The Interplay of the Domestic and the Uncanny in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

This article examines the effects resulting from the interplay of the domestic and the uncanny in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a novel that boldly blends the conventions of the novel of manners and Gothic fiction. Analysing the selected key elements of the story, it is argued that while the uncanny is domesticated for a considerable part of the narrative, in the Gothic layer of the novel the mechanism of the uncanny is used to bring to light repressed voices. In the process, the long-established sources of inspiration for fantasy literature are rejected, and the nineteenth-century tradition of women’s writing, in both its realistic and Gothic threads, is used to reinvigorate the thematic and structural repertoire of the genre.sbszerszun@gmail.comSylwia Borowska-Szerszun holds a PhD degree in English literature, and works in the Institute of Modern Languages, University of Białystok. She has published articles on medieval and early Renaissance drama. Her current research interests focus on fantasy fiction, in particular its connections with medieval literature and culture, representation of women and depiction of “the other”.University of BiałystokClarke, Susanna. 2015. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. London/New York: Bloomsbery Publishing Plc.Ellis, Kate Ferguson. 1989. The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Freud, Sigmund. 1919. The Uncanny. In: James Starchey (ed), 1955. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. XVII, 219-252. London: Hogarth.Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. 2000. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 2nd ed. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.Hoiem, Elizabeth. 2008. The Fantasy of Talking Back: Susanna Clarke’s Historical Present in Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Strange Horizons. http://www.strangehorizons. com/2008/20081027/hoiem-a.shtml (25 February 2016).Jackson, Rosemary. 1981. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London/New York: Methuen.Kumar, Krishan. 2003. The Making of English National Identity. Cambridge: CUP.Masschelein, Anneleen. 2011. The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory. Albany: State University of New York Press.Mendlesohn , Farah. 2008 Rhetorics of Fantasy. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.Schanoes, Veronica. 2012. Historical Fantasy. In: Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, 236-247. Cambridge: CUP.Smith, Andrew and Diana Wallace. 2004. The Female Gothic: Now and Then. Gothic Studies 6.1. 1-7.Thomson, Douglas H. 2011. Dread and Decorum in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. In: Danel Olson (ed.), 21st-Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels since 2000, 319-326. Lanham/Toronto/Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.Williams, Anne. 1995. Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.Wollfreys, Julian. 2004. Uncanny. In: Critical Keywords in Literature and Culture, 239-246. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.4-129 (2/2015)41