ABSTRACT

This article offers a new reading of Eliza Meteyard’s fictional writing within the emerging discourse on architecture and design in nineteenth-century Britain. It considers how the format of the novel, Mainstone’s Housekeeper (1860), articulates and enforces Meteyard’s construction of the textual space as both a narrative and architectural endeavour. I argue that the conceptual idea of literary architecture provides a metaphorical lens through which to understand the analogy between building and writing, architecture and text. I also maintain that Meteyard’s construction of her fictional houses in Mainstone’s Housekeeper supports the theories that posit a link between interrelated notions of theatricality and interiority. My article first explores how Meteyard’s literary representations of decorative arts and architectural design became a deciding component in the development of her writing career. It, then, considers how Meteyard employs the fictional form of Mainstone’s Housekeeper to describe Miss Eliot’s endeavours to reform Mr. Radnor’s domestic affairs through her disguised identity. While Mr. Radnor’s poor management of his household creates the senses of male captivity and bleak emptiness, Miss Eliot’s redecorating project, nonetheless, reinforces her performance as an architect-designer, an embodiment of female authority in the domestic sphere.

摘要

本文提供了对 19 世纪英国新兴建筑和设计话语中 Eliza Meteyard 虚构作品的全新解读。它考虑了小说的格式，Mainstone 的管家(1860)，如何将 Meteyard 的文本空间构建作为一种叙事和建筑努力来表达和执行。我认为文学建筑的概念提供了一个隐喻的视角，通过它可以理解建筑与写作、建筑与文本之间的类比。我还认为 Meteyard 在Mainstone 的管家中建造了她的虚构房屋支持在相互关联的戏剧性和内在性概念之间建立联系的理论。我的文章首先探讨了 Meteyard 对装饰艺术和建筑设计的文学表现如何成为她写作生涯发展的决定性组成部分。然后，它考虑了 Meteyard 如何使用Mainstone 管家的虚构形式来描述艾略特小姐通过她伪装的身份改革拉德诺先生的国内事务的努力。虽然 Radnor 先生对家庭的管理不善造成了男性被囚禁和荒凉空虚的感觉，但 Eliot 小姐的重新装修项目加强了她作为建筑师设计师的表现，是女性权威在家庭领域的体现。