Confinement and the Transnational in Emma Donoghue’s Room

Abstract

This article contends that Emma Donoghue’s Room (2010) generates its transnational effects through its manner of narrating elements of the carceral situation which its central characters, Ma and Jack, survive. Situating Room within Donoghue’s practice as a writer of historical fiction, the article studies the sources she drew on when writing her novel, the spaces the characters inhabit and the things that surround them, as well as the language used by the narrator Jack. It argues that, by focalising this narrative of coercive confinement through the worldview of a five-year-old child, Donoghue creates a text that is transnationally mobile in its approach to language, space and things.@font-face{font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:roman;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-unhide:no;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";margin:0cm;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}.MsoChpDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-default-props:yes;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}div.WordSection1{page:WordSection1;}