The concept HOUSE in Penelope Lively’s The House in Norham Gardens

27. The Outgoings and the Assets, and the cracked guttering that must be repaired and the leaking kitchen sink that would have to be replaced (The House. P 3);

28. The curtains were faded in stripes, and the William Morris wallpaper had brown marks on it, and damp patches. The silk cushions had holes in them (The House. P 21).

The main reason for the destruction is time. The longer the house remains exposed to nature, without human interference, the more active the dilapidating processes are. The explication of the cyclic time (the linear time in this case is associated with the presence of a thinking subject, a person) in the following examples is revealed in the substances: night, spring, summer, winter. Among the names of the cyclic time, the substance “spring” is associated with creation, flowering, and purity: (38) “The sunshine gradually filled the room and she knew that somehow the winter must have passed, without her realising it, and spring have come, or even summer” (The House. P. 115). The substantive night often occurs in a close context with the predicates and attributes that characterize winter phenomena and expresses negative connotations: (39) “The blizzard roared all that night” (The House. P. 68); (40) “I hate this winter. I felt as though time had stuck. Last night I dreamed it was summer”. (The House. P. 120).

As it has been already noted, the only force that can keep a house from destruction is a person. As for Claire, she needs money to support the house and put it in order. But there is a lack of money. The only way for Claire and her aunts is to have tenants:

29. You have to fill the gap somehow. The gap, in this instance, had been filled with Maureen. `A lodger!' Mrs. Hedges had said. `They never heard of a lodger!' (The House. P. 3);

30. I would not have thought the aunts would have been all that keen on the idea of a lodger, that's all. They do not mind (The House. P. 76).

One more action is repeated in the novel several times, and it is symbolic. This is the predicate “spring-clean”:

31. `Goodness!' Said cousin Margaret. `You could do with a proper spring-clean in here. You must let me give you a hand. I love throwing things away' (The House. P 72);

32. `Why all these changes, suddenly?' `I'm spring-cleaning' said Clare... `Those can be thrown away' said Clare. `Those old shoes. I'm just keeping the most important things' (The House. P 142).

The simple actions of getting rid of old unnecessary things can bring a house to life, stop the destruction, and initiate life and time.

Thus, in the novel, the motive of the house's destruction is connected not with the complete destruction, but with the transition from one state of being to another. Man is the only force capable of preventing destruction and regulating chaos.

The figurative component of the concept

The application of the metaphorical component of the concept in the novel opens the individual expression to understand abstraction. Based on the analysis of the novel, we can distinguish the following set of metaphorical models with the concept HOUSE as a target domain: 1) the house is a dinosaur / monster; 2) the house is a museum; 3) the house is life.

The first model is associated with the monster image, huge, insatiable, requiring more and more investments:

33. .then a house like this became a dinosaur, occupying too much air and ground and demanding to be fed by new sinks and drainpipes and a sea of electricity (The House. P. 5);

34. The house, now that she had shut the door, swallowed her, empty, apparently, and pitch dark. She felt, for an instant, quite panic-stricken. (The House. P 130).

A number of constantly recurring attributes in the novel, characterizing the house, makes it possible to imagine the monster-house vividly: silent, vast, empty, unnecessary, indestructible, greedy, awkward, demanding, big, dark, weird, huge, etc.

Fear of the monster disappears only with the realization that the house is full of family and friends, and that it is now Clare's own creation and transformation: (47) “Home, she toured the house, as though she had been away for a long time and needed to make sure that everything was all right and in its proper place. Drawing-room, library, study, dining-room, spare rooms. She tidied her own room.” (The House. P. 142).

Claire, in a jocular way, often compares the house to a museum full of old dresses, hats, china collection, old photographs, and albums:

35. They inspected the lavatory. Maureen giggled. Then she said, `Sorry, dear, but it is a bit of a museum-piece, isn't it?' (The House. P 11);

36. Like a museum where you're allowed to take everything out and mess with it (The House. P. 32);

37. It's stuffed, this place, like a museum (The House. P. 74).

Not only furniture objects, houseware, household items, and furnishings, but the very atmosphere of Clare's life reminds her of a museum. Many things from their house have already become museum exhibits. But one of them -- the shield, which becomes the center for events in the novel, is stored in the attic: (51) “She stood looking at her own face, not seeing it, thinking about other things. This house. That painted shield in the attic. The aunts. Then and now. Yesterday. Tomorrow” (The House. P. 52).

In her dreams, throughout the novel, Claire tries to return this tamburan to the owners -- the tribe to whom it once belonged. In the novel, this object personifies the deliverance from the past, from chaos, and order returns. But Claire honors and respects history, her ancestors. In the end, she understands that the tribe continues to live and has been changing all this time, their way of life has been undergoing change and their values have changed. The conclusion to which the girl arrives at is obvious. We need to get rid of unnecessary things. Life must be filled with new events, new things, relationships, and feelings. So, the house, its walls, its space, and filling (physical and spiritual) are associated with life:

38. `Step back into the past', said Clare. `In this house we preserve an older, finer way of life. Welcome to nineteen thirty-six' (The House. P. 32);

39. ...and the house had been absolutely still and silent around her. It was like a shell, quite without life. (The House. P. 51);

40. Either way, you will not need it. You will have furnished your own life, with other places and other things (The House. P. 153).

The metaphor “house-life” is emphasized by Lively throughout the novel. Clare constantly stresses the presence of frightening silence in the house, especially in the evenings. Life seems to stop, and Clare moves to another world, to another life.

Symbolical in this case is the image of the Christmas roses brought by Clare from the garden:

41. “Christmas roses! Susan, she has brought Christmas roses from the garden! An inspiration! Clever child. The roses, pale and unreal, like imaginary flowers, flopped over the edge of the vase and made of blurred reflections of themselves on the surface of the library table” (The House. P. 26).

The substantive roses is a symbol of the continuation of life, beauty, and joy.

At the beginning of the novel, the girl asks herself questions whether it is necessary to preserve and keep her ancestors' history unchanged, or whether the houses and people who live in them need to change, or maybe they just need to be destroyed to the ground in order to create something new. Clare presents houses as the witnesses of historical processes of all kinds -- economic, political, cultural, and educational:

42. It, and its kind, stood awkwardly on the fringes of a city renowned for old and beautiful buildings: they were old, and unbeautiful. Perhaps, Clare thought, you should knock own places like this when they are no longer useful. Reduce them to the brick and dust from which they came?

Or should you, just because they are old, not beautiful, but old, keep them? Houses like this have stood and watched the processes of change. People swept by the current, go with it: they grow, learn, forget, laugh and cry, replace their skin every seven years, lose teeth, form opinions, become bald, love, hate, argue and reflect. Bricks, roofs, windows and doors are immutable. Before them have passed carriages, and the carriages have given way to bicycles and the bicycles to the cars that line up now, bumper to shining bumper, along the pavement. In front of them have paraded ankle-length dresses and boaters and frock coats and plus-fours and duffle coats and miniskirts. Through their doors have passed heads, shingled, bobbed, permed and unkempt. Within their walls language has changed, and assumptions, and the furniture of people's minds. Possibly, just possibly, you must keep the shells inside which such things happen, in case you forget about the things themselves (The House. P. 5-6).

Claire is looking for the answers to these questions. She is tormented by the dreams, in which the motive of movement and changes in life is figuratively traced through the example of an African tribe. Clare meets new people. She goes beyond her shell-house. The house frightens her and burdens her with its emptiness at times.

In the end, it is time to part with everything that prevents movement and development. The museum cannot be a place to live; there are too many puzzles in it that can keep a person from moving. It happens with Clare, she is stuck between the ages, between the worlds, and Claire is not able to systematize all the information and knowledge she receives due to the lack of experience. Her aunt gives her excellent advice, which helps Clare start the time in the house and in the life to run: (57) “`My dear child,' said Aunt Susan, `you can't carry a museum round with you. Neither will you need to. What you need, you will find you already have. You are a listener'” (The House. P. 154).

Lakoff and Johnson note that understanding is necessarily relative to our cultural conceptual systems and it cannot be framed in any absolute or neutral conceptual system. Human conceptual systems are metaphorical in nature and involve an imaginative understanding of one kind of thing in terms of another... metaphorical understanding involves metaphorical entailment, which is an imaginative form of rationality [Lakoff, Johnson 1980: 139-140].

By analyzing the metaphorical models of the concept HOUSE in the novel, we uncover and clarify the core concept. The symbolic metaphors that are grounded in our physical experience provide an essential means of comprehending cultural concepts [Lakoff, Johnson 1980: 33].

Thus, the conducted analysis of the metaphorical component allowed us to draw the major lines along which this concept may be linked with other important concepts of English culture: TIME, HISTORY, MEMORY, HERITAGE, SELF-CONSCIEOUSNESS (MIND), and LIFE. The house, considered as the shell of a person, is simultaneously metaphorically conceptualized as an independent living being, which needs the presence of a person, his creative and constructive energy.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have demonstrated the procedure of a step-by-step analysis of the individual concept HOUSE in Lively's The House in Norham Gardens and compared the obtained results with the verbalization of the same concept in the English explanatory dictionaries. This approach allowed us to reveal the common notional or core component of the concept, which is perfectly natural, since it is the core component that forms the basis for an adequate understanding of the concept by all members of the culture. Nevertheless, in Lively's novel, the meaning of the core components has been extended -- the concept HOUSE acquires the basic features of the concept HOME. This is undoubtedly linked with the personification of the house in Lively's novel, which makes it not only a material, but truly spiritual object. The method of linguo-conceptual analysis also allowed us to reveal the variety of the images connected with the idea of the house. The metaphorical models “the house is a museum”, “the house is life”, and “the house is a dinosaur/monster” employed by the author add to the conceptualization of the house as a significant value of English culture. The linguistic analysis illustrates that the concept HOUSE is associated with English traditions, deeply rooted in previous epochs; the house bears the imprints of all cultural layers, therefore it is subject to careful storage. The house symbolizes security, permanence, shelter, stronghold, dwelling; family, family nest, clan, dynasty; fatherland; human body. It embodies a plea to preserve the purity of English culture, traditions, and art that will save and cleanse the human soul. This concept is based on the archaic understanding of the house as an internal, mastered space, which confronts the strange, external space of chaos. Thus, it is no coincidence that it is the concept HOUSE that is subjected to such a significant extension of meaning. All this allows us to conclude that house possesses a salient value component in English linguistic culture, which permits the author to extend and expand its core meaning by adding various shades of the images. It is its emotional and value charge that makes it a very “convenient” object for artistic writing.

The applied procedure of linguo-conceptual analysis reveals broad prospects for further study of the individual author's concept HOUSE in modern English literature in the comparative aspect.

Sources

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