Space and affect: (re)reading “Fingersmith” by Sarah Waters

The paper explores non-representation strategies in Sarah Waters’ novel “Fingersmith” (2002), which are specified through the introduction of ‘estrangement’, ‘embodied readings’, and of urban-specific mentality as an ‘embodied practice’ (Thrift, Auge). A strong connection between space and affect enables the idea of belonging as a key to characters’ identities. Waters’ use of “The Death of Nancy Sikes” theatrical episode as an opening to her story might be a self-conscious attempt to create the sensation of ‘seeing’ Victorian present through ‘estrangement’ (similar to Natasha Rostova’s), and not merely pushing the reader to ‘recognizing’ Dickens’s pastiche as part of postmodernist Neo-Victorian stylization. Special attention is given to Lant Street, historically known as the ‘Mint’, and infamous for its slums, crimes, and disorders, but perceived as familiar, organic, and homey by the character, who significantly differentiates it from the neighboring Clerkenwell. Apart from that, Waters does not only recreate Neo-Victorian past by staging it as a spectacle for the reader, but also makes them immerse into multiple nuances of body affects. Away from the exotic, yet happy, home locations (‘anthropological places’ of slums and a madhouse), the characters find themselves in ‘non-places’, given in a modernist manner (a perception of moving with a speed, a loss of ability to grasp the fragmented snapshots of modern urban life, and a crisis of reading and interpretation). All in all, it reinforces the reader’s questioning their own self-identity set against a radical and exoticized alterity of neo-Victorian sensibilities.