Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-24hb2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T20:37:51.538Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

HOUSES IN BETWEEN: NAVIGATING SUBURBIA IN LATE VICTORIAN WRITING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2004

Gail Cunningham
Affiliation:
Kingston University

Extract

Oh it really is a wery pretty garden And Chingford to the eastward could be seen; Wiv a ladder and some glasses You could see to 'Ackney marshes If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between. “WHAT A PLEASANT THING IT MUST BE…to have ancestors,” muses Alma in George Gissing's The Whirlpool. This reflection is prompted by response to her location, living as she does neither in country village nor metropolitan center but in suburbia. Recognition of this brings her bleakly down to earth: “Nobody's ancestors ever lived in a semi-detached villa” (342; pt. 3, ch. 4). Genealogically speaking, of course, Alma has as many ancestors as anyone else, as Gissing knew perfectly well; his point, however, is to signal through Alma–as he does throughout the novel–the degree to which the explosion in suburban living that characterized late nineteenth-century London had disturbed and fractured identities. Alma's ancestors may have existed, but not in any spatial, social, or temporal dimension to which she, a dweller in the new semi-detached suburbia, can relate. Like all suburban dwellers of the fin de siècle, she has moved beyond the bounds of the historically known and culturally defined. Floundering between fantasies of rural idylls and illusions of metropolitan glamour, she is fatally unable to settle the new territory she now actually inhabits, a terra incognita of domesticity in redbrick villas, of streets, gardens, commuters, of atomized family units in homogenized streetscapes. She has no social or historical chart by which to navigate.

Type
EDITORS' TOPIC: VICTORIAN BOUNDARIES
Copyright
© 2004 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bennett Arnold. 1898. A Man from the North. London: John Lane: The Bodley Head,
Bergonzi Bernard. 1961. The Early H. G. Wells. Manchester: Manchester UP,
Carey John. 1992. The Intellectuals and the Masses. London: Faber and Faber,
Crosland T. W. H.. 1905. The Suburbans. London: John Lang,
D'Arcy Ella. 1898. Modern Instances. London: John Lane: The Bodley Head,
Doyle Arthur Conan. 1912. Beyond the City: An Idyll of a Suburb. London: Everett,
Edwards Arthur M. 1981. The Design of Suburbia. London: Pembridge P,
Edwards A. T.A Criticism of the Garden City Movement.” Town Planning Review 4 (1913): 154.
Gissing George. 1997. The Whirlpool. London: J. M. Dent,
Hapgood Lynne. “The Literature of the Suburbs.” Journal of Victorian Culture 5.2 (2000): 287310.
Howard Ebenezer. 1965. Garden Cities of Tomorrow. Intro. by Lewis Mumford. Northampton: John Dickens,
Inwood Stephen. 1998. A History of London. London: Macmillan,
Jackson Alan A. 1973. Semi-Detached London. London: George Allen and Unwin,
Low Sidney J.The Rise of the Suburbs: A Lesson of the Census.” Contemporary Review 60 (1891): 54558.
Mellor J. R. 1977. Urban Sociology in an Urbanized Society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
Morris William. 1968. News from Nowhere. Three Works by William Morris. Ed. A. L. Morton. London: Lawrence and Wishart,
Panton J. E., 1888 From Kitchen to Garret. London: Ward and Downey,
Rose Jonathan. 2002. The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. New Haven: Yale UP,
Wells H. G. 1980. Ann Veronica. London: Virago,
Wells H. G. 1934 Experiment in Autobiography. 2 vols. London: Victor Gollancz,
Wells H. G. 1911 The New Machiavelli. London: John Lane: The Bodley Head,
Wells H. G. 1909 Tono-Bungay. London: Macmillan,
Wells H. G. 1993 The War of the Worlds. London: J. M. Dent,
Whitehead J. W. R., and Christine M. R. Carr. 1999England's Garden Suburbs: Development and Change.” Changing Suburbs: Foundation, Form and Function. Ed. Richard Harris and Peter J. Larkham. London: E & FN Spon, 7690.
Williams Raymond. 1993. The Country and the City. London: The Hogarth P,