![]() Marguerite's titular heroine, like so many others before her, will attempt to begin afresh and set down roots in her new home, but can you ever feel settled when you're still running from the past? Can a house ever embrace the presence of someone new when it continues to be haunted by the ghosts of those who came before? Whether speaking of literal or metaphorical hauntings (as in this case), it is these crucial questions that so often loom over a gothic heroine and her search for a place in the world. With all that considered, the inclusion of a gothic manor home has become literary shorthand for mounting tension and the promise of future danger for our protagonist(s), be it physical or emotional. The hostile welcomes from existing homeowners - strangers who will now be privy to our main characters' most intimate moments - do little to put any tensions at ease. The renown they hold amongst respective locals usually stems not from admiration and envy, but whispers of scandal. They are at the heart of a close-knit community, but often sit geographically and socially apart from it. They are at once impressively large and unnervingly claustrophobic. The buildings' outward beauty is often slowly decaying, their best years long behind them. This tainting of everything that home should represent to the protagonist (and the reader) is achieved through a succession of dichotomies authors contrasting the qualities that epitomize the "dream home" with a darker, more sinister reality. ![]() But what is it about this setup that continues to attract and enthrall authors and readers alike? The answer lies in the quietly sordid thrill that comes from witnessing the corruption of our long-held belief that home is an unwaveringly safe space. Susan Fletcher's House of Glass, Laura Purcell's The Silent Companions and Alice Thompson's The Book Collector are just a few comparative examples. Kemp is not the first contemporary author to draw heavily on this motif. Like Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, and Henry James's The Turn of the Screw before it, the novel opens with a young woman arriving at a large, secluded country house, before documenting her increasingly futile attempts to break free from the burden of the past and make said house her home. Marina Kemp's Marguerite operates on several thematic levels not least as an homage to classics of gothic literature. ![]() The Corruption of Home in Gothic Literature ![]()
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