The Archaeology of the Ideology of Houses: An Aspect of Modern English Society and Community in Suburban Novels

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This ressearch examined the ideological ramifications of the images of houses as they are represented in so-called 'suburban novels'. Suburban novels were immensely popular at the turn of the twentieth century, especially in the 1900s and 1910s, but they have been entirely eclipsed by Modernist Literature in the current history of English Literature. Houses described in these novels reflect the ideology of the lower middle-class people who began to enjoy their lives in the suburban residential areas: their lives were individualised and had far less civic pride or communal commitments than those in the Victorian period. Far from the unsanitary, noisy, and crowded lives at the centre of the city, they created an artificial utopia of petite bourgeois. Their life style suggests the way in which literary studies provide useful materials for studies in social history, sociology and urban planning.