Domestic Spaces

Domestic Spaces: Drawing room (pg 20-21)

Character relevant: Cecilia

Key events relevant: -Incident in front of Triton fountain
-Emily Tallis and Briony Tallis not really caring about Cecilia

Barriers and Connections: The drawing room is a space where guests may be entertained. Such a public function makes the drawing room a public space. In this extract, Cecilia stands in the drawing room and thinks about her 'homebound boredom'. From 'set of steps led down to the lawn on whose border Robbie still worked, and which extended to the Triton dountain fifty yards away' we can see that she is staring out at Robbie. All this can be done in her room, which she had to herself and is a private space but she chooses to do this in the drawing room and so breaks the barrier and the social convetion that one should not aimlessly loiter in a public space. If her mother or another adult saw her like this she would have been told to go to her room since she had no purpose in the drawing room. In this case, Cecilia breaks the restrictions and chooses to loiter around in the drawing room.

Significance to the novel and themes: From the quote stated in the paragraph above we can see that Cecilia isn't genuinely angry with Robbie and she was doing it only to make Robbie feel guilty. This is significant to the novel as this shows us that Cecilia still loves Robbie but just doesn't show it.

'that her family was owed an uninterrupted stretech of her company... her mother, when she wasn't nurturing her migraines, seemed distant, even unfriendly.'

'thinking some intimate conversations might develop. However, Emily Tallis wanted to share only tiny frets about the household, or she lay back against the pillows'

'Briony was lost to her writing fantasies - what had seemed a passing fad was now an enveloping obsession.'

From these quotes we can see that Cecilia expected a warm welcome home and thought that her family missed her, but realized that they didn't really care about her. This foreshadows the time when she leaves home to be alone after Robbie's arrest.