Come citare
Abstract
According to ancient Celt mythology, water draws a line between this world and the “otherworld”, an alternative reality inhabited by deities, spirits, or the souls of the departed (Monaghan, 2004: 469). Thus, water – and flowing water in particular – becomes an interstitial space that acquires several binomial meanings: life and death, destruction and rebirth, safety, and catastrophe (Arikan, 2014: 213). To inhabit a river is to dwell on the edges, on the borders of two opposite realities that merge within this interstitial fluid space. To reside in this hybrid third space is to be part of both worlds, while at the same time being part of neither. This is precisely the condition experienced by Pearl, one of the three characters enclosed in the pages of Weathering, the first novel published by Cornish author Lucy Wood. After her passing, Pearl remains trapped between the worlds of life and death, and dwells in the flowing waters of a river in an unnamed British town. Indeed, it is on these margins that she first meets her granddaughter, Pepper; and it is by breaking free from these margins and flooding the house where she once lived, that Pearl finally meets again with her daughter Ada. By focusing on the symbolic significance of water and on the meanings associated with the concept of ‘house, through Lucy Wood’s novel and through hints to her short story Notes from the House Spirits, this paper intends to analyse how margins can become a place of reunion and self-(re)discovery: a third and interstitial space where two worlds physically and emotionally come together into one.