The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space
1991; New School; Volume: 58; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1944-768X
Autores Tópico(s)Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism
ResumoIhe more we reflect on the tyranny of the home, the less surprising it is that the young wish to be free of its scrutiny and control. The evident nostalgia in much writing about the idea of home is more surprising. The mixture of nostalgia and resistance explains why the topic is so often treated as humorous. Dylan Thomas left home at an early age. His Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog has a story about two men, outcasts from seaside suburbia, standing under the pier and wistfully speculating on what would be happening at home. Given that it is five o'clock in the evening, they know quite precisely that curtains are being drawn, the children being called in to tea, and even what tea will comprise. In Less than Angels Barbara Pym, that coolly detached recorder of homes, has an ironic passage about the suburban home of two sisters. After supper the dishes are cleared and the house made ready for night; every day before retiring one sister sets the table for tomorrow's breakfast, then both go up to bed; every night, before extinguishing the light, the other sister creeps down again to have one last look at the breakfast table in case something has been forgotten, and is very relieved if she manages to avert catastrophe by straightening a fork or adding a plate that should be there. These are affectionate images of home as a pattern of regular doings. Other images are frankly hostile. The very regularity of home's processes is both inexorable and absurd. It is this regularity that needs focus and explaining. How does it go on being what it is? And what is it?
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