Functions of Space and Place: On Being 'Elsewhere' in Margaret Oliphant's Kirsteen

Abstract:There is a tremendous amount of room within nineteenth-century Scottish literature to discover how women occupied space and what the implications of space and place are in terms of how women defined and identified with place. This paper navigates space and place in Margaret Oliphant's Kirsteen. My textual exploration begins by defining space, place, outsideness, and insideness with the intention of understanding how we perceive the world and our place within it. Kirsteen enters and moves fluidly in different spaces; she thus successfully adapts when situations change or when elements of space contain dangerous or threatening people or circumstances. Consequently, she is able to move back and forth through the space that links her old life to her new life with ease. First, I analyse the role played by space in Kirsteen's personal journey towards independence by first considering how women function as a form of space themselves. Second, I examine how Kirsteen lives within the space of 'elsewhere' because she chooses to exclude herself from orthodox social systems of economy and power. I conclude by theorising that 'elsewhere' is an unfixed space that Kirsteen is able to harness and from which she can construct place. In harnessing 'elsewhere', Kirsteen's journey from metaphysical outsideness at home in Scotland becomes a fixed reality of insideness in London. Her life experience can be viewed as a journey through different intervals in space that culminate in a lived experience that finally includes insideness. This insideness allows her to forge a new identity as a woman.