House and homes: identity and interpretations of the human mind in Coraline and The Secret Garden

Abstract

This Master's thesis conducts an investigation into how the protagonist interacts and explores the architecture and gardens within their world. Through analysing of the protagonists from Coraline (2002) and Mary from The Secret Garden (1911), we are able to delve beneath the surface of them, as they try to explore their identity through depths of the houses that they inhabit. This thesis analyses the cause and effect of these spaces on the development of the protagonists, and how this effects their place in the world as they search for home of their own. The Poetics of Space (1958) written by Gaston Bacherlard is employed throughout the thesis to explore the aspects of the house and home in literature. There is great focus on house and home within the thesis and Bachelard is employed to enhance our understanding of the house and its place within our world. The house can be viewed as an entity at the centre of humanity’s world, and through this connections are made with writers whereby the house becomes a place that represents the dynamics of the human mind. Where the protagonists explore aspects of development and identity formation with the realms of the houses that contain them. This thesis will be presented through a psychoanalytical reading of the texts, and how this effects the behaviour of protagonists through the architecture that surrounds them. Through this type of reading, we will gain a better understanding of the protagonists state of mind as it is mirrored through the houses and the surroundings they inhabit. An psychoanalytic reading opens the doors and allows us to delve deep with the protagonist's minds to see what lurks beneath the levels of the house within their mind. This thesis analyses how the floors of the house effect the development and identity formation of the protagonists. What is it that hides within the realms of the house and deep within the unconcious that effects the protagonist's perspective of the world?