnref n="8" /> dating from 1861, which
described "The Mistress['s]" "necessary" "home qualities and virtues"
(1-2), or Shirley Forster Murphy's *Our Homes, and How to Make them
Healthy* from 1883. Thus, Coventry Patmore's long poem<fnref n="9" /> reflected the

<footnote n="6">⁶ Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865).</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ Coventry Patmore’s “The Angel in the House,” initially published in 1854, was expanded into four installments till 1862. It detailed his courtship of, and marriage with, a woman he considered to be an ideal, a paragon of innocence and morality devoted to her home and family.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ The first edition of Beeton's work opens on an illustration by H. N. Woods showing a rural family scene above a quotation from Felicia Hemans's poem "The Homes of England," which reads: "The Free, fair Homes of England!" It is followed by the title page which bears a quotation from Milton's *Paradise Lost*: "Nothing lovelier can be found in Woman, than to study household good" (1). In her first chapter, Beeton launches her theory about home: "AS WITH THE COMMANDER OF AN ARMY, or the leader of any enterprise, so is it with the mistress of a house" (1). Positing that "a mistress must [...] be perfectly conversant with all the other arts of making and keeping a comfortable home" (3), Beeton tackles various topics ranging from servants' management, to cooking, cleaning, nursing, household accounting, children and even legal issues.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ See footnote 7.</footnote>
as celebrated in the aforementioned song, was considered as the sphere
of women. In the wake of industrialization, work locations shifted, leaving
many women at home while men went away to find employment and
wages, although many working-class women had to look for employment
outside of home too. From a Marxist point of view, the rise of capitalism
has been perceived as responsible for this separate spheres pattern while
it made of the home a private place devoid of the means of production,
which had been "natural" so far and were then replaced by those "created
by civilization" (Marx and Engels 93). For many, home became a shelter
from the turbulent, merciless world of industry, commerce, finance and
politics, a "home, sweet home." In Elizabeth Gaskell's *Sylvia's Lovers*<fnref n="6" /> the
father of the family exclaims: "'Cold! [...] what do ye stay-at-homes know
about cold [...]?'," thus clearly pointing out the sole realm of influence his
wife and daughter are entitled to (108).

As the new nuclear middle-class family required the careful attention
of mothers meant to protect their loved ones through their devoted care,
women lost ground in the public sphere and focused on the comforts of
home and private matters such as religion, morality, marriage, maternity,
care and fashion, as well as domestic skills such as sewing, cooking,
cleaning or decorating, whether directly or through domestic servants.
Books on housekeeping abounded and tried to teach upper and middle
class wives how to be "angels in the house,"<fnref n="7" /> like Isabella Beeton's
successful *Book of Household Management*<fnref n="8" /> dating from 1861, which
described "The Mistress['s]" "necessary" "home qualities and virtues"
(1-2), or Shirley Forster Murphy's *Our Homes, and How to Make them
Healthy* from 1883. Thus, Coventry Patmore's long poem<fnref n="9" /> reflected the

<footnote n="6">⁶ Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865).</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷ Coventry Patmore’s “The Angel in the House,” initially published in 1854, was expanded into four installments till 1862. It detailed his courtship of, and marriage with, a woman he considered to be an ideal, a paragon of innocence and morality devoted to her home and family.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸ The first edition of Beeton's work opens on an illustration by H. N. Woods showing a rural family scene above a quotation from Felicia Hemans's poem "The Homes of England," which reads: "The Free, fair Homes of England!" It is followed by the title page which bears a quotation from Milton's *Paradise Lost*: "Nothing lovelier can be found in Woman, than to study household good" (1). In her first chapter, Beeton launches her theory about home: "AS WITH THE COMMANDER OF AN ARMY, or the leader of any enterprise, so is it with the mistress of a house" (1). Positing that "a mistress must [...] be perfectly conversant with all the other arts of making and keeping a comfortable home" (3), Beeton tackles various topics ranging from servants' management, to cooking, cleaning, nursing, household accounting, children and even legal issues.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹ See footnote 7.</footnote>
Victorian, moral expectations for idealized wives subdued to the modern ideology of separate spheres.

Studying women's magazines published between 1820 and 1860, Barbara Welter demonstrated that American women, like their British counterparts, were expected to embody the attributes of piety, purity, submission and domesticity (152), hence her conclusion: "Woman, in the cult of True Womanhood [...], was the hostage in the home" (151). Celebrated by Beeton as the household "commander" (1), the wife was nevertheless homebound in charge of domestic issues and deprived of power in the public sphere. "'Who can find a Valiant Woman?' was asked frequently from the pulpit and the editorial pages. There was only one place to look for her—at home," exclaims Welter (174). In his 1869 essay entitled *The Subjection of Women*, John Stuart Mill<fnref n="10" /> observed that woman was destined to be either "an odalisque, or [...] a domestic servant" (52), both being homebound fates. According to him, marriage implied a life at home for women: "Like a man when he chooses a profession, so, when a woman marries, it may in general be understood that she makes choice of the management of a household, and the bringing up of a family [...]" (89). Consequently, the married status involved withdrawal from the affairs of society: "The actual exercise [...] of outdoor occupations, or such as cannot be carried on at home, would [...] be practically interdicted to the greater number of married women" (Mill 89). Moreover, while mothers ruled at home when children were still young, their power was negated as the latter grew up and entered the public sphere, thus strengthening the gendered binarity of the bourgeois society.

From a literary point of view, Horace Walpole<fnref n="11" /> had launched the gothic tradition with his *Castle of Otranto* in 1764 and many novels followed suit in which places of residence, often medieval castles, ancient mansions or abbeys, meant an entrapment that betrayed social and psychological vulnerabilities but also sexual fears. A useful tool to explore taboos, this literary tradition was successfully exported to a New World devoid of medieval background, but that remained marked by the darkness and

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ John Stuart Mill (1806–1873).</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ Horace Walpole (1717–1797).</footnote>
Victorian, moral expectations for idealized wives subdued to the modern ideology of separate spheres.

Studying women's magazines published between 1820 and 1860, Barbara Welter demonstrated that American women, like their British counterparts, were expected to embody the attributes of piety, purity, submission and domesticity (152), hence her conclusion: "Woman, in the cult of True Womanhood [...], was the hostage in the home" (151). Celebrated by Beeton as the household "commander" (1), the wife was nevertheless homebound in charge of domestic issues and deprived of power in the public sphere. "'Who can find a Valiant Woman?' was asked frequently from the pulpit and the editorial pages. There was only one place to look for her—at home," exclaims Welter (174). In his 1869 essay entitled *The Subjection of Women*, John Stuart Mill<fnref n="10" /> observed that woman was destined to be either "an odalisque, or [...] a domestic servant" (52), both being homebound fates. According to him, marriage implied a life at home for women: "Like a man when he chooses a profession, so, when a woman marries, it may in general be understood that she makes choice of the management of a household, and the bringing up of a family [...]" (89). Consequently, the married status involved withdrawal from the affairs of society: "The actual exercise [...] of outdoor occupations, or such as cannot be carried on at home, would [...] be practically interdicted to the greater number of married women" (Mill 89). Moreover, while mothers ruled at home when children were still young, their power was negated as the latter grew up and entered the public sphere, thus strengthening the gendered binarity of the bourgeois society.

From a literary point of view, Horace Walpole<fnref n="11" /> had launched the gothic tradition with his *Castle of Otranto* in 1764 and many novels followed suit in which places of residence, often medieval castles, ancient mansions or abbeys, meant an entrapment that betrayed social and psychological vulnerabilities but also sexual fears. A useful tool to explore taboos, this literary tradition was successfully exported to a New World devoid of medieval background, but that remained marked by the darkness and

<footnote n="10">¹⁰ John Stuart Mill (1806–1873).</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹ Horace Walpole (1717–1797).</footnote>
constraints of its Puritan origins. Charles Brockden Brown<fnref n="12" /> was the first to tackle the genre and adapt it to his American environment by relying on the tradition of the Sublime but avoiding what strained his rational sense (Amfreville 37–60). Darkness and entrapment would equally be the cornerstones of the following generations of American fiction writers. In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"<fnref n="13" /> or in Nathaniel Hawthorne's *The House of the Seven Gables*,<fnref n="14" /> there lurk age-old male-dictions and incestuous overtones which deny the sweetness home is supposed to provide. This heavily-loaded atmosphere emphasizes the fears homebound women may have experienced as regards the outside world. Gothic homes conjure up both entrapment and psychological frailty, but also the scary presence of a looming unknown within the familiar, which Freud would later acknowledge as "the uncanny."<fnref n="15" /> In these gothic narratives, anthropomorphic architecture suggests deep-set human torments. A façade crack echoes a mental one and offers an appropriate metaphor for a family degeneration, the effects of which being that women are not only kept prisoners at home but also rushed toward death before their time, like Madeline Usher, buried alive into the smallest of homes, a coffin sealed by her own twin brother Roderick (Poe 230–237).

The gothic *House of the Seven Gables* is at stake in William Blazek's essay which, indeed, details the tortuous links between two families claiming ownership rights over the eponymous house; but his study, focused on "rented accommodation," spans the 19th and 20th centuries, as he also addresses this issue in Henry James's *The Aspern Papers*,<fnref n="16" /> F. Scott Fitzgerald's *The Beautiful and Damned*<fnref n="17" /> and Nathanael West's *The Day of the Locust*.<fnref n="18" /> Relying on the rented home pattern, he contends that these four texts question American national identity, but ponder

<footnote n="12">¹² Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810).</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849).</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864).</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Starting from the assumption that “[t]he German word ‘unheimlich’ is obviously the opposite of ‘heimlich’ [‘homely’], heimisch [‘native’]—the opposite of what is familiar [...],” Freud eventually concludes on the ambiguous nature of the term: “[...] the unheimlich is what was once heimisch, familiar; the prefix ‘un’ [‘un–’] is the token of repression” (“The Uncanny” 220, 245).</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ Henry James (1843–1916).</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940).</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ Nathanael West (1903–1940).</footnote>
constraints of its Puritan origins. Charles Brockden Brown<fnref n="12" /> was the first to tackle the genre and adapt it to his American environment by relying on the tradition of the Sublime but avoiding what strained his rational sense (Amfreville 37–60). Darkness and entrapment would equally be the cornerstones of the following generations of American fiction writers. In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher"<fnref n="13" /> or in Nathaniel Hawthorne's *The House of the Seven Gables*,<fnref n="14" /> there lurk age-old male-dictions and incestuous overtones which deny the sweetness home is supposed to provide. This heavily-loaded atmosphere emphasizes the fears homebound women may have experienced as regards the outside world. Gothic homes conjure up both entrapment and psychological frailty, but also the scary presence of a looming unknown within the familiar, which Freud would later acknowledge as "the uncanny."<fnref n="15" /> In these gothic narratives, anthropomorphic architecture suggests deep-set human torments. A façade crack echoes a mental one and offers an appropriate metaphor for a family degeneration, the effects of which being that women are not only kept prisoners at home but also rushed toward death before their time, like Madeline Usher, buried alive into the smallest of homes, a coffin sealed by her own twin brother Roderick (Poe 230–237).

The gothic *House of the Seven Gables* is at stake in William Blazek's essay which, indeed, details the tortuous links between two families claiming ownership rights over the eponymous house; but his study, focused on "rented accommodation," spans the 19th and 20th centuries, as he also addresses this issue in Henry James's *The Aspern Papers*,<fnref n="16" /> F. Scott Fitzgerald's *The Beautiful and Damned*<fnref n="17" /> and Nathanael West's *The Day of the Locust*.<fnref n="18" /> Relying on the rented home pattern, he contends that these four texts question American national identity, but ponder

<footnote n="12">¹² Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810).</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³ Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849).</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864).</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵ Starting from the assumption that “[t]he German word ‘unheimlich’ is obviously the opposite of ‘heimlich’ [‘homely’], heimisch [‘native’]—the opposite of what is familiar [...],” Freud eventually concludes on the ambiguous nature of the term: “[...] the *unheimlich* is what was once *heimisch*, familiar; the prefix ‘un’ [‘un–’] is the token of repression” (“The Uncanny” 220, 245).</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶ Henry James (1843–1916).</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷ F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940).</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸ Nathanael West (1903–1940).</footnote>
critical philosophical issues as well. In the end, they conjure up contrasting concerns: whereas intrusion and deceit dominate in the two 19th century narratives, "disease and dislocation" rule in the 20th century ones.

While the gothic trend developed and thrived in the US during the 19th century and what is known as the American Renaissance, British novelists progressively chose less frightful homes devoid of such gloomy and ghostly terrors, or even satirized them, like Jane Austen<fnref n="19" /> with her posthumous *Northanger Abbey*, completed in 1803 but only published in 1817, which offers a critique of gothic fiction through her impressionable character, Catherine Morland, an avid and naïve reader of Ann Radcliffe's *The Mysteries of Udolpho*.<fnref n="20" /> Homes and houses remained at the heart of many British novels, and Austen's in particular, as many of these narratives focused on the marriage market, where women prepared, at their parents' homes, for the ideal suitor, and then remained confined to their husbands', as wives and mothers. After Austen's refined psychological study of middle- and upper-class marriage schemes, George Eliot's<fnref n="21" /> fiction turned to provincial England and once again dealt with domestic female lives intertwined with marriage issues and homebound fates. As far as the gothic element is concerned, Elizabeth Gaskell and her contemporary Charles Dickens<fnref n="22" /> still relied on some specificities of the genre, but they also stressed social inequalities through their uses of the house imagery. From dilapidated houses that are the only available homes for orphans or poor workers and farmers—or even the complete lack of home, the streets becoming the only possible shelter for the most destitute—to gothic, frightening mansions, where the rich are fossilized within their belongings, the range of homes at stake offers continual metaphors in these novelists' fiction. During the 1850s, both of them also collaborated on *Household Words*, a weekly magazine edited by Dickens himself which aimed at entering the "innumerable homes"<fnref n="23" /> of the

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Jane Austen (1775–1817).</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823).</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹ George Eliot (1819–1880).</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² Charles Dickens (1812–1870).</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ "We aspire to live in the **Household** affections, and to be numbered among the **Household** thoughts, of our readers. We hope to be the comrade and friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, on whose faces we may never look. We seek to bring to **innumerable homes**, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less faithful in the progress of mankind, less thankful for the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time" (Dickens. My emphasis).</footnote>
critical philosophical issues as well. In the end, they conjure up contrasting concerns: whereas intrusion and deceit dominate in the two 19th century narratives, "disease and dislocation" rule in the 20th century ones.

While the gothic trend developed and thrived in the US during the 19th century and what is known as the American Renaissance, British novelists progressively chose less frightful homes devoid of such gloomy and ghostly terrors, or even satirized them, like Jane Austen<fnref n="19" /> with her posthumous *Northanger Abbey*, completed in 1803 but only published in 1817, which offers a critique of gothic fiction through her impressionable character, Catherine Morland, an avid and naïve reader of Ann Radcliffe's *The Mysteries of Udolpho*.<fnref n="20" /> Homes and houses remained at the heart of many British novels, and Austen's in particular, as many of these narratives focused on the marriage market, where women prepared, at their parents' homes, for the ideal suitor, and then remained confined to their husbands', as wives and mothers. After Austen's refined psychological study of middle- and upper-class marriage schemes, George Eliot's<fnref n="21" /> fiction turned to provincial England and once again dealt with domestic female lives intertwined with marriage issues and homebound fates. As far as the gothic element is concerned, Elizabeth Gaskell and her contemporary Charles Dickens<fnref n="22" /> still relied on some specificities of the genre, but they also stressed social inequalities through their uses of the house imagery. From dilapidated houses that are the only available homes for orphans or poor workers and farmers—or even the complete lack of home, the streets becoming the only possible shelter for the most destitute—to gothic, frightening mansions, where the rich are fossilized within their belongings, the range of homes at stake offers continual metaphors in these novelists' fiction. During the 1850s, both of them also collaborated on *Household Words*, a weekly magazine edited by Dickens himself which aimed at entering the "innumerable homes"<fnref n="23" /> of the

<footnote n="19">¹⁹ Jane Austen (1775–1817).</footnote>

<footnote n="20">²⁰ Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823).</footnote>

<footnote n="21">²¹ George Eliot (1819–1880).</footnote>

<footnote n="22">²² Charles Dickens (1812–1870).</footnote>

<footnote n="23">²³ "We aspire to live in the **Household** affections, and to be numbered among the **Household** thoughts, of our readers. We hope to be the comrade and friend of many thousands of people, of both sexes, and of all ages and conditions, on whose faces we may never look. We seek to bring to **innumerable homes**, from the stirring world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, that are not calculated to render any of us less ardently persevering in ourselves, less faithful in the progress of mankind, less thankful for the privilege of living in this summer-dawn of time" (Dickens. My emphasis).</footnote>
middle class while revealing, through fiction and nonfiction, social issues
affecting the poor and destitute of the times.

During this same Victorian era, while never completely forgetting
the social scene and its class disparities, the Brontë sisters<fnref n="24" /> focused
on houses as places of entrapment for women by relying on the gothic
and romantic traditions. Emily's *Wuthering Heights* (1847) and Charlotte's
*Jane Eyre* (1847) both stage women caught within houses that never
prove to be secure homes, although Jane Eyre may mistake Thornfield
Hall for one at the end of the eponymous novel. Thus, the condition of
Mr. Rochester's Creole first wife, Bertha (*Jane Eyre*)—whose discourse
would later be liberated from her attic confinement through Jean Rhys's
*Wide Sargasso Sea*<fnref n="25" />—suggested the title for Sandra Gilbert and Susan
Gubar's seminal study, *The Mad Woman in the Attic: The Woman Writer
and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination*, which focuses on
Victorian female writing. Their feminist analysis emphasizes women's
estrangement and confinement as evidenced by Bertha's fate, while
focusing on narratives which rely on homebound female archetypes
ranging from monsters to angels, but it also points out concealed feminist
subtexts that were deemed improper for the age.

American poet Emily Dickinson,<fnref n="26" /> “the recluse” as she is often
described due to her diagnosed nervous prostration, is one of the writers
dealt with in their study. The exact explanation of her isolation remains
uncertain, but she definitely proved the creative power that could never-
theless emerge from, or perhaps be induced by, confinement. Isolated
from the world from 1858 to 1865, she wrote hundreds of poems which
were discovered on her death and had never been published by the one
who had buried herself alive at home for years. Whether this voluntary
Madeline (Poe) was unable to leave the safety of her bedroom or was
dissuaded from it because of health, or emotional and social constraints,
has remained a mystery so far. Although she had confined herself to
her own home, her poem “I Years Had Been from Home” (299–300)

<footnote n="24">²⁴ Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) and Emily Brontë (1818–1848).</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Jean Rhys (1890–1979).</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Emily Dickinson (1830–1886).</footnote>
middle class while revealing, through fiction and nonfiction, social issues
affecting the poor and destitute of the times.

During this same Victorian era, while never completely forgetting
the social scene and its class disparities, the Brontë sisters<fnref n="24" /> focused
on houses as places of entrapment for women by relying on the gothic
and romantic traditions. Emily's *Wuthering Heights* (1847) and Charlotte's
*Jane Eyre* (1847) both stage women caught within houses that never
prove to be secure homes, although Jane Eyre may mistake Thornfield
Hall for one at the end of the eponymous novel. Thus, the condition of
Mr. Rochester's Creole first wife, Bertha (*Jane Eyre*)—whose discourse
would later be liberated from her attic confinement through Jean Rhys's
*Wide Sargasso Sea*<fnref n="25" />—suggested the title for Sandra Gilbert and Susan
Gubar's seminal study, *The Mad Woman in the Attic: The Woman Writer
and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination*, which focuses on
Victorian female writing. Their feminist analysis emphasizes women's
estrangement and confinement as evidenced by Bertha's fate, while
focusing on narratives which rely on homebound female archetypes
ranging from monsters to angels, but it also points out concealed feminist
subtexts that were deemed improper for the age.

American poet Emily Dickinson,<fnref n="26" /> “the recluse” as she is often
described due to her diagnosed nervous prostration, is one of the writers
dealt with in their study. The exact explanation of her isolation remains
uncertain, but she definitely proved the creative power that could never-
theless emerge from, or perhaps be induced by, confinement. Isolated
from the world from 1858 to 1865, she wrote hundreds of poems which
were discovered on her death and had never been published by the one
who had buried herself alive at home for years. Whether this voluntary
Madeline (Poe) was unable to leave the safety of her bedroom or was
dissuaded from it because of health, or emotional and social constraints,
has remained a mystery so far. Although she had confined herself to
her own home, her poem “I Years Had Been from Home” (299–300)

<footnote n="24">²⁴ Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) and Emily Brontë (1818–1848).</footnote>

<footnote n="25">²⁵ Jean Rhys (1890–1979).</footnote>

<footnote n="26">²⁶ Emily Dickinson (1830–1886).</footnote>
paradoxically conjures up an impossible return home after absence, the resurfacing of the past and the duality of the self, leading to escape in the last stanza:

I moved my Fingers off
As cautiously as Glass,
And held my ears, and like a Thief
Fled gasping from the House – (300)

During that same period, although she managed to earn her living through writing, Louisa May Alcott<fnref n="27" /> offered her own picture of female domesticity, with her *Little Women*, as it focuses on the American Civil War through the perspective of a mother and her four daughters' life at home, the latter having been inspired by Orchard House, Alcott's family house in Concord, Massachusetts. The novelist modeled Jo on herself and suggested her own rebellious nature as her protagonist clings to the desire to become a writer and continually challenges gender norms. Biographer John Matteson underlines Alcott's "extraordinary natural energy" as "she succeeded in doing a massive amount of writing from home while also cooking, cleaning, and caring for her parents [...]. However, she also wore herself out." He contends that "chronic overwork contributed to her early death at 55." Coining a phrase, he concludes that "she was able to carry both the burdens of an author and a house-daughter [...] but she also paid a heavy price for her achievements" (Matteson's interview).<fnref n="28" /> Interestingly, more than a century later, a sequel to the novel, *March*, which was published by Australian-born Geraldine Brooks in 2005 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, imagines the father's life away from home during the war, thus retrospectively emphasizing the separate spheres of the 19th century once again.

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). Some of her writings were published anonymously or under the pen name A. M. Barnard.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ Matteson reports the following amusing anecdote: Alcott “had too much nervous energy for her to write in just one room. She sometimes moved into the parlor, where, unfortunately, there was much more risk of her being disturbed. So she made use of a cylindrical pillow, which operated somewhat like a tollgate. If it was on its end, people were free to interrupt her. But if it was lying flat, that meant that she was deep in thought and positively no one should disturb her. So, even in her ‘comfortable’ home, she needed to delineate spaces and set boundaries” (Matteson’s interview).</footnote>
paradoxically conjures up an impossible return home after absence, the
resurfacing of the past and the duality of the self, leading to escape in
the last stanza:

I moved my Fingers off
As cautiously as Glass,
And held my ears, and like a Thief
Fled gasping from the House – (300)

During that same period, although she managed to earn her living
through writing, Louisa May Alcott<fnref n="27" /> offered her own picture of female
domesticity, with her *Little Women*, as it focuses on the American Civil
War through the perspective of a mother and her four daughters' life at
home, the latter having been inspired by Orchard House, Alcott's family
house in Concord, Massachusetts. The novelist modeled Jo on herself and
suggested her own rebellious nature as her protagonist clings to the desire
to become a writer and continually challenges gender norms. Biographer
John Matteson underlines Alcott's "extraordinary natural energy" as
"she succeeded in doing a massive amount of writing from home while
also cooking, cleaning, and caring for her parents [...]. However, she also
wore herself out." He contends that "chronic overwork contributed to her
early death at 55." Coining a phrase, he concludes that "she was able to
carry both the burdens of an author and a house-daughter [...] but she
also paid a heavy price for her achievements" (Matteson's interview).<fnref n="28" />
Interestingly, more than a century later, a sequel to the novel, *March*,
which was published by Australian-born Geraldine Brooks in 2005 and
won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, imagines the father's life away from
home during the war, thus retrospectively emphasizing the separate
spheres of the 19th century once again.

<footnote n="27">²⁷ Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888). Some of her writings were published anonymously or under the pen name A. M. Barnard.</footnote>

<footnote n="28">²⁸ Matteson reports the following amusing anecdote: Alcott “had too much nervous energy for her to write in just one room. She sometimes moved into the parlor, where, unfortunately, there was much more risk of her being disturbed. So she made use of a cylindrical pillow, which operated somewhat like a tollgate. If it was on its end, people were free to interrupt her. But if it was lying flat, that meant that she was deep in thought and positively no one should disturb her. So, even in her ‘comfortable’ home, she needed to delineate spaces and set boundaries” (Matteson’s interview).</footnote>
Home has not always been the most favorable place to be creative, as women have often been supposed to be involved in household tasks rather than artistic achievements. In Kate Chopin's<fnref n="29" /> *The Awakening*, Edna Pontellier's freedom and self-fulfillment precisely imply moving away to an independent “little four-room house” (79), nicknamed her “pigeon house” (85). There only will she feel at ease to practice her painting, whereas she determinedly rejects her luxurious marital home in New Orleans: “‘I’m tired looking after that big house. It never seemed like mine, anyway—like home’” (79). Independence at home is thus claimed as the necessary condition for female intellectual and artistic activity. If Edna Pontellier's liberation eventually goes beyond the “pigeon house” and entails her fatal swimming away at Grand Isle, and, therefore, her choosing a boundless space of her own resembling an amniotic condition, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”<fnref n="30" /> stages the growing mental entombment of its anonymous autodiegetic narrator. Following her post-partum depression, the female protagonist is not only confined to her home for a rest cure, but eventually feels she merges with the gruesome wallpaper of her bedroom, thus reaching utter psychological disorder and collapse. Gilman's reflection on the topic of women and home is further developed in her socialist-inspired essay *The Home*, which offers an original analysis of home economics:

> The home is a human institution. All human institutions are open to improvement. This specially dear and ancient one, however, we have successfully kept shut, and so it has not improved as have some others. The home is too important a factor in human life to be thus left behind in the march of events; its influence is too wide, too deep, too general, for us to ignore. (3)

Basing her approach on Darwinian principles, Gilman criticizes the lack of evolution of home organization and offers revolutionary solutions—including the outsourcing of meal preparation, child care and education—

<footnote n="29">²⁹ Kate Chopin (1850–1904).</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935).</footnote>
Home has not always been the most favorable place to be creative, as women have often been supposed to be involved in household tasks rather than artistic achievements. In Kate Chopin's<fnref n="29" /> *The Awakening*, Edna Pontellier's freedom and self-fulfillment precisely imply moving away to an independent “little four-room house” (79), nicknamed her “pigeon house” (85). There only will she feel at ease to practice her painting, whereas she determinedly rejects her luxurious marital home in New Orleans: “‘I’m tired looking after that big house. It never seemed like mine, anyway—like home’” (79). Independence at home is thus claimed as the necessary condition for female intellectual and artistic activity. If Edna Pontellier's liberation eventually goes beyond the “pigeon house” and entails her fatal swimming away at Grand Isle, and, therefore, her choosing a boundless space of her own resembling an amniotic condition, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”<fnref n="30" /> stages the growing mental entombment of its anonymous autodiegetic narrator. Following her post-partum depression, the female protagonist is not only confined to her home for a rest cure, but eventually feels she merges with the gruesome wallpaper of her bedroom, thus reaching utter psychological disorder and collapse. Gilman's reflection on the topic of women and home is further developed in her socialist-inspired essay *The Home*, which offers an original analysis of home economics:

> The home is a human institution. All human institutions are open to improvement. This specially dear and ancient one, however, we have successfully kept shut, and so it has not improved as have some others. The home is too important a factor in human life to be thus left behind in the march of events; its influence is too wide, too deep, too general, for us to ignore. (3)

Basing her approach on Darwinian principles, Gilman criticizes the lack of evolution of home organization and offers revolutionary solutions—including the outsourcing of meal preparation, child care and education—

<footnote n="29">²⁹ Kate Chopin (1850–1904).</footnote>

<footnote n="30">³⁰ Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935).</footnote>
to better women's living conditions and society at large as she insists that "[...] the home need be neither a prison, a workhouse, nor a consuming fire" (13). Time was nevertheless still needed for mindsets and habits to evolve and homes, the stage of sexual politics, to experience change.

After centuries of female homebound life, the First World War was a watershed as it offered women the opportunity to be involved in the nations' fighting efforts when they replaced men gone to the front in all sectors and positions. After such involvement, a return to an exclusively homebound life would not be accepted. Women's contribution during the conflict and long political campaigns were eventually rewarded with the right to vote—granted in Germany in 1918, in the UK in two steps in 1918 and 1928, in the US in 1920 through Amendment XIX, and, after another world conflict, in France in 1944. However, in 1929, Virginia Woolf still had to insist, in her eponymous essay, on the importance of "a room of one's own" for women to be able to be creative, as if little had changed since Edna Pontellier's desperate attempt at emancipation (Chopin).

In her essay devoted to Woolf, Floriane Reviron-Piégay starts from the writer's childhood homes and the impact they had on her ambiguous relationship with space and home in her fiction. Her analysis of *A Room of One's Own* then aims at showing how it informs our reading of the novels. She contends that if the female characters' rooms are constantly under assault, echoing the writer's own experience, they also helped the latter articulate her modernist ethics and aesthetics. She then offers an insightful reading of *Orlando* as a recreation of the Sackville-Wests' home and as Vita's mock biography.

Woolf's essays and fiction reflected a time of change and contributed to it. Women's growing political and professional involvement in the public sphere during and after the First World War gained them some results and eventually led the second wave of feminists to campaign still further in the 1970s. Their famous slogan "The personal is political" was inspired by Carol Hanisch's essay "Some Thoughts in Response to Dottie [Zellner]'s Thoughts on a Women's Liberation Movement" for which the editors of *Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation* eventually chose the well-known phrase as a title. Being confined to a life at home devoted to maternity and household tasks was now perceived as a state which required
to better women's living conditions and society at large as she insists that "[...] the home need be neither a prison, a workhouse, nor a consuming fire" (13). Time was nevertheless still needed for mindsets and habits to evolve and homes, the stage of sexual politics, to experience change.

After centuries of female homebound life, the First World War was a watershed as it offered women the opportunity to be involved in the nations' fighting efforts when they replaced men gone to the front in all sectors and positions. After such involvement, a return to an exclusively homebound life would not be accepted. Women's contribution during the conflict and long political campaigns were eventually rewarded with the right to vote—granted in Germany in 1918, in the UK in two steps in 1918 and 1928, in the US in 1920 through Amendment XIX, and, after another world conflict, in France in 1944. However, in 1929, Virginia Woolf still had to insist, in her eponymous essay, on the importance of "a room of one's own" for women to be able to be creative, as if little had changed since Edna Pontellier's desperate attempt at emancipation (Chopin).

In her essay devoted to Woolf, Floriane Reviron-Piégay starts from the writer's childhood homes and the impact they had on her ambiguous relationship with space and home in her fiction. Her analysis of *A Room of One's Own* then aims at showing how it informs our reading of the novels. She contends that if the female characters' rooms are constantly under assault, echoing the writer's own experience, they also helped the latter articulate her modernist ethics and aesthetics. She then offers an insightful reading of *Orlando* as a recreation of the Sackville-Wests' home and as Vita's mock biography.

Woolf's essays and fiction reflected a time of change and contributed to it. Women's growing political and professional involvement in the public sphere during and after the First World War gained them some results and eventually led the second wave of feminists to campaign still further in the 1970s. Their famous slogan "The personal is political" was inspired by Carol Hanisch's essay "Some Thoughts in Response to Dottie [Zellner]'s Thoughts on a Women's Liberation Movement" for which the editors of *Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation* eventually chose the well-known phrase as a title. Being confined to a life at home devoted to maternity and household tasks was now perceived as a state which required
change and this became a political field for protests and claims. Home life
and its ensuing tasks and worries were no longer to be exclusively female
topics, but needed to be debated collectively within a political vision of
society. Homes suddenly opened their doors and, as literature had already
inferred for centuries, they ceased to be private, hidden places of lesser
importance and mere resting places after involvement outside. While they
were denounced as a restricted space for women, they had, concomitantly,
provided literature with privileged settings and tropes.

Indeed, houses and homes have always been at the heart of fiction
and poetry writing. English romantic poet John Keats compared "human
life to a large Mansion of Many apartments" whose "dark passages" were
to be explored through writing (107-108). In *Poetics of Space*, Gaston
Bachelard claims that the house is a "'tool to analyze' the human soul"
(19). While Freud notices the analogy in dreams between the human
figure and a house (*Introductory Lectures* 196), Philippe Hamon<fnref n="31" /> and
Marilyn Chandler (2) insist on the link between the literary activity and
architecture. William Faulkner<fnref n="32" /> himself often compared writing skills and
carpentry, as when he gave the following advice: "Read, read, read. Read
everything—trash, classics, good and bad; see how they do it. When a
carpenter learns his trade, he does so by observing. Read! You'll absorb
it. Write!" (Inge 68). Within the narrative process itself, the house is
not only a metaphor for the self, as is subtly expressed, for example,
in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," but it also alludes to literary
construction. Chandler claims that "'[t]he way we build and inhabit our
houses has a good deal to do with the way we tell our stories" (6). In his
preface to *The Portrait of a Lady*, Henry James explains how its creation
went from a "large building" relying on the "single small cornerstone" of
Isabel Archer "affronting her destiny" to "a square and spacious house"
(X-XI). While he first recalls how Ivan Tourgenieff preferred to have
"too little architecture than too much" (VII), he develops his own idea of
"'[t]he house of fiction" which offers, through its "apertures," a multiple
view "over the human scene," which will depend on the viewers (IX). This

<footnote n="31">³¹ See "Texte et architecture" and *Expositions, littérature et architecture au XIXe siècle*.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² William Faulkner (1897-1962).</footnote>
change and this became a political field for protests and claims. Home life
and its ensuing tasks and worries were no longer to be exclusively female
topics, but needed to be debated collectively within a political vision of
society. Homes suddenly opened their doors and, as literature had already
inferred for centuries, they ceased to be private, hidden places of lesser
importance and mere resting places after involvement outside. While they
were denounced as a restricted space for women, they had, concomitantly,
provided literature with privileged settings and tropes.

Indeed, houses and homes have always been at the heart of fiction
and poetry writing. English romantic poet John Keats compared "human
life to a large Mansion of Many apartments" whose "dark passages" were
to be explored through writing (107-108). In *Poetics of Space*, Gaston
Bachelard claims that the house is a "'tool to analyze' the human soul"
(19). While Freud notices the analogy in dreams between the human
figure and a house (*Introductory Lectures* 196), Philippe Hamon<fnref n="31" /> and
Marilyn Chandler (2) insist on the link between the literary activity and
architecture. William Faulkner<fnref n="32" /> himself often compared writing skills and
carpentry, as when he gave the following advice: "Read, read, read. Read
everything—trash, classics, good and bad; see how they do it. When a
carpenter learns his trade, he does so by observing. Read! You'll absorb
it. Write!" (Inge 68). Within the narrative process itself, the house is
not only a metaphor for the self, as is subtly expressed, for example,
in Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," but it also alludes to literary
construction. Chandler claims that "'[t]he way we build and inhabit our
houses has a good deal to do with the way we tell our stories" (6). In his
preface to *The Portrait of a Lady*, Henry James explains how its creation
went from a "large building" relying on the "single small cornerstone" of
Isabel Archer "affronting her destiny" to "a square and spacious house"
(X-XI). While he first recalls how Ivan Tourgenieff preferred to have
"too little architecture than too much" (VII), he develops his own idea of
"'[t]he house of fiction" which offers, through its "apertures," a multiple
view "over the human scene," which will depend on the viewers (IX). This

<footnote n="31">³¹ See "Texte et architecture" and *Expositions, littérature et architecture au XIXe siècle*.</footnote>

<footnote n="32">³² William Faulkner (1897-1962).</footnote>
interest in architecture and literature was echoed by his contemporary, Edith Wharton,<fnref n="33" /> who tackled the same transatlantic and architectural topics. She was particularly keen on interior design and published *The Decoration of Houses* with architect Ogden Codman in 1897. She even relied on her taste in reaction to overstuffed Victorian homes for the creation of the Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts, the country house where she lived with her husband from 1902 to 1911. Equally concerned about the links between interior decoration and writing, Willa Cather<fnref n="34" /> advocated "The Novel Démeublé," i.e. a literary restraint that echoed uncluttered interiors. As in James's novels, Cather's and Wharton's fictional houses provide metaphoric tools which are not only meaningful as regards the characters and plots, but also the metafictional discourse of their narratives. Dilapidated houses and ruins echo crumbling bodies and morals, stifling decoration is on a par with muffled lives while social ascent or collapse are reflected in the characters' accommodation. Moreover, referentiality and the use of language are questioned, thus heralding what would be fully at stake with the following generations of writers. A few decades later, indeed, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1933 short story "More Than Just a House"<fnref n="35" /> encapsulates these architectural and literary issues which had been feeding fictional and metafictional pondering.

Like British literature with its castles, mansions, urban and rural homes, American literature displays a wide range of houses reflecting the multiplicity and hybridity of the country's population. It is replete with Frontier log cabins and Indigenous types of lodging like wigwams, tepees or cliff-dwellings, but also with wealthy villas, skyscraper apartments, and a variety of accommodations in farms, downtown tenements, privileged or abandoned suburbs. Chandler declares:

> Our literature reiterates with remarkable consistency the centrality of the house in American cultural life and imagination. In many of our major novels, a house stands at stage center as a unifying symbolic

<footnote n="33">³³ Edith Wharton (1862–1937).</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ Willa Cather (1873–1947).</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ See Pascale Antolin, "From Romance to Modernist Writing: 'More Than Just a House.'"</footnote>
interest in architecture and literature was echoed by his contemporary, Edith Wharton,<fnref n="33" /> who tackled the same transatlantic and architectural topics. She was particularly keen on interior design and published *The Decoration of Houses* with architect Ogden Codman in 1897. She even relied on her taste in reaction to overstuffed Victorian homes for the creation of the Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts, the country house where she lived with her husband from 1902 to 1911. Equally concerned about the links between interior decoration and writing, Willa Cather<fnref n="34" /> advocated "The Novel Démeublé," i.e. a literary restraint that echoed uncluttered interiors. As in James's novels, Cather's and Wharton's fictional houses provide metaphoric tools which are not only meaningful as regards the characters and plots, but also the metafictional discourse of their narratives. Dilapidated houses and ruins echo crumbling bodies and morals, stifling decoration is on a par with muffled lives while social ascent or collapse are reflected in the characters' accommodation. Moreover, referentiality and the use of language are questioned, thus heralding what would be fully at stake with the following generations of writers. A few decades later, indeed, F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1933 short story "More Than Just a House"<fnref n="35" /> encapsulates these architectural and literary issues which had been feeding fictional and metafictional pondering.

Like British literature with its castles, mansions, urban and rural homes, American literature displays a wide range of houses reflecting the multiplicity and hybridity of the country's population. It is replete with Frontier log cabins and Indigenous types of lodging like wigwams, tepees or cliff-dwellings, but also with wealthy villas, skyscraper apartments, and a variety of accommodations in farms, downtown tenements, privileged or abandoned suburbs. Chandler declares:

> Our literature reiterates with remarkable consistency the centrality of the house in American cultural life and imagination. In many of our major novels, a house stands at stage center as a unifying symbolic

<footnote n="33">³³ Edith Wharton (1862–1937).</footnote>

<footnote n="34">³⁴ Willa Cather (1873–1947).</footnote>

<footnote n="35">³⁵ See Pascale Antolin, "From Romance to Modernist Writing: 'More Than Just a House.'"</footnote>
structure that represents and defines the relationships of the central
characters to one another, to themselves, and to the world. (1)

Indeed, American literature includes all kinds of home which in turn
proclaim Indigenous rooting, diasporic ambitions and proofs of success
in a land of immigration, but also limits to the dream. In 1940, the title
of Thomas Wolfe's novel, *You Can't Go Home Again*,<fnref n="36" /> seemed to sum up
the previous decades of voluntary expatriation from the US to Europe by
those critical of their homeland. Indeed, in their narratives, travelers like
Ernest Hemingway<fnref n="37" /> or F. Scott Fitzgerald<fnref n="38" /> seem to regret a reassuring
home and, above all, to grieve over the painful loss of a primeval America.
A nomad generation whose writings relied on wanderings and crack-ups,
these writers staged a ceaseless mobility, which was theirs, and which
ignored rooting whether in terms of land or real estate. On the other
hand, far from this whirlwind of transatlantic crossings pointing out the
disappointing failure of the home nation that had aroused so many hopes
in its early days, William Faulkner proved to be the exception, deeply
rooted as he was in his southern homeland, focusing endlessly on his
fictional "Yoknapatawpha county," "a little postage stamp of native soil"
where dilapidated family homes and estates mourn the collapse of the
post-Civil War South. For this "Lost Generation," whether they were
expatriates or deeply anchored dwellers, home remained a place one
longed for nostalgically at a time when America seemed to have lost its
original mission as an "asylum for mankind" (Paine 107) and was divided
on how to face maturity as a nation.

In his essay, Rédouane Abouddahab scrutinizes the way Hemingway's
fiction harbors numerous houses but is devoid of homes, even to the
point of "home-phobia." Beyond the usual historical, social and personal
reasons provided by the post-war context, he considers that, in most of
the writer's fiction, this lack of home echoes with the missing mother
figure, whose potency is nevertheless unescapable. What he calls "the

<footnote n="36">³⁶ Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938).</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷ Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961).</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940).</footnote>
structure that represents and defines the relationships of the central
characters to one another, to themselves, and to the world. (1)

Indeed, American literature includes all kinds of home which in turn
proclaim Indigenous rooting, diasporic ambitions and proofs of success
in a land of immigration, but also limits to the dream. In 1940, the title
of Thomas Wolfe's novel, *You Can't Go Home Again*,<fnref n="36" /> seemed to sum up
the previous decades of voluntary expatriation from the US to Europe by
those critical of their homeland. Indeed, in their narratives, travelers like
Ernest Hemingway<fnref n="37" /> or F. Scott Fitzgerald<fnref n="38" /> seem to regret a reassuring
home and, above all, to grieve over the painful loss of a primeval America.
A nomad generation whose writings relied on wanderings and crack-ups,
these writers staged a ceaseless mobility, which was theirs, and which
ignored rooting whether in terms of land or real estate. On the other
hand, far from this whirlwind of transatlantic crossings pointing out the
disappointing failure of the home nation that had aroused so many hopes
in its early days, William Faulkner proved to be the exception, deeply
rooted as he was in his southern homeland, focusing endlessly on his
fictional "Yoknapatawpha county," "a little postage stamp of native soil"
where dilapidated family homes and estates mourn the collapse of the
post-Civil War South. For this "Lost Generation," whether they were
expatriates or deeply anchored dwellers, home remained a place one
longed for nostalgically at a time when America seemed to have lost its
original mission as an "asylum for mankind" (Paine 107) and was divided
on how to face maturity as a nation.

In his essay, Rédouane Abouddahab scrutinizes the way Hemingway's
fiction harbors numerous houses but is devoid of homes, even to the
point of "home-phobia." Beyond the usual historical, social and personal
reasons provided by the post-war context, he considers that, in most of
the writer's fiction, this lack of home echoes with the missing mother
figure, whose potency is nevertheless unescapable. What he calls "the

<footnote n="36">³⁶ Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938).</footnote>

<footnote n="37">³⁷ Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961).</footnote>

<footnote n="38">³⁸ F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940).</footnote>
maternal sovereign” refers to a domination tendency on the part of the mother, who also embodies community and homeland. Recalling the novelist’s “iceberg theory” (*Death* 153–54), which favors deliberate omissions, Abouddahab offers a psychoanalytical analysis where mother and home are intimately related and signal their unavoidable influence despite their very absence in the text.

Focusing on the same paradoxical period of excitement and uncertainty between the two World Wars, Elisabeth Bouzonviller studies F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s self-narratives. Actually, the couple was among the American expatriates Hemingway met in France during the 1920s and it is from France that Fitzgerald recommended Hemingway, his junior, to his own editor, Maxwell Perkins, at Scribner’s in New York. She demonstrates that while a permanent actual home eluded the Fitzgeralds, they found it in their artistic practice—whether it be literature or painting, as far as Zelda is concerned—thus echoing critic and Fitzgerald scholar, Alfred Kazin, who contends that “[o]ne writes to make a home for oneself, on paper” (43).

During the Roaring Twenties, the United States saw the thriving impact of what became its fifth largest industry thanks to the relentless production and distribution activities of its Californian dream factory. Ever since those beginnings, Hollywood has relied on real or imaginative homes and contributed to a national representation linking architecture, geography and politics: from the “little house on the Prairie”<fnref n="39" /> to Gatsby’s “impeccable imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy” (Fitzgerald 11), forcefully rendered in the novel’s film adaptations, from Norman Bates’s gothic home in *Psycho* (Hitchcock) to the Great Plains tepees, the southern plantations and slaves’ cabins, but also from chic city apartments boasting of the latest style in decoration to poor accommodation in gang ridden suburbs.

On the eve of the Second World War, despite the disenchantment of the “Lost Generation,” Payne’s song was nevertheless played in MGM’s very successful *Wizard of Oz*. In the final scene when heroine Dorothy, played by Judy Garland, joins her family again after her adventures along

<footnote n="39">³⁹ Originally a series of novels by Laura Ingalls, it was turned into a very popular American Western historical drama television series (Claxton).</footnote>
maternal sovereign” refers to a domination tendency on the part of the mother, who also embodies community and homeland. Recalling the novelist’s “iceberg theory” (*Death* 153–54), which favors deliberate omissions, Abouddahab offers a psychoanalytical analysis where mother and home are intimately related and signal their unavoidable influence despite their very absence in the text.

Focusing on the same paradoxical period of excitement and uncertainty between the two World Wars, Elisabeth Bouzonviller studies F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s self-narratives. Actually, the couple was among the American expatriates Hemingway met in France during the 1920s and it is from France that Fitzgerald recommended Hemingway, his junior, to his own editor, Maxwell Perkins, at Scribner’s in New York. She demonstrates that while a permanent actual home eluded the Fitzgeralds, they found it in their artistic practice—whether it be literature or painting, as far as Zelda is concerned—thus echoing critic and Fitzgerald scholar, Alfred Kazin, who contends that “[o]ne writes to make a home for oneself, on paper” (43).

During the Roaring Twenties, the United States saw the thriving impact of what became its fifth largest industry thanks to the relentless production and distribution activities of its Californian dream factory. Ever since those beginnings, Hollywood has relied on real or imaginative homes and contributed to a national representation linking architecture, geography and politics: from the “little house on the Prairie”<fnref n="39" /> to Gatsby’s “impeccable imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy” (Fitzgerald 11), forcefully rendered in the novel’s film adaptations, from Norman Bates’s gothic home in *Psycho* (Hitchcock) to the Great Plains tepees, the southern plantations and slaves’ cabins, but also from chic city apartments boasting of the latest style in decoration to poor accommodation in gang ridden suburbs.

On the eve of the Second World War, despite the disenchantment of the “Lost Generation,” Payne’s song was nevertheless played in MGM’s very successful *Wizard of Oz*. In the final scene when heroine Dorothy, played by Judy Garland, joins her family again after her adventures along

<footnote n="39">³⁹ Originally a series of novels by Laura Ingalls, it was turned into a very popular American Western historical drama television series (Claxton).</footnote>
"the yellow brick road," she borrows Payne's words and confesses that "there's no place like home" (Fleming). Jean Viviès contends that all travel narratives can be apprehended not so much as tales about visited places, but about the traveller's capacity to return home since they question the self and one's identity, which is what had been at stake for the "Lost Generation" expatriates and was now at the heart of Fleming's movie.

Celebrating the nation's settlement and Manifest Destiny through the home pattern, Hollywood has also fed on the national myth of mobility and staged numerous horseback riding, covered wagon or train adventures. Eventually, mechanical progress gave birth to the successful road movie genre, which combines home and movement by offering an intimate space within a moving vehicle. In her study for this volume, Catherine Morgan-Proux considers how a car can be transformed into an unexpected home for writers Barbara Kingsolver and Louise Erdrich, thus baffling the usual gendered notion of unavoidable female rooting at home. Focusing on the microcosm of the vehicle which recreates a domestic space within mobility, she asserts that these road trip narratives are a way to challenge the pattern established by former stories of male escape from home and to reconfigure women's place by combining homeliness and movement.

If the narratives from the 1920s and 1930s conjure up and regret the loss of an ideal "home, sweet home," the existence of which might sometimes have been only nostalgic wishful thinking, the longing for the original homeland is a specific feature of post-colonial and diasporic literatures. Within this context, it is not so much traveling as displacement and encroachment which is at stake, but, as in travel narratives (Viviès), the central concern remains home, its sometimes difficult localization adding an extra pitfall. Indigenous populations which have been the victims of displacement and dispossession, immigrants who have turned their backs—willingly or not—on their homeland, all express the desire to reach back to or evoke what has often become a home rooted in the past, sometimes "an imaginary homeland," as clear-sighted Salman Rushdie emphasizes. Thieme even refers to "imaginative geography" which "opposes scientific accuracy by asserting a personal right to
"the yellow brick road," she borrows Payne's words and confesses that "there's no place like home" (Fleming). Jean Viviès contends that all travel narratives can be apprehended not so much as tales about visited places, but about the traveller's capacity to return home since they question the self and one's identity, which is what had been at stake for the "Lost Generation" expatriates and was now at the heart of Fleming's movie.

Celebrating the nation's settlement and Manifest Destiny through the home pattern, Hollywood has also fed on the national myth of mobility and staged numerous horseback riding, covered wagon or train adventures. Eventually, mechanical progress gave birth to the successful road movie genre, which combines home and movement by offering an intimate space within a moving vehicle. In her study for this volume, Catherine Morgan-Proux considers how a car can be transformed into an unexpected home for writers Barbara Kingsolver and Louise Erdrich, thus baffling the usual gendered notion of unavoidable female rooting at home. Focusing on the microcosm of the vehicle which recreates a domestic space within mobility, she asserts that these road trip narratives are a way to challenge the pattern established by former stories of male escape from home and to reconfigure women's place by combining homeliness and movement.

If the narratives from the 1920s and 1930s conjure up and regret the loss of an ideal "home, sweet home," the existence of which might sometimes have been only nostalgic wishful thinking, the longing for the original homeland is a specific feature of post-colonial and diasporic literatures. Within this context, it is not so much traveling as displacement and encroachment which is at stake, but, as in travel narratives (Viviès), the central concern remains home, its sometimes difficult localization adding an extra pitfall. Indigenous populations which have been the victims of displacement and dispossession, immigrants who have turned their backs—willingly or not—on their homeland, all express the desire to reach back to or evoke what has often become a home rooted in the past, sometimes "an imaginary homeland," as clear-sighted Salman Rushdie emphasizes. Thieme even refers to "imaginative geography" which "opposes scientific accuracy by asserting a personal right to
map the world" (27) and therefore the desire to reconquer a lost home, if not spatially at least mentally—which, for novelists, means through the medium of literature. Ashcroft stresses the fact that “colonization disrupts a people's sense of place” (125). This applies both to the colonized and colonizers because of the shifting of populations from one place to another, be it willingly or not. Within the colonial context, the process of remapping and renaming places also makes it harder to locate one's home for uprooted populations.

The American autobiographical genres of the captivity and slave narratives rely on characters/narrators/authors torn away from home: by Native tribes in the case of kidnapped colonists and settlers of European ancestry, and by slave traders in the case of African populations. Although the former had various attitudes toward their home loss,<fnref n="40" /> most of the latter wished to escape from forced labor in quest of a home of freedom, away from the slave societies of the southern American states or the Caribbean. Inspired by these self-narratives, American fiction has fed on this pattern of home deprivation. Harriet Beecher Stowe's landmark melodramatic *Uncle Tom's Cabin*<fnref n="41" /> conjures up the idea of a lost home and the desire to flee to a safe one. The surviving runaways, Eliza, George and Harry, escape first to Canada, then France and eventually settle in Liberia (H. Stowe 406-413). The Middle Passage launched, indeed, one of the fiercest stories of home deprivation, which then engendered entrapments, displacements and migrations and the ceaseless quest for a safe home through escape, rebellion, civil war and activism. Contemporary literature bears witness to these forced displacements, lost homes and attempts at reconquering places of one's own through writers and characters of African descent.

In Toni Morrison's *Beloved*,<fnref n="42" /> for years, protagonists Baby Suggs and Sethe looked after a house which was not theirs since they were slaves on a plantation—ironically called “Sweet Home.” After escaping

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ Whereas Mary Rowlandson was eventually bought back and celebrated her return home in her 1682 narrative, John Tanner, who had been kidnapped as a child and sold to an Ojibwe clan, never managed to readapt to White ways as an adult. Louise Erdrich, who contributed a preface for a Penguin edition of his narrative, *The Falcon, a Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner During Thirty Years Residence among Indians in the Interior of North America*, describes him as a “white Indian” and his text as “the first narrative of native life from an Ojibwe point of view” (*Books and Islands 46*).</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896). Her son claimed that Lincoln had declared, “So this is the little lady who started this great war,” when he met her in 1862, which has not been proved (C. Stowe 203).</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² Toni Morrison (1931-2019).</footnote>
map the world" (27) and therefore the desire to reconquer a lost home, if not spatially at least mentally—which, for novelists, means through the medium of literature. Ashcroft stresses the fact that “colonization disrupts a people's sense of place” (125). This applies both to the colonized and colonizers because of the shifting of populations from one place to another, be it willingly or not. Within the colonial context, the process of remapping and renaming places also makes it harder to locate one's home for uprooted populations.

The American autobiographical genres of the captivity and slave narratives rely on characters/narrators/authors torn away from home: by Native tribes in the case of kidnapped colonists and settlers of European ancestry, and by slave traders in the case of African populations. Although the former had various attitudes toward their home loss,<fnref n="40" /> most of the latter wished to escape from forced labor in quest of a home of freedom, away from the slave societies of the southern American states or the Caribbean. Inspired by these self-narratives, American fiction has fed on this pattern of home deprivation. Harriet Beecher Stowe's landmark melodramatic *Uncle Tom's Cabin*<fnref n="41" /> conjures up the idea of a lost home and the desire to flee to a safe one. The surviving runaways, Eliza, George and Harry, escape first to Canada, then France and eventually settle in Liberia (H. Stowe 406-413). The Middle Passage launched, indeed, one of the fiercest stories of home deprivation, which then engendered entrapments, displacements and migrations and the ceaseless quest for a safe home through escape, rebellion, civil war and activism. Contemporary literature bears witness to these forced displacements, lost homes and attempts at reconquering places of one's own through writers and characters of African descent.

In Toni Morrison's *Beloved*,<fnref n="42" /> for years, protagonists Baby Suggs and Sethe looked after a house which was not theirs since they were slaves on a plantation—ironically called “Sweet Home.” After escaping

<footnote n="40">⁴⁰ Whereas Mary Rowlandson was eventually bought back and celebrated her return home in her 1682 narrative, John Tanner, who had been kidnapped as a child and sold to an Ojibwe clan, never managed to readapt to White ways as an adult. Louise Erdrich, who contributed a preface for a Penguin edition of his narrative, *The Falcon, a Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner During Thirty Years Residence among Indians in the Interior of North America*, describes him as a “white Indian” and his text as “the first narrative of native life from an Ojibwe point of view” (*Books and Islands 46*).</footnote>

<footnote n="41">⁴¹ Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896). Her son claimed that Lincoln had declared, “So this is the little lady who started this great war,” when he met her in 1862, which has not been proved (C. Stowe 203).</footnote>

<footnote n="42">⁴² Toni Morrison (1931-2019).</footnote>
enslavement, they must learn to inhabit 124 Bluestone Road,<fnref n="43" /> a home of their own in Cincinnati. During Paul D's first visit, Sethe's daughter wonders about these former slaves' recurring recollections of Sweet Home, which was nothing like a home:

"How come everybody run off from Sweet Home can't stop talking about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed."

"Girl, who you talking to?"

Paul D laughed. "True, true. She's right, Sethe. It wasn't sweet and it sure wasn't home." He shook his head.

"But it's where we were," said Sethe. "All together. Comes back whether we want it to or not." (13-14)

Despite the hardships, the place has bred a community. Now, as Sethe's ghost daughter haunts 124, the former victims of enslavement and dispossession are the owners of a home possessed by a supernatural presence. After Baby Suggs' death, Sethe and her living daughter Denver must establish their ownership over the place to fully integrate society and get rid of their haunting past as deprived and possessed members of the antebellum South.

Similar issues related to home loss and its reclaiming are at stake in Lawrence Hill's *The Book of Negroes* or Yaa Gyasi's *Homegoing*.<fnref n="44" /> These novels offer a circular structure, from abduction on the African West Coast to return to the ancestors' continent, years, or even centuries, later. Such post-modern novelists manage to sketch "historiographic metafictions" which voice the forgotten "histories of the losers" (Hutcheon 66). These narratives of return intertwine roots and routes while emphasizing the quest for home, which is also a major concern for diasporic groups. In her essay entitled "Home," Morrison broadens her reflection beyond the slavery period and mentions "the constant

<footnote n="43">⁴³ Claudine Raynaud notices that the address is an "interrupted sequence of numbers." When one reads it, number 3 sounds missing, but this figure also corresponds to the three generations of women living there: Baby Suggs, Sethe and Denver. We can also suggest that, although it is supposed to be a refuge for these former slaves, the place embodies a kind of lack, alluded to through the missing figure, thus pointing out the after-effects of the slavery trauma.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ Anne Damour, the translator for the French version of the novel, has chosen the title *No Home*, thus emphasizing the issue at stake and the lack of a French concise equivalent for the term "home."</footnote>
enslavement, they must learn to inhabit 124 Bluestone Road,<fnref n="43" /> a home of their own in Cincinnati. During Paul D's first visit, Sethe's daughter wonders about these former slaves' recurring recollections of Sweet Home, which was nothing like a home:

"How come everybody run off from Sweet Home can't stop talking about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed."

"Girl, who you talking to?"

Paul D laughed. "True, true. She's right, Sethe. It wasn't sweet and it sure wasn't home." He shook his head.

"But it's where we were," said Sethe. "All together. Comes back whether we want it to or not." (13-14)

Despite the hardships, the place has bred a community. Now, as Sethe's ghost daughter haunts 124, the former victims of enslavement and dispossession are the owners of a home possessed by a supernatural presence. After Baby Suggs' death, Sethe and her living daughter Denver must establish their ownership over the place to fully integrate society and get rid of their haunting past as deprived and possessed members of the antebellum South.

Similar issues related to home loss and its reclaiming are at stake in Lawrence Hill's *The Book of Negroes* or Yaa Gyasi's *Homegoing*.<fnref n="44" /> These novels offer a circular structure, from abduction on the African West Coast to return to the ancestors' continent, years, or even centuries, later. Such post-modern novelists manage to sketch "historiographic metafictions" which voice the forgotten "histories of the losers" (Hutcheon 66). These narratives of return intertwine roots and routes while emphasizing the quest for home, which is also a major concern for diasporic groups. In her essay entitled "Home," Morrison broadens her reflection beyond the slavery period and mentions "the constant

<footnote n="43">⁴³ Claudine Raynaud notices that the address is an "interrupted sequence of numbers." When one reads it, number 3 sounds missing, but this figure also corresponds to the three generations of women living there: Baby Suggs, Sethe and Denver. We can also suggest that, although it is supposed to be a refuge for these former slaves, the place embodies a kind of lack, alluded to through the missing figure, thus pointing out the after-effects of the slavery trauma.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">⁴⁴ Anne Damour, the translator for the French version of the novel, has chosen the title *No Home*, thus emphasizing the issue at stake and the lack of a French concise equivalent for the term "home."</footnote>
flow of people" who are uprooted for various political reasons, reaching
the following conclusion:

The relocation of peoples has ignited and disrupted the idea of home
and expanded the focus of identity beyond definitions of citizenship
to clarifications of foreignness. Who is the foreigner? is a question
that leads us to the perception of an implicit and heightened threat
within "difference." (The Source 19)

As noticed by Thieme, post-colonial writing offers "a particular
challenge to discourses that see place as a stable entity" (2); thus, "home
has become an increasingly problematic concept in the contemporary
world, where routes versions of cultural becoming are supplanting
originary roots notions of identity" (27). If Ghanaian-American Gyasi
intertwines generations and locations in a novel that attempts to tell the
story of forced wrenching from home, but also of ensuing re-enrooting
away from home, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie focuses on the tension
bred by chosen emigration in *Americanah*, the very title<sup>45</sup> of which plays
on the diasporic dilemma as regards the sense of belonging. However,
as defended by Stuart Hall, "identity has many imagined 'homes' and
therefore no one single homeland; it has many different ways of 'being
at home'" (207). Thus, the home of diasporic people may not be spatial
but rather social and cultural, as perfectly demonstrated in Bernardine
Evaristo's *Girl, Woman, Other*, which intertwines generations of Black
women from African and Caribbean descent who have emigrated to Great
Britain, or were born there, and keep wondering about their rootedness
through their homes, professions and sexuality. When settlement away
from the original home is definitive, then home may be found in shared
culture, ethnicity and even a common sense of nostalgia for what
has been lost. Sometimes even placelessness and the experience of
displacement can become a home—or at least writing about such issues—
as expressed by Canadian poet Dennis Lee, who asserts that “perhaps

<footnote n="45">45 When Ifemelu, a successful student who has emigrated to the US and, progressively, been Americanized, returns to Nigeria, she is perceived as an "Americanah" by those who have remained at home, and is thus a metaphor for the in-between position of diasporic cultures.</footnote>
flow of people" who are uprooted for various political reasons, reaching
the following conclusion:

The relocation of peoples has ignited and disrupted the idea of home
and expanded the focus of identity beyond definitions of citizenship
to clarifications of foreignness. Who is the foreigner? is a question
that leads us to the perception of an implicit and heightened threat
within "difference." (The Source 19)

As noticed by Thieme, post-colonial writing offers "a particular
challenge to discourses that see place as a stable entity" (2); thus, "home
has become an increasingly problematic concept in the contemporary
world, where routes versions of cultural becoming are supplanting
originary roots notions of identity" (27). If Ghanaian-American Gyasi
intertwines generations and locations in a novel that attempts to tell the
story of forced wrenching from home, but also of ensuing re-enrooting
away from home, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie focuses on the tension
bred by chosen emigration in *Americanah*, the very title<sup>45</sup> of which plays
on the diasporic dilemma as regards the sense of belonging. However,
as defended by Stuart Hall, "identity has many imagined 'homes' and
therefore no one single homeland; it has many different ways of 'being
at home'" (207). Thus, the home of diasporic people may not be spatial
but rather social and cultural, as perfectly demonstrated in Bernardine
Evaristo's *Girl, Woman, Other*, which intertwines generations of Black
women from African and Caribbean descent who have emigrated to Great
Britain, or were born there, and keep wondering about their rootedness
through their homes, professions and sexuality. When settlement away
from the original home is definitive, then home may be found in shared
culture, ethnicity and even a common sense of nostalgia for what
has been lost. Sometimes even placelessness and the experience of
displacement can become a home—or at least writing about such issues—
as expressed by Canadian poet Dennis Lee, who asserts that “perhaps

<footnote n="45">45 When Ifemelu, a successful student who has emigrated to the US and, progressively, been Americanized, returns to Nigeria, she is perceived as an "Americanah" by those who have remained at home, and is thus a metaphor for the in-between position of diasporic cultures.</footnote>
our job was not to fake a space of our own and write it up, but rather to
find words for our space-lessness. Perhaps that was home" (163). Home
can also be a series of homes, even a migrating route, as developed by
Nicolas Bourriaud with his "radicant" theory, which focuses on "exodus
organizing" and "moving from cultural sedentariness to a nomadic
universe."<fnref n="46" />

In her essay for this volume, Alice Michel offers an insight into Ada
Cambridge's early works and the way diasporic people search for some
kind of anchorage within new environments while never managing to
determine and express where their true home lies, which was the case
for this English-born Australian writer. Salhia Ben-Messahel tackles
the Australian context too as she examines how flexible the concept
of "home" is in some Australian fiction from the 1990s and 2000s. She
contends that post-colonial housing never simply means residence since
it involves the complexity of borders. She observes that the European
settlers tried to transplant their home-model on an alien territory at
the expense of the Indigenous people, and claims that it is through a
transformation involving both habitation and representation that Australia
evolved from a colonial space to a post-colonial life place. Her analysis
once again emphasizes the intricate links between the concept of home
and politics, in particular through references to the issues of land's rights,
cultural appropriation and immigration. The idea that one can have of
"home" is therefore strongly challenged as the latter becomes a fluid
concept within the multicultural framework of Australia.

Focusing on colonized peoples, Homi Bhabha declares: "If, as they
say, the past is a foreign country, then what does it mean to encounter
a past that is your own country reterritorialized, even terrorized by
another?" (283-284). Within the colonial context, geographical and
cultural disruptions have entailed home deprivation; linguistic loss thus
appears as particularly problematic for those who try to reconquer a
sense of home through representation. Post-colonial writers who have
lost their ancestors' original languages or cannot, anyway, rely on them

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ My translation from the original French "l'organisation d'un exode" (88) and "passer de la sédentarité culturelle à un univers nomade" (Bourriaud 216).</footnote>
our job was not to fake a space of our own and write it up, but rather to
find words for our space-lessness. Perhaps that was home" (163). Home
can also be a series of homes, even a migrating route, as developed by
Nicolas Bourriaud with his "radicant" theory, which focuses on "exodus
organizing" and "moving from cultural sedentariness to a nomadic
universe."<fnref n="46" />

In her essay for this volume, Alice Michel offers an insight into Ada
Cambridge's early works and the way diasporic people search for some
kind of anchorage within new environments while never managing to
determine and express where their true home lies, which was the case
for this English-born Australian writer. Salhia Ben-Messahel tackles
the Australian context too as she examines how flexible the concept
of "home" is in some Australian fiction from the 1990s and 2000s. She
contends that post-colonial housing never simply means residence since
it involves the complexity of borders. She observes that the European
settlers tried to transplant their home-model on an alien territory at
the expense of the Indigenous people, and claims that it is through a
transformation involving both habitation and representation that Australia
evolved from a colonial space to a post-colonial life place. Her analysis
once again emphasizes the intricate links between the concept of home
and politics, in particular through references to the issues of land's rights,
cultural appropriation and immigration. The idea that one can have of
"home" is therefore strongly challenged as the latter becomes a fluid
concept within the multicultural framework of Australia.

Focusing on colonized peoples, Homi Bhabha declares: "If, as they
say, the past is a foreign country, then what does it mean to encounter
a past that is your own country reterritorialized, even terrorized by
another?" (283-284). Within the colonial context, geographical and
cultural disruptions have entailed home deprivation; linguistic loss thus
appears as particularly problematic for those who try to reconquer a
sense of home through representation. Post-colonial writers who have
lost their ancestors' original languages or cannot, anyway, rely on them

<footnote n="46">⁴⁶ My translation from the original French "l'organisation d'un exode" (88) and "passer de la sédentarité culturelle à un univers nomade" (Bourriaud 216).</footnote>
for obvious commercial and editorial reasons, have been forced to adopt
the languages and literary genres of the colonialists; thus, Ashcroft asks:

> Where is one's 'place'? What happens to the concept of 'home' when
> home is colonized, when the very ways of conceiving home, of talking
> about it, writing about it, remembering it, begin to occur through the
> medium of the colonizer's way of seeing the world? (15)

However, through the process of “transformation” celebrated by Ashcroft himself or by Deleuze, who contends that “a minority literature is not defined by a local language which would be specific to it but by the modification it forces on the major language,”<fnref n="47" /> even the colonizer’s language and literary practices—like the novel genre—can become tools to fight loss and erasure by re-inscribing a home narrative within postcolonial geography and culture. Thus, for example, Simon J. Ortiz, who is a poet of Acoma Pueblo descent, explains that “[...] the Indigenous peoples of the Americas have taken the languages of the colonialists and used them for their own purposes. [...] And this response has been one of resistance” (42–43).

Focusing on Native American literature, William Bevis demonstrates
that it is centripetal as its protagonists try to go back home, which is a
place of identity and belonging, whereas canonical American literature
is centrifugal, with its adventurous protagonists moving away from
home to acquire experience through solitary discoveries within new
environments (103–135).<fnref n="48" /> Hence, within the bildungsroman genre, works
will either follow a pattern of “leaving” and “wandering” (Bevis 104, 115)
or a “homing” one (Bevis 126, 134, Lincoln 209), depending on the writer’s
origins and home experience.

Since Native American literature tends to favor the return home
motif, it celebrates the specific activities of the place, which are often
women's domain. Novelist Louise Erdrich asserts that “[t]he women in [her]
books are lighting out for home” (Pearlman 153). Thus, whereas feminist

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ Translated from the original French: "Une littérature de minorité ne se définit pas par une langue locale qui lui serait propre, mais par un traitement qu'elle fait subir à la langue majeure" (73).</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ See for example Moby Dick (Melville), *Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* (Twain), *Sister Carrie* (Dreiser), *The Great Gatsby* (Fitzgerald), *For Whom the Bell Tolls* (Hemingway) or *On the Road* (Kerouac).</footnote>
for obvious commercial and editorial reasons, have been forced to adopt
the languages and literary genres of the colonialists; thus, Ashcroft asks:

> Where is one's 'place'? What happens to the concept of 'home' when
> home is colonized, when the very ways of conceiving home, of talking
> about it, writing about it, remembering it, begin to occur through the
> medium of the colonizer's way of seeing the world? (15)

However, through the process of “transformation” celebrated by Ashcroft
himself or by Deleuze, who contends that “a minority literature is not defined
by a local language which would be specific to it but by the modification it
forces on the major language,”<fnref n="47" /> even the colonizer’s language and literary
practices—like the novel genre—can become tools to fight loss and erasure
by re-inscribing a home narrative within postcolonial geography and culture.
Thus, for example, Simon J. Ortiz, who is a poet of Acoma Pueblo descent,
explains that “[...] the Indigenous peoples of the Americas have taken the
languages of the colonialists and used them for their own purposes. [...] And this response has been one of resistance” (42–43).

Focusing on Native American literature, William Bevis demonstrates
that it is centripetal as its protagonists try to go back home, which is a
place of identity and belonging, whereas canonical American literature
is centrifugal, with its adventurous protagonists moving away from
home to acquire experience through solitary discoveries within new
environments (103–135).<fnref n="48" /> Hence, within the bildungsroman genre, works
will either follow a pattern of “leaving” and “wandering” (Bevis 104, 115)
or a “homing” one (Bevis 126, 134, Lincoln 209), depending on the writer’s
origins and home experience.

Since Native American literature tends to favor the return home
motif, it celebrates the specific activities of the place, which are often
women's domain. Novelist Louise Erdrich asserts that “[t]he women in [her]
books are lighting out for home” (Pearlman 153). Thus, whereas feminist

<footnote n="47">⁴⁷ Translated from the original French: "Une littérature de minorité ne se définit pas par une langue locale qui lui serait propre, mais par un traitement qu'elle fait subir à la langue majeure" (73).</footnote>

<footnote n="48">⁴⁸ See for example Moby Dick (Melville), *Adventures of Huckleberry Finn* (Twain), *Sister Carrie* (Dreiser), *The Great Gatsby* (Fitzgerald), *For Whom the Bell Tolls* (Hemingway) or *On the Road* (Kerouac).</footnote>
studies had initially perceived home solely as a place of entrapment for
the victims of “the cult of domesticity” (Keister and Southgate 228),
in Native American narratives, it turns out to be a place of sharing and
power where women can welcome those who have strayed away from
family and identity, a nurturing place which provides new enrooting.
Food-making there is no longer a burden to be taken care of by those
who are forbidden the right to occupy public space, but a skill, which
is shared among connoisseurs who know about transmission and care.
It can also be a gathering sign of identity when home can no longer be
equated with a territory or if the latter has been reduced to meager
portions of former boundless space.<fnref n="49" /> Within the kitchen setting, ancestral
knowledge is shared in a transgenerational way among women who do
not claim freedom and independence in another sphere of influence.
Critical of the patriarchal system and the subjugation of women, Engels
had broached this type of topic by relying on Lewis H. Morgan’s anthro-
pological data about Native American matrilineal societies—the Iroquois in
particular—and celebrated such female communities. However, it seems
that today, decades after the claims of second wave feminism, home as
an unexpected place of cooperation and power for women is no longer
restricted to the Native world, as proved, for example, by the numerous
autobiographies focused on food and cooking—“gastro-graphies,” says
Rosalia Baena—which gather women and generations around a place and
an activity at the heart of the home and family. Relying on this new trend
of narratives, Corinne Bigot offers an insightful study of Louise DeSalvo’s,
Diane Abu-Jaber’s, Linda Furiya’s, Bich Minh Nguyen’s, Laura Schenone’s
and Joyce Zonana’s culinary memoirs. Focusing on these self-narratives
from the 2000s about food and kitchen-life, she demonstrates that
what used to be a place of female entrapment and a subaltern activity
can also be a medium of memory and enrooting for diasporans. In these
memoirs, the poetics of home entails time and space issues as the term
may recall a childhood place and/or an ancestral homeland. Food can
conjure up childhood memories, but also launch a re-discovering of the

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ In Ojibwemowin, the native language of the Ojibwe tribe, the culinary and territorial link is clearly emphasized as the term for “reservation” is “ishkonigan,” which also means “leftover” (Erdrich, *Four Souls* 210).</footnote>
studies had initially perceived home solely as a place of entrapment for
the victims of “the cult of domesticity” (Keister and Southgate 228),
in Native American narratives, it turns out to be a place of sharing and
power where women can welcome those who have strayed away from
family and identity, a nurturing place which provides new enrooting.
Food-making there is no longer a burden to be taken care of by those
who are forbidden the right to occupy public space, but a skill, which
is shared among connoisseurs who know about transmission and care.
It can also be a gathering sign of identity when home can no longer be
equated with a territory or if the latter has been reduced to meager
portions of former boundless space.<fnref n="49" /> Within the kitchen setting, ancestral
knowledge is shared in a transgenerational way among women who do
not claim freedom and independence in another sphere of influence.
Critical of the patriarchal system and the subjugation of women, Engels
had broached this type of topic by relying on Lewis H. Morgan's anthro-
pological data about Native American matrilineal societies—the Iroquois in
particular—and celebrated such female communities. However, it seems
that today, decades after the claims of second wave feminism, home as
an unexpected place of cooperation and power for women is no longer
restricted to the Native world, as proved, for example, by the numerous
autobiographies focused on food and cooking—“gastro-graphies,” says
Rosalia Baena—which gather women and generations around a place and
an activity at the heart of the home and family. Relying on this new trend
of narratives, Corinne Bigot offers an insightful study of Louise DeSalvo's,
Diane Abu-Jaber's, Linda Furiya's, Bich Minh Nguyen's, Laura Schenone's
and Joyce Zonana's culinary memoirs. Focusing on these self-narratives
from the 2000s about food and kitchen-life, she demonstrates that
what used to be a place of female entrapment and a subaltern activity
can also be a medium of memory and enrooting for diasporans. In these
memoirs, the poetics of home entails time and space issues as the term
may recall a childhood place and/or an ancestral homeland. Food can
conjure up childhood memories, but also launch a re-discovering of the

<footnote n="49">⁴⁹ In Ojibwemowin, the native language of the Ojibwe tribe, the culinary and territorial link is clearly emphasized as the term for “reservation” is “ishkonigan,” which also means “leftover” (Erdrich, *Four Souls* 210).</footnote>
home of older generations. Eventually, this essay points out that, more
than a geographic landmark, home is a discourse involving the intricate
links of space and emotions and, as in many other narratives studied in
this volume, the text becomes the ultimate home created by the writer.

Since the strongly critical approach to home developed by historians
like Barbara Welter,<fnref n="50" /> more nuanced views have been developing which
tend to value homebound activities and emphasize the existence of female
involvement and work outside of home, even during the constraining 19th
century. Laura F. Edwards explains, for example, that “[b]ecause women
were so closely associated with the home, they were relegated to the
historical margins as well,” whereas, in fact, “the domestic sphere took
multiple forms” (228). Thus, historians must reassess the perception of
women’s influence and involvement in society even during such home-
bound times. Cathy Ross, for example, focuses on female philanthropic
and charitable endeavors in 19th century Britain, and emphasizes the
ambiguity of the ideology of the separate spheres, calling for a subtler
perception of home and women’s confinement there. She explains that
“[w]hile this ideal of domesticity was at one level deeply conservative, at
another, it held within it the seeds of its own subversion. Within the home
women could exercise a certain amount of power” (230). She contends
that sometimes “‘the angel in the house’ becomes ‘the angel out of the
house’” (230) and that “the spheres are perhaps more porous than strict
adherence to the ideology allows” (230). Women’s moral influence could
thus extend from home toward the local, national and even international.
Moreover, through shared domesticity, home could—and still can—be a
place of sorority and solidarity, and ultimately of empowerment.

Jonathan Coe's *Number 11* seems to encapsulate most of the home issues that we have mentioned above, ranging from public and political ones to more private and emotional ones. While its title conjures up a landmark home in London,<fnref n="51" /> its cover for the 2016 Penguin edition shows

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ See *supra*.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ 11 Downing Street (sometimes referred to as Number 11) is the official home of Great Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Head of her Majesty's Treasury. It stands next to 10 Downing Street, which is the Prime Minister's official residence.</footnote>
home of older generations. Eventually, this essay points out that, more
than a geographic landmark, home is a discourse involving the intricate
links of space and emotions and, as in many other narratives studied in
this volume, the text becomes the ultimate home created by the writer.

Since the strongly critical approach to home developed by historians
like Barbara Welter,<fnref n="50" /> more nuanced views have been developing which
tend to value homebound activities and emphasize the existence of female
involvement and work outside of home, even during the constraining 19th
century. Laura F. Edwards explains, for example, that “[b]ecause women
were so closely associated with the home, they were relegated to the
historical margins as well,” whereas, in fact, “the domestic sphere took
multiple forms” (228). Thus, historians must reassess the perception of
women’s influence and involvement in society even during such home-
bound times. Cathy Ross, for example, focuses on female philanthropic
and charitable endeavors in 19th century Britain, and emphasizes the
ambiguity of the ideology of the separate spheres, calling for a subtler
perception of home and women’s confinement there. She explains that
“[w]hile this ideal of domesticity was at one level deeply conservative, at
another, it held within it the seeds of its own subversion. Within the home
women could exercise a certain amount of power” (230). She contends
that sometimes “‘the angel in the house’ becomes ‘the angel out of the
house’” (230) and that “the spheres are perhaps more porous than strict
adherence to the ideology allows” (230). Women’s moral influence could
thus extend from home toward the local, national and even international.
Moreover, through shared domesticity, home could—and still can—be a
place of sorority and solidarity, and ultimately of empowerment.

Jonathan Coe's *Number 11* seems to encapsulate most of the home issues that we have mentioned above, ranging from public and political ones to more private and emotional ones. While its title conjures up a landmark home in London,<fnref n="51" /> its cover for the 2016 Penguin edition shows

<footnote n="50">⁵⁰ See *supra*.</footnote>

<footnote n="51">⁵¹ 11 Downing Street (sometimes referred to as Number 11) is the official home of Great Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, Head of her Majesty's Treasury. It stands next to 10 Downing Street, which is the Prime Minister's official residence.</footnote>
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GILMAN, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1892. London, Virago, 1981.

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—. "Home." *The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations*. New York, Vintage, 2019, pp. 17-20.

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<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>
Chapter 1

Robinson Crusoe
at Home in a Desert Island:
Dislocation and the Sense
of Home in Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe (1719)

Emmanuelle Peraldo
Chapter
1

Robinson Crusoe
at Home in a Desert Island:
Dislocation and the Sense
of Home in Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe (1719)

Emmanuelle Peraldo
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>
<figure><img src="image_5.png" /></figure>
Chapter 1

"I had got home to my little Tent, where I lay, with all my Wealth about me, very secure" (Robinson 47). This quotation from Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel *Robinson Crusoe* occurs only thirteen days after he was shipwrecked on the desert island and just after he has found a lot of money on what remains of the ship after the storm. It means that he is alone on a forlorn island in the Atlantic Ocean, away from home and from everything he has built so far (since he was a successful tradesman and plantation owner before the shipwreck), but he calls the small tent he has just built his "home," a place where he feels secure. Being stranded on a desert island south-east of Trinidad, thousands of miles from one's native country and family, is not exactly what one would naturally call home—a concept that is traditionally associated to someone's familiar and congenial environment, place of origin or residence. However, the word is used about eighty times in *Robinson Crusoe*, and more than fifty times to refer to his experience on the desert island, where he finds himself deprived of all the comfort and facilities of his previous life in Great Britain. Talking about Crusoe's in-betweenness, or "bi-résidentialité," Jean-Didier Urbain (71) has analysed how, at the end of the narrative, Crusoe is torn between the desires to stay or to leave, which shows that the island is far more than just a prison for him and Michel Baridon, by focusing on how Crusoe became a real gardener on the island, has helped understand the problematic relationship that unites the desert island and its supposed "prisoner," Crusoe.
Chapter 1

"I had got home to my little Tent, where I lay, with all my Wealth about me, very secure" (Robinson 47). This quotation from Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel *Robinson Crusoe* occurs only thirteen days after he was shipwrecked on the desert island and just after he has found a lot of money on what remains of the ship after the storm. It means that he is alone on a forlorn island in the Atlantic Ocean, away from home and from everything he has built so far (since he was a successful tradesman and plantation owner before the shipwreck), but he calls the small tent he has just built his "home," a place where he feels secure. Being stranded on a desert island south-east of Trinidad, thousands of miles from one's native country and family, is not exactly what one would naturally call home—a concept that is traditionally associated to someone's familiar and congenial environment, place of origin or residence. However, the word is used about eighty times in *Robinson Crusoe*, and more than fifty times to refer to his experience on the desert island, where he finds himself deprived of all the comfort and facilities of his previous life in Great Britain. Talking about Crusoe's in-betweenness, or "bi-résidentialité," Jean-Didier Urbain (71) has analysed how, at the end of the narrative, Crusoe is torn between the desires to stay or to leave, which shows that the island is far more than just a prison for him and Michel Baridon, by focusing on how Crusoe became a real gardener on the island, has helped understand the problematic relationship that unites the desert island and its supposed "prisoner," Crusoe.
Starting from the paradox that Crusoe never feels more at home
than when he is estranged from home and trapped alone on a desert
island, this article aims to explore what it means to feel at home on
a desert island—especially in a period marked by imperialism and
colonialism—and what it means to be at home in a prison—as Crusoe
calls the island so himself (“the Island was certainly a Prison to me, and
that in the worst Sense in the World,” 77). To make sense of Defoe’s use
of the concept of “home,” an interesting perspective would be to study
*Robinson Crusoe* in the context of seventeenth and eighteenth-century
overseas commerce and colonial expansion. With the intensification of
trade due to remarkable improvements in maritime technology, cartography
developed and fostered more discoveries and maritime expansion. These
innovations enabled Europeans to expand overseas and set up colonies.

The first part will tackle the unhomeliness of Crusoe's home in
England that accounts for his urge to explore the seas and, perhaps, his
feeling at home on the desert island very shortly after the shipwreck.
The second part will focus on what one could call "colonial Crusoe," even
though he is alone for most of the island episode, and how his appropriation
of the land turns the rudimentary tent of his first days on the island into
a house, a fortress, a castle and even a kingdom: home seems to be a
construct in both senses of the word, a physical as well as an imaginary
construction. In his way of building his house and barricades, Crusoe
uses natural material, which will lead us to explore the etymological
link between home and ecology, eco meaning home, household, from
the Greek *oikos*. Isn't it in the continuity between man and nature that
Crusoe really feels at home on a desert island?

# 1. Crusoe's "Wandring Inclination" (Robinson 5) or His Lack of Sense of Home

## 1.1 Fragmentation, hybridity and unhomeliness

Home refers to a social unit formed by a family living together in
a particular place, but from the incipit onwards, the reader realizes that
Crusoe has no such place, as can be seen in the fragmentation of space
with three cities mentioned and not one (York, Bremen, Hull), with the
Starting from the paradox that Crusoe never feels more at home
than when he is estranged from home and trapped alone on a desert
island, this article aims to explore what it means to feel at home on
a desert island—especially in a period marked by imperialism and
colonialism—and what it means to be at home in a prison—as Crusoe
calls the island so himself (“the Island was certainly a Prison to me, and
that in the worst Sense in the World,” 77). To make sense of Defoe’s use
of the concept of “home,” an interesting perspective would be to study
*Robinson Crusoe* in the context of seventeenth and eighteenth-century
overseas commerce and colonial expansion. With the intensification of
trade due to remarkable improvements in maritime technology, cartography
developed and fostered more discoveries and maritime expansion. These
innovations enabled Europeans to expand overseas and set up colonies.

The first part will tackle the unhomeliness of Crusoe's home in
England that accounts for his urge to explore the seas and, perhaps, his
feeling at home on the desert island very shortly after the shipwreck.
The second part will focus on what one could call “colonial Crusoe,” even
though he is alone for most of the island episode, and how his appropriation
of the land turns the rudimentary tent of his first days on the island into
a house, a fortress, a castle and even a kingdom: home seems to be a
construct in both senses of the word, a physical as well as an imaginary
construction. In his way of building his house and barricades, Crusoe
uses natural material, which will lead us to explore the etymological
link between home and ecology, eco meaning home, household, from
the Greek *oikos*. Isn't it in the continuity between man and nature that
Crusoe really feels at home on a desert island?

# 1. Crusoe's "Wandring Inclination" (Robinson 5) or His Lack of Sense of Home

## 1.1 Fragmentation, hybridity and unhomeliness

Home refers to a social unit formed by a family living together in
a particular place, but from the incipit onwards, the reader realizes that
Crusoe has no such place, as can be seen in the fragmentation of space
with three cities mentioned and not one (York, Bremen, Hull), with the
fact that Crusoe and his family were considered as foreigners, "not of that country," and that their name has been altered from Kreutznaer to Crusoe:

> I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, though not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called—nay we call ourselves and write our Name—Crusoe; and so my Companions always called me. (*Robinson* 5)

The passive form ("we are now called") and the fact that Crusoe is the direct object of some sentences ("my companions always called me") suggest an absence of control on his identity and origins. These three elements (fragmented space, change of name and lack of agency) make of Crusoe, from the very start, a hybrid. He is not anchored in a place and a family: the next paragraph mentions his two brothers, one of whom is dead while the other is missing. The only figure that stands out in the incipit is the father who is old and sick and who, in a long and tedious didactic monologue, tries to convince Crusoe to "stay home," i.e. to stay in the "middle state" of life, which is not something particularly appealing to young Crusoe whose head is filled with "rambling Thoughts" and who has a "wandring Inclination" (*Robinson* 5). The first occurrence of the word "home" in the novel denotes that static life advocated for by Crusoe's father in the form of blackmail: "he would do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at home as he directed" (7); the alliterative anaphora ("stay and settle") emphasizes this idea of stasis that Crusoe rejects. This notion of staying at home to be safe is reiterated by Crusoe's father in nearly exactly the same terms a few pages later: "That boy might be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can give no consent to it" (8).
fact that Crusoe and his family were considered as foreigners, "not of that country," and that their name has been altered from Kreutznaer to Crusoe:

> I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, though not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called—nay we call ourselves and write our Name—Crusoe; and so my Companions always called me. (*Robinson* 5)

The passive form (“we are now called”) and the fact that Crusoe is the direct object of some sentences (“my companions always called me”) suggest an absence of control on his identity and origins. These three elements (fragmented space, change of name and lack of agency) make of Crusoe, from the very start, a hybrid. He is not anchored in a place and a family: the next paragraph mentions his two brothers, one of whom is dead while the other is missing. The only figure that stands out in the incipit is the father who is old and sick and who, in a long and tedious didactic monologue, tries to convince Crusoe to “stay home,” i.e. to stay in the “middle state” of life, which is not something particularly appealing to young Crusoe whose head is filled with “rambling Thoughts” and who has a “wandring Inclination” (*Robinson* 5). The first occurrence of the word “home” in the novel denotes that static life advocated for by Crusoe’s father in the form of blackmail: “he would do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at home as he directed” (7); the alliterative anaphora (“stay and settle”) emphasizes this idea of stasis that Crusoe rejects. This notion of staying at home to be safe is reiterated by Crusoe’s father in nearly exactly the same terms a few pages later: “That boy might be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can give no consent to it” (8).
## 1.2 Crusoe's father and home as a haven to which he might return

Considering the many dangers that travelling at sea entailed in the eighteenth century, Crusoe may have trusted his father's judgement, but leaving that "unhomely home" seems an irrepressible urge for him ("I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea," 5), and then, once he is at sea, he mentions "home" again in moments of anguish and trouble, as can be seen during the first storm he goes through:

> I expected every Wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the Ship fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or hollow of the Sea, we should never rise more; in this Agony of Mind, I made many Vows and Resolutions that if it would please God to spare my Life in this one Voyage, if ever I got once my Foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my Father, and never set it into a Ship again while I lived; that I would take his Advice, and never run myself into such Miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the Goodness of his Observations about the middle Station of Life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his Days, and never had been exposed to Tempests at Sea or Troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to my Father. (9)

Here, the idea of "home" is clearly associated with his father, as is shown in the repetition of the expression "go home to my Father," and thus it works as a metonymy for Great Britain and his father, whenever he feels frightened. Crusoe even uses blackmail rhetoric previously used by his father to make a pact with God if the latter spares him. The idea of home brings him a form of *ataraxia*: it stands for a psychological place of security, the reassuring "middle station" in life that his father talks about in the incipit. However, these moments when he remembers his father's advice alternate with passages stressing the power of fate and the irresistible drive to go to sea ("my ill Fate pushed me on now with an Obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several Times loud Calls from my Reason and my more composed Judgment to go home, yet I had no Power to do it," 13-14) or even Robinson Crusoe's utter rejection of home ("an irresistible Reluctance continued to going home," 15).
## 1.2 Crusoe's father and home as a haven to which he might return

Considering the many dangers that travelling at sea entailed in the eighteenth century, Crusoe may have trusted his father's judgement, but leaving that "unhomely home" seems an irrepressible urge for him ("I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea," 5), and then, once he is at sea, he mentions "home" again in moments of anguish and trouble, as can be seen during the first storm he goes through:

> I expected every Wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the Ship fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or hollow of the Sea, we should never rise more; in this Agony of Mind, I made many Vows and Resolutions that if it would please God to spare my Life in this one Voyage, if ever I got once my Foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my Father, and never set it into a Ship again while I lived; that I would take his Advice, and never run myself into such Miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the Goodness of his Observations about the middle Station of Life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his Days, and never had been exposed to Tempests at Sea or Troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to my Father. (9)

Here, the idea of "home" is clearly associated with his father, as is shown in the repetition of the expression "go home to my Father," and thus it works as a metonymy for Great Britain and his father, whenever he feels frightened. Crusoe even uses blackmail rhetoric previously used by his father to make a pact with God if the latter spares him. The idea of home brings him a form of *ataraxia*: it stands for a psychological place of security, the reassuring "middle station" in life that his father talks about in the incipit. However, these moments when he remembers his father's advice alternate with passages stressing the power of fate and the irresistible drive to go to sea ("my ill Fate pushed me on now with an Obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several Times loud Calls from my Reason and my more composed Judgment to go home, yet I had no Power to do it," 13-14) or even Robinson Crusoe's utter rejection of home ("an irresistible Reluctance continued to going home," 15).
After undergoing several storms, Crusoe ends up stranded on a desert island, i.e. in a completely unfamiliar place that he initially calls “the Island of Despair” (56), but thanks to his hard work, his construction of a tent, a cave that is made to look like a store and his development of agriculture, the island becomes “a happy Desert,” and even his “beloved Island” (110): the island changes as his experience on it unfolds, and the unfamiliar place turns into his home, into a “colony” peopled with animals at first (Poll the parrot, his dog and the cats) before the arrival of Friday, his father and the Spaniard (“My Man Friday was a Protestant, his Father was a Pagan and a Cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Papist,” 188), which is the reiteration of what Manuel Schonhorn calls “Crusoe’s triadic pattern [that] may allude to the authority of the first kings, Adam and Noah, and the absolute authority they exercised over their three sons” (148).

## 2. Home in the Colonial Context: Robinson at Home in His Castle on the Desert Island

### 2.1 Private property and the sense of home

Within the context of imperialism and colonialism, the desert island at the core of *Robinson Crusoe* can be understood as a Lockean blank slate (Locke Ch. I, 2) upon which Crusoe could write a new colonial story: the island is a place to appropriate and colonize. A desert island is never just a desert island, according to Defoe who believed that the state of nature was “theoretical and always implied a level of civilization” (Novak 37). Indeed, when Crusoe arrives on his island, he decides to spend his first night in a tree, which he turns into his “Lodging” (“I took up my Lodging,” 40), and the morning after, he says: “I came down from my Apartment in the Tree” (40). The possessive adjective “my” and the words “Lodging” and “Apartment,” which belong to his cultural sphere in England and not to the nature of that desert island, underline the fact that, surprisingly, he feels at home in this unfamiliar desert island in the middle of nowhere, alone and severed from his family and from society. The anthropization of the desert island is connected to the concept of private property and Crusoe’s feeling at home in the middle of nowhere is made possible because he can bring back many objects from the shipwreck
After undergoing several storms, Crusoe ends up stranded on a desert island, i.e. in a completely unfamiliar place that he initially calls “the Island of Despair” (56), but thanks to his hard work, his construction of a tent, a cave that is made to look like a store and his development of agriculture, the island becomes “a happy Desert,” and even his “beloved Island” (110): the island changes as his experience on it unfolds, and the unfamiliar place turns into his home, into a “colony” peopled with animals at first (Poll the parrot, his dog and the cats) before the arrival of Friday, his father and the Spaniard (“My Man Friday was a Protestant, his Father was a Pagan and a Cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Papist,” 188), which is the reiteration of what Manuel Schonhorn calls “Crusoe’s triadic pattern [that] may allude to the authority of the first kings, Adam and Noah, and the absolute authority they exercised over their three sons” (148).

## 2. Home in the Colonial Context: Robinson at Home in His Castle on the Desert Island

### 2.1 Private property and the sense of home

Within the context of imperialism and colonialism, the desert island at the core of *Robinson Crusoe* can be understood as a Lockean blank slate (Locke Ch. I, 2) upon which Crusoe could write a new colonial story: the island is a place to appropriate and colonize. A desert island is never just a desert island, according to Defoe who believed that the state of nature was “theoretical and always implied a level of civilization” (Novak 37). Indeed, when Crusoe arrives on his island, he decides to spend his first night in a tree, which he turns into his “Lodging” (“I took up my Lodging,” 40), and the morning after, he says: “I came down from my Apartment in the Tree” (40). The possessive adjective “my” and the words “Lodging” and “Apartment,” which belong to his cultural sphere in England and not to the nature of that desert island, underline the fact that, surprisingly, he feels at home in this unfamiliar desert island in the middle of nowhere, alone and severed from his family and from society. The anthropization of the desert island is connected to the concept of private property and Crusoe’s feeling at home in the middle of nowhere is made possible because he can bring back many objects from the shipwreck
that represent his past life—razors, knives, forks, Bibles, bottles of rum, coins, to mention a few of them (47). To feel secure, Crusoe regularly makes lists and inventories of the objects that he owns, as if private property was something that brought that sense of home. This gesture may be reminiscent of the imposition of culture and traditions that is at the core of the colonial gesture.

## 2.2 The motif of the circle: home as matrix, enclosure and security

Crusoe, who, in the incipit, said that he “had not been bred to any trade” (5) turns out to be in turn an architect, a carpenter, a builder, a farmer, and there is a rapid gradation from the tent he builds at the beginning to bigger and bigger “houses.” Crusoe is restless on the island and spends his time building various constructions, or, should we say, replicating his former life in a Great Britain characterized by the phenomenon of enclosure, and he does so using a geometrical vocabulary that suggests his mastery and control: “Before I set up my Tent, I drew a half-Circle before the hollow Place, which took in about ten Yards in its semi-Diameter from the Rock and twenty Yards in Diameter, from its Beginning and Ending” (48). The motif of the circle is recurrent in Crusoe’s attempt to domesticate the desert island, as when he says that he “mark’d out a semi-Circle for [his] Encampment” (57). A psychoanalytical reading of this motif might reveal that the circle is a reassuring figure that may bring Crusoe the security of some form of unity and wholeness that he never had, because of the hybridity in which he grew up. The circle can also symbolize the matrix, and by extension home. Crusoe keeps drawing circles or digging holes, such as his cave, which also symbolizes the matrix and the concept of home. Interestingly enough, the cave is a natural hollow place but here Crusoe digs one that is then described as a store of goods in which he accumulates as much as he can, so much actually that he needs to make it bigger and bigger, until it looks like “a general Magazine of all necessary Things” (56). He also erects a barricade to circumscribe an area and create a closed place for himself: “as well as I could, I barricaded myself round with the Chests and Boards that I had brought on Shore, and made a kind of Hut for that Night’s Lodging” (44). He uses furniture that he took on the wreck to recreate a sense