Penelope Lively's novel "The house in Norham Gardens" and its invisible character

Contemporary prose is distinguished by sophisticated interpretations of time and temporality. These phenomena are at

® Marina Karapetyan, 2012

the forefront of many publications in various fields: philosophy, psychology, linguistics, literature. Time is the focus and horizon of all our thought and experience.

The outstanding Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin suggested the notion of chronotope which is very effective in dealing with literary time. Chronotope is a kind of formal and conceptual unity of spatial and temporal features taken as a whole within the framework of a literary text [Бахтин 1986:121].

We will describe types of literary time in relation to fiction, to the temporal structures that have developed in the novel in recent decades. Time is placed at the forefront of a novel's thematic concerns. Moreover, conventional narrative temporality which has been embedded in our consciousness is being revised in modernist and postmodernist theories, although each literary trend has worked out its own treatment of time. Sentimentalism, for instance, depicts time as very close to the author's; naturalism tried to stop time; modernism continued experimenting with time, suggesting consciousness techniques.

Literary time differs greatly from objective time. In real life we usually perceive it chronologically or cyclically. In a literary text due to its phenomenological character there might be prolepsis, flashbacks, one - dimensional or polydimensional, compressed (retarded) or prolonged modes of time. Thus, contemporary prose is characterized by complexity of temporal structure.

In this respect Penelope Lively's novel, The House in Norham Gardens deserves special attention where ontological categories of time and space are presented in such text categories as integrity: ‘a large old house in a quiet road in an ancient city, a house filled not only with relics of the past of those who have lived there, but also with trophies of expeditions to a much deeper past: to the Stone Age of New Guinea'.

Thus, the novel under analysis presents a literary text in which temporal orientation is one of the essential characteristics. Philip Pullman in the preface writes explicitly about it:

There is an invisible character who haunts a great deal of Penelope Lively's work. Perhaps it's going too far to call him [her? It?) a character; it is both less than a fully rounded human character, and more; because more powerful, and implacable, and invulnerable.

The idea of time is brilliantly expressed in the poetic epigraph which opens the text. The poem was written by an outstanding British writer and poet Thomas Hardy. 'Old Furniture' embodies the author's expressive and emotional intention, her great sympathy with the past and history. The idea of the poem is in the profound personal attitude to the past which is materialized in different objects: furniture, photos, paintings, clock etc.

Lively undoubtedly possesses her own philosophical conception of time which could be inferred from the narrative structure of the novel. She respects and loves the history not only of her country but other countries too. We come across the cultural interpretation of time in the novel. It is present in all the introductions at the beginning of each chapter. We can speak about polydimensional literary time as the events described in the introductions refer to some distant past and mark out the second time axis.

Primitive people perceive time differently. They can't imagine a linear character for objective time. Time for them is primarily rituals, ceremonial objects and their ancestors.

They know only the cycle of a man's life: birth, and maturity, and death, (p.27)

They don't know about time, or history, or anything. They just kind of go on, living and dying, over and over again, without knowing anything about themselves. But they think their ancestors are terribly important. They worship them, really, (p. 28)

The difference is vivid through the relationships to the elderly. John regrets that in Western culture old people are not respected.

But here you do not respect old people as much as we do. In my country we admire the old. We take advice from them. Here is the young who are admired, (p. 64)

The chronological flow of the events is disturbed by flashbacks and prolepsis; the author narrates the future out of turn. We may also speak about compressed time in dealing with introductions where 1900 is the starting point and it stretches till modern time in only 12 chapters.

Lively's time interpretation results in characters' individual psychological existence. Each character is unique and lives in her individual time world. Clare's perception of time is opposed to her elderly aunts'.

When you are old you remember things quite well if they happened years and years ago: it is yesterday that becomes unclear, or last week.

The aunts think backwards mostly, because that suits them best. Perhaps I should think forwards, but I can't because there's nothing to be seen for certain except О-Levels and August in Norfolk. (p. 25-26)

Thus, the analysis of the text confirms the hypothesis that literary time differs from the real one thanks to various means: composition of the plot, characters, retrospective show of past events (flashback), description of future events out of turn (prolepsis), parallel existence of several plot lines and correspondingly several time axes.

The image of Clare, the fourteen-year old girl is at the centre of the story, and she is poised between present and past, between her own world and different worlds. Clare is a very sensitive and intelligent girl. The author resorts to ekphrasis creating very bright visual images of the old house and making the reader feel the atmosphere. This is how Clare perceives the junk room and things stored there.

The first thing you noticed, going in there, always, was the smell. It was not unpleasant, not really a musty or stale smell, but somehow the smell of some other time, as though the air in the room, like the other things, was 1890, or 1911, or 1926. Going into the room, it was you who became displaced in time: the room was quite at home. (p. 55).

In her school essay Clare raises the eternal problem of time, the causes of changes and why people pay so little attention to them.

Mrs. Cramp understood the idea precisely.

'It did convey the idea of memory being something that people can't do without', (p.48).

Unlike many people Clare feels almost physically the irreversibility of time. Sometimes she wants to stop the time and finds ways how to do that.

I like fires. I like being here, just now, just at this moment. This is one of the times I wouldn't mind stopping at, for ever, or for long, anyway, if you could kind of freeze yourself. Butyou can't. (p.90)

One more character very close to Clare is John a student of anthropology from Uganda. He also values the past and thinks it to be very crucial for national identity.

'You can't ever stop things happening if they're going to.'

'Ah,' said John, you know that. People have been telling you about history for years!'

'Does being told about history help?'

'Knowing about time does. Being able to remember!' (p.114)

The idea of constantly moving time is recurrent in many contexts throughout the narrative. The cyclical character of time (changing seasons) is also interpreted within the concept of literary model of time. The story begins at the still point of the year, in winter and the time is very slow. When spring comes there happen transformations in main character's inner world.

'Why all these changes, suddenly?'

'I'm spring-cleaning', said Clare.

The present for her aunt is very original and special. It is a copper beech, the symbol of everlasting and changing life. Clare can't think about her distant future; she imagines it vaguely. But she is sure that the old house, furniture, photographs will remain part of her life.

Penelope Lively's novel explores different layers of time - past, present, distant past, future, memories and experience. The author's individual conception of time may be characterized as philosophical as it comprises almost all its modes: ontological, psychological. It is a remarkable novel.