House Haunting: The Domestic Novel Of The Inter-War Years

Abstract

In this article we attempt to historicize and address the literary manifestations of the meaning and idea of home culture in the English domestic novel of the inter-war years. During this period, the cult of domesticity was avidly promoted by the government and popular magazines. We discuss how both houses and novels furnish a dwelling place that invites the exploration of private and social relations. In their turn to domestic space and the domestic interior, domestic novelists of the inter-war years inaugurated a turn to interiority, feminine subjectivity and the everyday.