Use of Attics in Literature Essay
The Phenomenology of Space Attic Memories and Secrets
Since Gilbert and Gubar s The Madwoman in the Attic, critics have assumed that attics house
madwomen. But they use that concept as a metaphor for their thesis, that women writers were
isolated and treated with approbation. In most literature, attics are dark, dusty, seldom visited
storage areas, like that of the Tulliver house in The Mill on the Floss a great attic under the old
high pitched roof, with worm eaten floors, worm eaten shelves, and dark rafters festooned with
cobwebs a place thought to be weird and ghostly. Attics do not house humans (not even mad ones)
they warehouse artifacts that carry personal and familial history often a history that has been ...
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Attics make us think of history, interesting artifacts, old toys, books, clothes, linens, jewelry, and
other treasures but, most of all, of deep, dark, and significant family secrets. It was in the attic of
the house that I grew up in that, as a snooping teenager, I found the packet of letters from my
mother to her first husband. Her FIRST husband. I had never dreamed that she had had but one
husband my father. And had I not ferreted out those letters, I probably still would not know. Then,
that night, my father took me aside I m sure at my mother s urging and confessed that he too had
been married and divorced before he met my mother. Whether particular attics hide such secrets
hardly matters. What matters is that psychologically we believe that they do. In fact, attics
frequently house just the sort of information I unearthed facts that one is too attached to to throw
away, but which one very much wants to remain secret.
Before a discussion of attics can begin, it is essential to define what is meant by attic and to
distinguish attics from upper rooms. Not all third floor spaces are attics, because many larger
houses have and had third floor rooms that were normal living spaces, sometimeshaving bedrooms
and sometimes having a huge, finished room used for balls and other parties. Such rooms were
furnished, and comfortably habitable. Such is the case with a room that is often cited as an attic
that incarcerates a madwoman, the upper room in The
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