5. Uncanny Technology

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about the presentation of communications technology in The Little Stranger, focusing in particular on: (i) the disproportionate impact that technology has on the female characters in the novel – Mrs Ayres, Caroline, Betty and Mrs Bazeley; (ii) series of the nuisance calls are made to the house in the middle of the night and the implication of the line being ‘dead’; (iii) the (apparent) autonomy of the technology at the house; (iv) the extent to which the technology in the house underpins and then subverts class distinctions; and (v) the ominous symbolism that bells take on in the novel.

Course

In this course, Professor Lucie Armitt (University of Lincoln) explores Sarah Waters’ 2009 novel, the Little Stranger. We begin by thinking about the novel as a haunted house narrative, focusing in particular on what, if anything, the house is actually haunted by. After that, we think about the social and political reforms that were at work in the mid- to late 1940s, the period in which the novel is set, and the ways in which the reflects on these changes, before turning in the third module to the representation of children in the novel. In the fourth module, we provide a close reading of the scene in chapter five in which Roderick encounters the ghost, before moving on in the fifth module to think about the representation of communications technology in the novel – particularly the telephone and the speaking tube. Finally, in the sixth module, we focus on the narrator of the novel, Dr Faraday: is he as trustworthy and impartial as he would like us to believe?

Lecturer

Lucie Armitt is a Professor in Contemporary English Literature at the University of Lincoln. She is a specialist in the fields of contemporary women’s writing, the literary fantastic and the Gothic. She is an Associate Editor of the award-winning OUP journal Contemporary Women’s Writing and founding Treasurer of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association.