Family Crises in Confession, Fragility and the Indelible Subject in Great House
Family Crises in Confession, Fragility and the Indelible Subject in Great House

Summary/Abstract: This paper discusses the indelible role of the subject in confessional fiction, by looking at Nicole Krauss’s novel Great House (2010). I argue that there is an inter-subjective immersion in Great House, depicted through fictional confessions in front of another, that builds a different narrative architecture, which differs from the stream of consciousness novel and the self-conscious novel. Moreover, I look at the rehabilitation of the subject, not in isolation, but in the context of interaction and indebtedness in-between subjects, a process which portrays a novel of exposure and fragility, where the subject is always at risk in the encompassed family space it inhabits. In the end, I show how the asymmetrical relationships from a shared life and the string of confessions attest a re-humanizing of the subject in Great House, while also indicating a reconfiguration of the view of the reader, as the novel demands from her new forms of attention and affective reading, rather than interpretation.

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