The negotiation inside : historical upheaval and domestic space

There appears to be a pattern of literary domestic spaces holding historical tension between past and present. In this project, I examine three novels of historical upheaval: Angle of Repose, O Pioneers!, and The Optimist's Daughter. I examine these domestic spaces through three main lenses of domestic space: spatiality, gender, and nostalgia. Ultimately, I find that domestic spaces exist in literature of upheaval to make historical tension visible, through characters, enclosure, and nests.