The Jolly Corner | World View, World Void: Brydon at His Window in The Jolly Corner
In the following essay, Johnson
explores the function of windows in ‘‘The Jolly
Corner.’’
Opening a window may not seem an important event in life; after all, Brydon hired Mrs. Muldoon ‘‘for a daily hour to open windows and dust and sweep.’’ Yet when Brydon opens the window after retreating from his alter ego, the effect is nearly magical, ‘‘a sharp rupture of his spell.’’ By looking closely at how windows function literally and figuratively in the story, one can understand both Brydon’s limitation as a hero and James’s subtle criticism of the protagonist’s simplistically oppositional thinking. With images of architecture and specifically of windows,...
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