According to one of the anecdotes in Christina Hardyment’s Novel Houses – Twenty Famous Fictional Dwellings , Kits Browning, Daphne du Maurier’s son, once said that ‘She always had this thing that places were more important than people.’ Whilst Manderley was central to Rebecca and Jamaica Inn pivotal in the novel of the same name, she wasn’t the only one to place importance on, well, place.
This book features twenty essays about homes that are central to the novels they are in, acting as more than mere backdrop to stories of society, love, drama and politics. There’s those that are so important that the book is named after – Brideshead, Wuthering Heights, Mansfield Park, Howard’s End, Bleak House – and that have become well renowned in every day literary culture, as well as lesser known spots, such as those in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables and Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast.
Each chapter features a fictional house, describes the story, and analyses the part played by the house in the story. The focus then shifts to discussing the authors and the houses that influenced their work.
In her introduction, Hardyment declares herself fascinated by houses that become ‘second skins, against the world, nests.’ A home is a space to be yourself, discover yourself in safety, and even our favourite literary characters need that experience. The authors she explores were shaped by their formative experiences, and so we read how the Brontes’ Haworth parsonage informed Wuthering Heights, or Austen’s connection between Steventon and Chawton, and Mansfield Park (written at the latter in 1809), as well as what it meant to Heathcliff and Cathy, or Marianne.
Of course, it’s much more enjoyable reading about a house you’re familiar with, through the novel. Having said that, Hardyment is a skilled writer, and able to evoke a picture through carefully selected quotes and elegant arguments. By foregrounding the importance of the domestic, this book seems quietly revolutionary, and maybe even feminist.
It’s a beautiful book to cosy up with. Full of houses to lose yourself in, it feels welcoming and warm. Hardyment has written a book that is filled with stories, and those stories all have a home.