Disrupting the continuum

This article explores the constructions of time and space in Sarah Waters's fourth novel, The Night Watch. In addition to an examination of the material space in which her characters function, Waters also considers the psychological topography of her characters. Furthermore, the body is a space in which discursive structures focus their attentions, repressing gendered and sexual identities through manipulation of bodily space: thus a textual analysis of the body runs throughout the article. Drawing on the work of the feminist geographer, Doreen Massey, and of Judith Halberstam, who assert that space and time are masculine, patriarchal notions reified by the dichotomy in which they currently exist, this article argues that Waters offers possibilities for different conceptualizations of space and time.Keywords:: Sarah WatersspacetimeThe Night WatchqueerWorld War II Notes1. In Breaking the Mould? (2007), Mark Llewellyn discusses whether The Night Watch enhances our understanding of the 1940s because, he says, it is usual when writing about World War II ‘that boundaries become more fluid’ and non-normative behaviours and sexualities were ‘not as harshly persecuted as at other times’ (Llewellyn Citation2007, p. 208). This is, of course, true of the novel, but Llewellyn's statement does not reflect the extent to which Waters moves beyond simply representing that fluidity and instead offers a re-examination of the effects of non-normative behaviours on the social structures that seek to confine them.2. For a discussion on the gendered nature of prison space and the functioning of the panopticon, see Armitt and Gamble (Citation2006).3. The terms ‘abject’ and ‘abjection’ in this article refer to the concepts elucidated by Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror (1982). Although Kristeva gives multiple meanings to the term, here I refer to ‘abjection’ as the threat that meaning is breaking down, that is meaning in the sense that we are material beings functioning within social and cultural discourse. Thus the abject is that which ‘disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules’ (Kristeva Citation1982, p. 4). Abjection, Kristeva asserts, makes itself known in somatic manifestations such as vomiting, nausea, leakage, and excretion.4. I use the term unheimlich here to represent the Freudian idea of that which is familiar, yet at the same time unknown or unfamiliar, thus provoking a fearful or uncomfortable reaction from those confronted by it. Freud also uses unheimlich to mean the opposite of ‘homely’ – a defamiliarization of that place which we know and where we are safe (Freud Citation2003).Additional informationNotes on contributorsAdele JonesAdele Jones is currently an Honorary Research Associate in the Research Institute of Arts and Humanities at Swansea University, where she is also a College of Arts and Humanities. Her main areas of research are feminist discourses within contemporary women's writing, (re)reading Julia Kristeva, constructions of feminism within popular cultures, and the neo-Victorian. Adele has published on Michèle Roberts and is a founder member of the AHRC funded Postgraduate Contemporary Women's Writing Network

Aesthetics · Art · Criminology · Epistemology · Human sexuality · Literature · Normative · Panopticon · Prison · Psychoanalysis · Sensibility · Sociology · Contemporary Literature and Criticism · Gender Studies · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology

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