Hotel du Lac - Angry Immigrant’s Daughter

Hotel by a lake. Image by David Martyn Hunt
Anita Brookner's Booker Prize winning novel, Hotel du Lac, reveals how a female writer's lack of self stems from childhood experiences and stereotyping. In Anita Brookner’s novel, Hotel du Lac (1993), Edith Hope, a romantic novelist, resides in a Swiss hotel in preparation for her return to society. Edith seems to choose to accept her role as a diminished woman despite her achievements, an acceptance that stems from her home life as a child.


Edith an Angry Immigrant’s Daughter


Edith, the daughter of immigrants and even more so as a woman, has become an unconscious victim of marginalisation. She grew up as a minor within a minority – a circle enclosed within a circle. But even though displaced sociologically, Edith should have benefited from the contiguity of a female, presumably her mother.


For Giuliana Giobbi, mentioned in “Blood ties: a case-Study of Mother Daughter relationships in Anita Brookner," by Sara Maitland and Rosetta Lox (1997), states that, “a woman's sense of identity, as well as her view of her place in society, is likely to be largely shaped in response to her relationship with the woman who has served as her earliest model” (1). Apparently, Edith’s politically displaced mother, Rosa, raised in an era which offered few opportunities for women, “bequeathed [Edith] her own cloud of unknowing” (4). Rosa, unable to accept her own “wasted years” (84) and misfortunes, spent her time “rag[ing] . . . unsuccessfully against her fate [and] mocking her pale, silent daughter” (48).

Edith’s Loveless Childhood


Consequently, Edith “never knew [love]” (48); her childhood was characterised by deprivation, and any attempts to reach out and test her own limits were impeded by her mother’s “blaze[s] of retrospective fury” (49). These frequent periods of unpredictable terror compelled Edith to seek sanctuary deep inside her. Segregated socially, and a victim of an unstable household, Edith had relatively few resources that might nurture a sense of identity. Therefore, she began to model the timid quietness of her father and “fear … the presence of strong personalities” (33).

Lack of emotional support depleted Edith’s self-worth to the degree that as an adult she believes “she no longer matter[s] to herself” (29). Her mother, displaced and rendered purposeless, perpetuated her own impotence in her daughter. Edith, “doomed to [only] walk the earth” [22] and accomplish little else, fails to progress beyond the boundaries Rosa bestowed upon her.

Edith’s unstable home life where “annoyance and frustration blazed from . . . every pore” (49) assured her as Yi-Fu Tuan in his book, Space and Place –The Perspective of Experience,1977, explains that “to be open and free is to be exposed and vulnerable” (54). Thus, unaccustomed to enunciation, Edith uses writing, a space-bound, static, permanent medium as a means for expression and identity formation.

Edith Hope Adopts Virginia Woolf’s Persona


In addition, denied of a satisfactory role model, Edith embraces Virginia Woolf as an exemplar. Similar in appearance, Edith heightens the semblance by wearing matching attire and procuring the initials V W for her pseudonym. Edith’s illusory persona allows her to communicate and yet remain spatially and temporally removed. Her safe position of detachment grants her uncontested space in which to compose her thoughts and assert herself from a distance. However, while she has discovered a medium and a persona with which to extend her territory, the space she acquires is limited to the printed words of a book and the benevolence of the reader. Only her nom de plume Victoria White has gained space in society; Edith Hope has not.



 

Sources:

Brookner, Anita. Hotel du Lac. Harmondsworth, London: Penguin, 1993.

Maitland, Sara and Lox, Rosetta. “Blood ties: a case-Study of Mother Daughter relationships in Anita Brookner," 1997.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place -The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: Uni of Minnesota, 1977.






Copyright Lesley Lanir. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication.
First published on Suite101, Mar 2, 2011, by Lesley Lanir.

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