Perhaps it is because I have been sick for the majority of
this semester that Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics
of Space has resonated with me. Although Bachelard is talking about
childhood homes when he says “for our house is our corner of the world... as
has often been said, it is our first universe, a real cosmos in every sense of
the word" (4), being surrounded by any space that feels like home is
comforting. Or, as Bachelard says later
in the essay, "the house is a large cradle" (7). While I am not
living in the house that I grew up in, my house is still a comforting cradle,
especially when I’m not feeling well. I grew up in the North and now my house
is in the South – two very different climates. But the “four walls” of both
houses serve(d) as a protection from the outside world. It is not the plaster
and brick walls that make us feel protected; instead “we shall see the
imagination build ‘walls’ of impalpable shadows, comfort itself with the
illusion of protection” (Bachelard 5). Of course, the opposite may happen as
well, and the walls may become a prison of sorts. But for this blog, I want to
focus on the comfort of home. Because even Bachelard would say “the chief
benefit of the house: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the
dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace” (6).
This is not a simple relationship between house and housed. “The
house of memories becomes psychologically complex. Associated with the nooks
and corners of solitude are the bedroom and the living room in which the
leading characters held sway” (Bachelard 14). While the kitchen and the dining
room could elicit memories of gatherings, energy, celebrations, or special
occasions, the more private rooms in the house such as the bedroom or the
favorite spot on the couch in the living room is where we retreat for healing,
recovery, and time alone. (Yes, gatherings often spread to the living room, but
this room can be used for privacy as well. Especially when there’s a comfy
couch, and warm blanket, and soft lighting perfect for reading, writing, or
reflecting. Also, specific places with the house can elicit different daydreams
and different feelings; some happy and protective, others might be frightening
and suffocating. While “each one of [the
house’s] nooks and corners [is] a resting-place for daydreaming…and often the
resting-place particularize[s] the daydream (Bachelard 15), sometimes it is not
a place that brings forth strong emotions, but instead an object within the
house.
For instance, for Virginia Woolf in “A Sketch of the Past,” it
is the mirror that prompts shame (68). Woolf reflects that a “strong feeling of
guilt seemed naturally attached to it. But why was this so?” (68). Within a
page, the reader is told of an incident involving a
slab outside the dining room door
for standing dishes upon. Once when I was very small Gerald Duckworth lifted me
onto this, and as I sat there he began to explore my body. I can remember the
feel of his hand going under my clothes; going firmly and steadily lower and
lower. I remember how I hoped that he would stop; how I stiffened and wriggled
as his hand approached my private parts. But it did not stop. His hand explored
my private parts too. I remember resenting, disliking it- what is the word for
so dumb and mixed a feeling? It must have been strong, since I still recall it.
(Woolf 69)
Ironically, it is not the slab outside the dining room door,
or the dining room itself which makes Woolf feel ashamed or guilty; it is a
looking glass that was hung in the hall with the slab. The violation of a young
girl is not attached to a nook or cranny in the home, but to an object hanging
on the wall. (Psychologically, we could delve into the idea of the mirror
reflecting her shame or showing her a world she doesn’t expect, but this is a
humble blog and I am no psychologist.)
On the other hand, Woolf does associate a space within the
house that was comforting: the nursery. Her first memory is
of lying half asleep, half awake,
in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one,
two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then break blind
draw its little acorn across the floor as the wind blew the blind out. It is of
lying and hearing this splash and seeing this light, and feeling, it is almost
impossible that I should be here; of feeling the purest ecstasy I can conceive.
(Woolf 65)
Woolf does mention objects in the room: the bed, the blind, and
the light, but she doesn’t refer to these things, she refers to “being here” –
the nursery – with feelings of pureness and ecstasy. It was what she “felt in
the nursery at St Ives” (Woolf 65), not what she felt being surrounded by the objects
that stayed with her.
Once again we can turn to Bachelard and his view of the
house. He says
Of course, thanks to the house, a
great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if
it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges
that are all the more clearly delineated… [and]even when we no longer have a
garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we
once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night
dreams. These retreats have the value of a shell. (Bachelard 8, 10)
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