Neo-Victorianism as a Cemetery: Heterotopia and Heterochronia in Tracy Chevalier’s Falling Angels and Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry

Barbara Braid

doi:10.3390/h11010011

Abstract

This article examines the nature of neo-Victorianism as a heterotopia and heterochronia, that is, situatedness where the relationship between the past and the present is paradoxically concurrent and palimpsestic. This is done via a discussion of the cemetery as a governing metaphor to describe neo-Victorianism, as it is a highly heterotopic and heterochronic space. A hauntological approach is applied to interpret the attempt to bury the spectre of Victorianism in Michel de Certeau’s “scriptural tombs” as the main project of neo-Victorianism. Two neo-Victorian novels, Tracy Chevalier’s Falling Angels (2001) and Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry (2009), are selected as illustrations of this phenomenon, as they both focus on Highgate Cemetery in London as a key element of their narratives. Both these texts show that neo-Victorianism, conceptualised as a cemetery, is a heterotopic and heterochronic archive of the spectres that rarely stay buried in their narrative tombs.

Highlights

Michel Foucault’s article on heterotopia, titled “Of Other Spaces” (1986) and based on a lecture delivered in 1967, starts with a comparison of the Victorian and the contemporary eras
Angels (2001) and Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry (2009), are selected as illustrations of this phenomenon, as they both focus on Highgate Cemetery in London as a key element of their narratives
Both these texts show that neo-Victorianism, conceptualised as a cemetery, is a heterotopic and heterochronic archive of the spectres that rarely stay buried in their narrative tombs

Summary

Introduction

Michel Foucault’s article on heterotopia, titled “Of Other Spaces” (1986) and based on a lecture delivered in 1967, starts with a comparison of the Victorian and the contemporary eras. The more open definitions of neo-Victorianism as narratives with Heilmann and Llewellyn’s “trace elements” of engagement with Victoriana allow one to more clearly see crucial references to the Victorian past in this novel, for instance, to nineteenth-century historical places, people and literary texts. These include Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1859–1860), which shares with Niffenegger’s novel some typical sensation tropes, such as doubles and mistaken identities, family secrets revealed via letters and diaries, and mental illness. Martin pertinently regards Highgate as an important liminal space, representing the typical neo-Victorian oscillation between past and present (Martin 2015, p. 202), and this function is evident in both novels examined here, where the cemetery constitutes a heterotopic and heterochronic space

Cemetery as Heterotopia and Heterochronia

Heterotopia and Heterochronia in Falling Angels and Her Fearful Symmetry

Conclusions