Journey To Self-realization-A Spatial Interpretation Of Anita Brookner’s Hotel Du Lac

Anita Brookner was one of the most active women writers in the contemporary British world. Although Anita Brookner was a late-blooming novelist, she had published twenty-five novels since 1981. Her fourth novel Hotel du Lac (1984) won the prestigious Booker Prize.Until now, the study to Hotel du Lac mainly focuses on the perspectives of realism, modernism, postmodernism, phenomenology, psychology and Jewishness, etc. No related study from the perspective of spatial interpretation has yet been made. Taking the exile journey of the romance novelist Edith Hope as an example, the present thesis aims at analyzing the heroine Edith’s self-realization journey in the physical, social and mental spaces in Hotel du Lac by using Lefebvre’s spatial triad dialectics.By examining the landscapes and spaces in Hotel du Lac, it is easy to discover that the metaphorically physical spaces and the protagonist’s inner world are interrelated to and interacted on each other. Edith grows up in the cross-cultural family, suffering in the sense of alienation from the social space both physically and mentally. The heroine’s destiny has been extensively influenced by the social and cultural factors implied in the space. The choices of being an intellectual woman, jilting her fiance and rejecting the two proposals are the vivid manifestation of Edith’s unswerving pursuit for spiritual independence. Edith refuses to succumb to the mainstream social ideology and pursues mental independence at the expense of physical security. Finally, Edith accomplishes self-realization by constructing selfhood in literary creation. Therefore, a conclusion can be drawn that spiritual independence is of greater significance for women than merely obtaining economic dependence and stable social status. Only with their independent soul can intellectual women truly achieve self-realization.