Peculiarities of realization of language units in the novel «The House Next Door» by Anne Rivers Siddons



Sothern Gothic is a mode or genre predominant in literature from the early nineteenth century till the present time. The presence of unreasonable, horrendous, and transgressive contemplations, impulses and desires could be the main characteristics of Southern Gothic as well as odd characters, dark humour, and a generally angst-ridden sense of alienation (Bjerre, 2017) [1].

The Southern Gothic genre refers to American literature only as all events geographically happen in the Southern states of the United States of America. This feature may play an important role in the world literature as an exclusive part of it, representing only American writers and American mentality. As it might be seen, this genre is relatively new one in literature and deserves further survey. Hence, the genre can be unfamiliar for some readers or might be mistakenly considered to be the horror genre. Flannery O’Connor stated that, the Southern Gothic mostly contain both fiction and horror but with dominating geographic storyline where the author guarantees the respect to the mystery (O'Connor, 1979) [2, p. 31].

The special term « Southern School » can be distinguished to characterize the group of Southern writes and their works (O'Connor, 1979) [2, p. 28]. One of the female writers of this genre is Anne Rivers Siddons, widely known for her gothic fiction. Her novel « The House Next Door » is full of explicit characteristics of the American South:« Walter and I are not natives. And we certainly are not in the same financial league with some of our friends. » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 11], the narrator also shows the culture of capitalistic America in general. « But we are of them precisely because we understand the way they choose to live. » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 11]; or « We are not rich or about-to-be rich enough… » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 1] at the same time shows an ordinary, happy American family. A feeling of spiritual purpose and joy of life appears to be lacking in most of Southern literature stories. The stories are mostly about poor people with actions which do not seem to give the reader much confidence in the joy of life, who suffer both in mind and body, possess little or, from the positive perspective, a distorted — sense of spiritual purity (O'Connor, 1979) [2, p. 32].

It may be seen in the plot of the novel « The House Next Door» as the inhabitants of the house suffer from their past, which the house masterfully uses to destroy them. Among other scholars bad desires are viewed as the result of subconsciousness as it was described by Sigmund Freud. Thus, the teachings of Sigmund Freud, influencing since the 1890s (Crow, 2014) [4, p. 5], can be considered as a concept that coincides with the main idea of the Southern Gothic genre of the novel. In both cases, unbridled desires for committing sins can be observed, which is usually not characteristic of the main character, but nevertheless the subconscious breaks out and takes control of the character (Crow, 2014) [4, p. 5]. The plot of the novel illustrates the psychology of human perception: firstly, it is denial, secondly, it is anger, then bargaining, depression and the last is acceptance.

The novel is the first person narration, the author is not a participant, but takes the role of the main character of the novel — Colquitt Kennedy. She is not omniscient one, she does not know the solution of the problem up to the end but then she finds resolutions, represented by the plot twist in the end of the novel — the problem was in the architect Kim Dougherty, but not in the house.

The realization of diverse language units might be divided into three parts: depiction of macabre ambiance and fear in the novel, the haunted house and the American culture.

Macabre apprehension of the characters might be seen in the last sentence in Prologue, separated and giving hints to the reader that they should expect terror and fear in the story: « I do not think we will be alive long enough. » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 5]; or « Ilay still in the darkness, in pain and sorrow. The depth of it surprised me » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 68], the main characters may experience negative, dim feelings. The representation of the fear could be found mostly in repetition of nouns, such as: pain, agony, terror and death, for example, « Chaos, violence, disorder, mindlessness all upset us. » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 11], « The pain and terror , the dead , stony calm, had seemed so deep.» (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 119]. And grotesque epithets: « A violent motion from Buck Sheehan caught our eyes. We turned to him. He sat staring at the figure in the darkness , his face as still as if it were settled forever into death. » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 117], which carry descriptive and evaluative functions, applied in linguistic coloring of the narration. As well as phono — graphical expressive means: suspension marks, italics and hyphenation to show pauses in the speech of characters and create the image not of a fiction, but a reality to engage the readers’ attention: « There mustn’t be any more…distance…between Buck and me… » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 134], «…there was something wrong over there [House], you agreed with me …» (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 242], « If I insisted on people worthy of my houses—house—I’d …» (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 36].

It is worth noting that haunted houses take a special place in the tradition of Southern Gothic. A haunted house and a contested castle are mostly identified as prominent features in the Gothic literary landscape. The main feature of the genre is repetition of other forms of houses, containing the same main idea of mysterious secrets of unknown origin, incestuous relationships, villains and disembodied things (Castillo & Crow, 2016) [5, p. 55]. The house may be a mirror reflecting characters’ psychology or a concept discovering a family history. A trauma is registered by the gothic in representational tactics through bringing forward a painful history to which it alluded but could never fully respond (Martin & Savoy, 1998) [6, p. 11]. The doubleness in allegorical impulse of American gothic, which portrays «trauma» in a traumatized speech by separating the sign from the referent, arises most notably in Edgar Allan Poe's literature tradition (Crow, 2014) [4, p. 12]. The early Southern Gothic haunted house story is « The Fall of the House of Usher» by Edgar Allan Poe. This work is regarded as the «master text» for other stories and tales of the genre, and may be called as only fully realized tale for the first time, with all its necessary Southern socio-political components and concerns (Crow, 2014) [4, p. 56]. The house in the American Gothic tradition becomes anthropomorphized, actually acquiring its own life in the form of consciousness and free will. It is regularly and occupied in different ways. Occupied by unsettled undead, houses become creepy, depopulated spaces, undermining the established dynamics of generational power and even possessing their supposed living owners, the theme of ownership and deprivation suggests rich spiritual, psychological and material consequences (Castillo & Crow, 2016) [5, p. 55]. In describing the House the author mostly uses personification, simile and irony.Personification can be understood as the main trope of House description in the novel, used in an ironic way: « The house next door was dark and quiet and seemed to breathe sweetly in sleep » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 130]. More precisely, prosopopeia can be understood as the main trope of the allegorical turn of Gothic, because prosopopoeia—the act of putting a face to an abstract, disembodied Other in order to bring it back into narrative — disturbs the common reality of things, logocentric order [6, p. 10].

Since it is uncanny to make the unseen apparent, prosopopoeia is hallucinatory (Martin & Savoy, 1998) [6, p. 10]. Simile and irony are used for purposes of expressive evaluation, emotive explanation, highly individual description. For example, «… it’s not worth moving. It’s only a house » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 15] — here, the readers can observe the ironical connotation, but the character who says this phrase is rather serious and sure. « It looked — inevitable » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 24] — the protagonist, Colquitt Kennedy, speaks about the draft of yet inbuilt house, so that giving hints to the reader from the beginning of the narration. « This was a pretty good place to live until Happy House went up over there » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 120] — this is the opinion of another character Claire Swanson about the House. It is noteworthy that the character precisely uses sarcasm «Happy House» to describe the grief the House brings into people’s lives.

American culture in the novel is depicted through usage of proper names, idiomatic expressions, and colloquial vocabulary, which carry out descriptive or evaluative functions and act as Americanism in the novel to have the readers immersed into the American everyday life, for example, « Her television was on- Let’s Make a Deal was going on …» (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 47], « You’re a lucky gal [girl] to have your own resident Pygmalion » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 75].

Another stylistic device applied by the author is hyperbole. The writer, using hyperbole, always expects that the reader will understand the deliberate use of exaggeration. Both reader and author understand that the hyperbole has a certain subtext. Both agree that hyperbole in the novel is one of the forms more colorfully and emotionally express the characters’ speech and personal features. For example, « I heard he’s been in the state legislature for about a thousand years »(Siddons, 1995)[3, p. 44] — Kim says about Pie’s father, Daddy, and shows his dislike towards him. The exaggeration here is based mainly on the interaction of two types of lexical meanings of words. The subject-logical meaning of the word «thousand» becomes overgrown with emotional meanings. « But they did love the house, and so will you. For a million years at least, I hope . » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 114], Colquitt tells about the house to Anita, and hyperbole is used in the statement to express her admiration. In both cases the author uses trite language hyperboles to illustrate simple, everyday speech of characters and their roused emotions. The most remarkable feature of the novel, that the tautological repetition is extremely rare to find in the novel, nevertheless, it leaves an impression on readers and helps to expand the narration. The tautology in the work does not expose the emptiness and monotony of his character's life, but on the contrary shows that it is full of events that even goes beyond the border of normal and understandable. For example, « … we have believed the unbelievable and spoken the unspeakable . » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 4] — tautology reveals expressiveness and emotionality. This tautology has the fearful connotation of past events and unwillingness to remember them. « … one of the things I find amusing about her [Claire] is a totally unmalicious malice . » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 12] — tautology reveals descriptive and evaluative functions. Unlike the first example, this example has a satirical connotation, exposing the negative feature of the character. In this case, it describes a talkative and curious woman — Claire. Also, the word «totally» gives a special coloring and emphasis, acting as an evaluation.

One of the examples of syntactical peculiarities of the novel is inversion and repetition . Inversion and repetition are used to intensify the characters' speech. For example, « Don’t I know it», Pie pouted » (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 64], in this case, the author uses inversion to show the expressive nature of Pie, which is seen not only in her dress style and behavior, but also in her speech. In the dialogue between Colquitt and Claire,« No. No, I won’t help you, whatever it is you’re planning to do. I told you that before. I’m not going to help you, I’m not going to talk about it, I’m not going to think about it» (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 281] the reader might see anaphora; or « Get out of my house» she shrieked. «Get out of my house! You’re dead, Colquitt , you’re a walking dead woman! Get out of my house !» [3, p. 283]; «Behind me I could hear her still screaming. « You’re dead , you’re walking around dead , you’re dead » — (Siddons, 1995) [3, p. 283] — this anaphora shows the rising pressure and fear of the character.

To sum it up, textual dominance, the foregrounding, actualization of linguistic units in the novel are carried out in various ways: representation of fear and gothic ambiance, house description and features of the American culture. It might be concluded that the novel contains stylistic devices on the phono-graphical, lexical and stylistic levels, mostly: epithets, proper names, repetitions, as the main source to influence the readers. The author, Anne Siddons synthesized all the previous experiences of the genre’s authors and isolated genre features and created the image of the anxiety, haunted house and the American South with a masterful implementation of language units.

References:

1. Bjerre, T. Æ. (2017, June 28). Southern Gothic literature. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Retrieved April 28, 2022, from https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-304
2. O'Connor, F. (1979). Mystery and manners: Occasional prose, selected and Ed. by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York. — 237 p.
3. Siddons, Anne Rivers (1995). The House Next Door. Published by HarperPaperbacks, New York. — 346 p.
4. Crow, C. L. (2014). A companion to American Gothic. Wiley Blackwell. — 587 p.
5. Castillo, S. P., & Crow, C. L. (2016). The Palgrave Handbook of the southern gothic. Palgrave Macmillan. — 505 p.
6. Martin, R. K., & Savoy, E. (1998). American Gothic: New interventions in a national narrative. University of Iowa Press. — 225 p.