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Por Soraya García-Sánchez
Número
58
Michèle
Roberts’s last novel, Paper Houses: a Memoir
of the ‘70s and Beyond is a valuable contribution
to women’s studies, history and writing.
After having studied in Oxford, Roberts moves
to London to experience a time filled with political
demonstrations and comforting herself by becoming
part of various women’s groups. Yet she
also enjoys and loves the company of men. Even
though Roberts does not live in the most desirable
conditions, she is determined to become a writer
despite her lack of time, her parents’
misunderstanding and many other impediments.
The plot of
this fictional memoir is filled with accounts
of experiences related to family, friends, religion,
food, sex, love, feminism, parties, demonstrations,
being in motion, homes, fashion and the passion
for becoming a writer. The form of the novel
presents an autobiographical piece of writing,
and also an historical overview of the movement
for women’s liberation and emancipation
in England during the 1970s. From communal houses
to private spaces, the homeless protagonist has
to fight back, make her own decisions in order
to move on and become the subject of her dreams.
By means of writing (and the revision of diaries
and notebooks from her past), Roberts portrays
the construction of her persona with continuous
arguments between inside and outside, unconsciousness
and consciousness: “I had written all my
life … In any case, writing felt secret,
still. A secret activity. A safe house of art
in which my illegal emotions might hide …
Writing was my soul-saver” (19, 20, 55).
The novel, written
in the first person narrator, has an introduction
and is divided into twelve sections which are
titled according to specific places. The organization
of the content is linear with conscious reflections
from the narrator’s present perspective
about the historical time that she lived. Areas
in London where Roberts spent most of her youth
are Regent’s Park, Holloway, Clapham Junction,
Camberwell, Peckham Rye, Holland Park, Notting
Hill Gate, Bayswater, Wivenhoe and Tufnell Park.
Bangkok and Cambridge, Massachusetts comprise
chapters four and ten respectively. Roberts also
describes her journeys to France, Italy and other
cities in Europe and England but they form only
a small part of the content. Black and white
pictures of Roberts and some friends along with
a descriptive note introduce every chapter. These
spaces, experiences, meetings and jobs are constituents
of the protagonist’s identity and her transformation
from a religious woman to a feminist and conscious
writer who expresses her reservations about Catholicism.
Historical facts
and Robert’s personal viewpoints are intertwined
in this literary text. Traditional contradictions
are primary sources in Roberts’s production
but in this novel, as in her previous fictional
texts, they complement each other. Some of the
examples are Male-Female, Catholic-Protestant,
Mother-Father, Active-Passive, Form-Content,
History-Fiction, Outside-Inside, Community-Individuality,
Conscious-Unconscious, and Form-Content. When
Roberts narrates her relationship with Jim, her
second husband, she acknowledges oppositions
and the need to convey it into words, into language:
“First of all the words were in the streets
and then they moved into the house, into my diary”
(116). I use the term protagonist because even
though Roberts is reflecting upon her life 20
or 30 years ago, she is using story-telling,
fiction, autobiography and history as techniques
simultaneously in her fictional writing. Her
past is reflective and predominant in her conscious
writing: “I take my past with me. History
matters” (337).
Dedicated to
all the young ones, Roberts explores
her dynamic and revolutionary past from her present
by placing herself in different positions, not
only spatially but professionally. She worked
as a librarian, an editor, a teacher. Time and
space construct her identity as she is presented
as an explorer, as a flâneur: “Worry
dissolved when I roamed London and forgot myself
in exploring it” (74). This physical travelling
around corresponds with the protagonist’s
discovery of her persona. That is to say, Roberts
puts into practice Charles Baudelaire’s
theory and she herself participates, understands
and portrays the facts that happened to London
and to herself. The outer world is observed and
developed at the same time that the inner world
of the writer-protagonist is being explored.
The flâneur has a double purpose
of observing and participating: “I continued
my solitary walks around London” (56).
This attitude corresponds with her technique
at the time of writing this novel where oppositions
and dualities merge. Roberts not only observes
but, as the young protagonist, is being observed
by her mature and more conscious voice: “When
I write, the outside comes inside, and then the
inside goes back outside again” (336).
Paper Houses:
a Memoir of the ‘70s and Beyond uses
a feminist approach to convey a profound knowledge
about women’s communities, particularly,
from a conscious and reflective “I”
voice. There is a sense of persistence and continuity
at the time of writing and we sense the atmosphere
during the creation of novels such as The
Wild Girl, The Visitation, Daughters of the House
or Impossible Saints, to name a few. Roberts
even acknowledges the invention of experimental
techniques that she originally used in Flesh
and Blood and they form now part of her writing
style (335). Paper Houses enforces the union
of oppositions such as that between the sexes.
Yet among all her novels, this one is about life,
decisions and the construction of identity, the
construction of her own paper house,
of her own writing. As Hélène Cixous,
Michèle Roberts defends the idea of writing
one self in the text. Body and form dance together
in her vision of writing. Paper Houses is
about living and building your results, your
luck. It is a must especially for students and
scholars interested in women’s writing,
creative and experimental writing, feminism,
sexuality, Catholicism, history and fiction.
Soraya
García-Sánchez
The University of Queensland,
Australia. |