Home, Maison, Casa: The Politics of Location in Works by Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Erminia Dell'Oro by Erica L. Johnson (review)

Abstract

588 Reviews classical features and avoidance of regionalisms, became accepted as a 'supra-regional' standard in Italy and a model for such a standard abroad. (4) Petrarchan imitators in Italy combined a supra-regional style and language with a content which included particular geographical references. This could be seen as combining local loyalties with a wider sense of belonging. (5) National sentiment, Kennedy argues, grows out of personal loyalties. Du Bellay exemplifies this in his attempt to forge a network of French Petrarchan poets. Such ties enabled members ofthe aristocracy to bring about a general enlargement of cultural loyalties. Marriage ties among the aristocracy were able to bring about a similar enlargement. (6) Petrarchism could serve as a kind of school of personal character as virtuous love or friendship emerged from a struggle with passion. This provided a bond between powerful and influential aristocrats, who were to become builders of a new national culture. The above is an extremely schematic account of a complex and detailed argument. It becomes clear that not all Petrarchan poets necessarily fitinto this picture. An inter? esting chapter in this respect is the comparison between Du Bellay, with his concern for French culture, and Ronsard, more interested in his personal literary fame. In the case of English literature, the poetry of Mary Wroth is seen as reflectingthe cultural ideals of her uncle, Philip Sidney, more closely than does the latter's own poetry. Kennedy's interpretations of the texts he discusses can at times appear forced, and the details of his argument do not always convince. His style can often be exasperatingly precious. Nevertheless, there is much in the work that is thought-provoking and interesting. University College Dublin Jennifer Petrie Home, Maison, Casa: The Politics ofLocation in Worksbyjean Rhys,Marguerite Duras, and Erminia Dell'Oro. By Erica L. Johnson. London: Associated University Presses. 2003. 264 pp. ?38. ISBN 0-8386-3961-5. Erica Johnson's book poses the question of what it means to write from the singular position ofthe rimpatriataox rapatriee: a (post)colonial woman writer,who has made the journey back to the imperial 'motherland' only to become permanently displaced from her country of birth. The three writers whose (semi)autobiographical fiction is examined in the study?Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, and Erminia Dell'Oro?share the experience of an 'exotic' childhood which comes to an end with a 'return' trip to Europe. For all of them, that journey marks both a loss and a starting point: the separation from their colonial homeland (which, in turn, is already being replaced by a postcolonial nation) and the beginning of their writing life (which is to be based in Europe and to address primarily Western audiences). All three are also colonial children: second- or third-generation members of immigrant families which had es? tablished roots in territories controlled by distant metropolitan nations. In the case of Rhys and Duras, the child's position is furthercomplicated by the low social and economic status of her family,which places its members in a sort of no man's land suspended between the privileged spaces occupied by the colonizers and the subaltern position of the colonized. It is this interstitial position which makes concepts of 'home' unstable and troubling for such women writers, especially since their gendered authorial voice is intimately linked to the autobiographical experience they draw upon and elaborate in their fic? tion. Seen from another angle, however, the unsettling interrogative raised by Rhys, Duras, and perhaps especially by Dell'Oro (given her family's privileged position in Eritrea and her explicit claim to identify herself as an 'African' or a 'world' writer rather than an ltalian one) is embodied by a question famously posed by Nadine MLR, 100.2, 2005 589 Gordimer: 'Could one, in fact, make the claim, "my country" if one could not also say "my people"?' (quoted on p. 208). Johnson's answer is to point out how the three authors whose work she has chosen to compare all responded to feelings of exclusion and displacement by drawing on childhood memories of absent lands. In their fiction, they tried to move 'beyond borders and boundaries and among people and places both...