When the reader becomes a child: Narratological issues in 'Daughters of the House' by Michèle Roberts

Abstract

Employing the theoretical framework derived from Gérard Genette’s narratology, with a special focus on the category of a focalized narrator, the article investigates narratological strategies employed in Michèle Roberts’s novel Daughters of the House in order to demonstrate how employing a particular form of narration influences the reader’s perception and understanding of the novel. In Daughters of the House, the narrative is focalized by adolescent characters, which makes the reader assume a childlike perspective and identify with the children characters. Tracing the motif of childhood also on the level of structure and plot, the article aims to prove that for the proper understanding of the narrative, the reader has to become a child themselves.