Leaving the Hothouse

Abstract

This concluding chapter presents a detailed examination of Spark’s most outlandish work of metafiction, The Hothouse by the East River, as a means of uniting the various, interrelated strands of literary experimentation, satire, subversion and social critique discussed over the course of the preceding chapters. Like The Driver’s Seat almost immediately before it, Hothouse stages the operation and gradual deconstruction of a masculine ideal of all-knowing omnipotence; its protagonist, Paul, spirals into impotent obsession when he finds himself unable to decipher the impenetrable mystery concocted by his ghostly wife, Elsa. Before this point, Paul has enjoyed exploiting the kind of manipulative authority exhibited by the likes of The Public Image’s Frederick Christopher, Not to Disturb’s Baron Klopstock, The Ballad of Peckham Rye’s Mr Druce, and Doctors of Philosophy’s Charlie Delfont. Akin to the female characters in those texts (Annabel Christopher, Baroness Klopstock, Merle Coverdale and Leonora Chase, most notably), Elsa has come to languish within a narrow, preconstructed role, before seizing her opportunity, as Leonora and Annabel do, to abandon it entirely. This chapter concludes with a discussion of Spark’s best-known novel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, before reflecting critically on the aims and achievements of the present study.