Non-places of memory: interstitiality and the social function of space in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) and Ellen Wood’s Danesbury House (1860)

ABSTRACT

Challenging the well-established assumption that memory constitutes a determinant of place, this article argues that memory of traumatic events can also turn place into non-place. The characteristic of this transformation is the difference between past and present that reminiscent individuals trace, thus deeming the latter deficient. Hence, the present state of memory-invested sites is perceived as temporary and transient, a non-place that does not contribute to an individual’s understanding of themselves, thus creating the need to bridge the past to a future that enables the recovery of a past sense of place. Consequently, on account of its shortcomings, the present creates an interstitial space that triggers recollection, enables evaluation, and allows alternative modes of emplacement to be envisioned. The moors in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and the family home in Danesbury House constitute two cases in point, exemplifying how memory juxtaposes a harmonious past to a turbulent and tormenting present that needs to be overridden. Being interstitial spaces that, respectively, represent the distinct ends of the nature/culture dichotomy, the moors, and the family residence problematise and endorse mid-Victorian norms about place and identity. Ultimately, though, the novels’ outcome makes a case for the instrumentality of place in preserving the social order.

KEYWORDS:

• Danesbury House
• interstitiality
• memory
• non-place
• trauma
• Wuthering Heights

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This is how Wood’s narrator describes Arthur when he draws the attention of passers-by while standing outside a gin-palace and opposite a pawnshop in London. Arthur is looking for his brother Robert who faces persecution as a criminal for “forging his father’s business signature,” since the latter refused to increase his allowance and thus pay for his son’s “extravagances” (Wood [1860] 2009, 155). The dislocation that Arthur experiences in this scene encapsulates his resentment for the current state of his home and family.

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Elisavet Ioannidou

Elisavet Ioannidou is an adjunct lecturer at the School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, where she teaches courses on English literature and literary theory. She received her PhD from the same department. Her doctoral thesis explored the representation of Victorian space and place in neo-Victorian fiction, and the revision this effects for Victorian class and gender norms. She has presented papers at conferences in Greece and abroad and published articles in peer-reviewed journals. Her research interests revolve around neo-Victorianism, Victorian and contemporary fiction, space, place, identity, and adaptation.