The Interplay of the Domestic and the Uncanny in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

Abstract

This article examines the effects resulting from the interplay of the domestic and the uncanny in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a novel that boldly blends the conventions of the novel of manners and Gothic fiction. Analysing the selected key elements of the story, it is argued that while the uncanny is domesticated for a considerable part of the narrative, in the Gothic layer of the novel the mechanism of the uncanny is used to bring to light repressed voices. In the process, the long-established sources of inspiration for fantasy literature are rejected, and the nineteenth-century tradition of women’s writing, in both its realistic and Gothic threads, is used to reinvigorate the thematic and structural repertoire of the genre.