Occasional Scribe

MUCH COMMENT has surrounded the ending of Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger, which leaves the central mystery unresolved, prompting endless speculation about “what really happened”. However, I would argue that the novel also exhibits another form of ambiguity, which I call genre ambiguity. When I say the book is genre ambiguous, I mean that it’s deliberately unclear about what kind of story it’s telling, and what the reader can expect from it.

Note that “genre” in this sense doesn’t refer to a marketing category (horror, lit fic, romance, crime etc.) – but rather to a class of similar stories, defined by traits like:-

• what they promise to reveal
• the degree to which they’re supposed to be realistic
• the mindset with which they should be approached
• the values by which they should be judged.

Whilst these genre categories may be somewhat nebulous, they surely exist, at least in the minds of readers. When we start reading a novel, we immediately begin picking up cues about what sort of story we’re dealing with, and form expectations about what it is likely to deliver. Within a few pages, we know a Jane Austen novel is not going to be about how a young woman solves a murder; and there’s surely no doubt that a ghost story and a kitchen sink drama expect to be approached with a different sensibility, and judged by different values.

Sarah Waters is well known for mixing literary and popular genre elements, but I think in The Little Stranger particularly she uses genre-ambiguity to play cat-and-mouse with the reader’s expectations. Indeed, the ambiguity is so well-poised that, even having finished the book, readers disagree about what type of novel it is, and what it’s trying to communicate.

When reading the book myself, I was aware of several shifts in genre. I began by approaching it as a mystery novel. There were inexplicable events at Hundreds Hall; supernatural forces were supposedly at work. A sceptical doctor was narrating the story. All seemed set for an investigation and eventual revelation of “what was really going on”.

Yet I had my doubts. I’d read Waters’ earlier novel “Affinity”, whose denouement made me think it unlikely she would provide either a rational explanation or a supernatural one for The Little Stranger. An open, ambiguous ending seemed like the only option.

As the book went on, the focus shifted more to the story of Faraday’s pursuit of Caroline. No mystery here – a story in the social-realist genre. Perhaps now this was the real story? Perhaps the mystery story was just a sub-plot; it would have a rational explanation tied to the facts of social relations.

But Faraday’s love for Caroline only got going late in the book, and in any case was never very credible – he almost had to talk himself into it. As I neared the end of the book I began to see that it was probably only a means to an end – that Faraday’s real object of desire was the house itself. This made more sense, as it formed a constant spine to the story, beginning with the recounting, early in the book, of how the infant Faraday had stolen an acorn from a plaster moulding, as though claiming a little piece of the house for himself.

This was more or less my final position on the nature of the story. The mystery was of secondary importance; the real story was a lowly doctor’s (possibly subconscious) quest to possess a country house.

Except, if that was the real story, why include the supernatural mystery at all?

On the other hand, if the mystery is the real story, why leave it unresolved?

These objections typify certain types of reader who respond negatively to Waters’ work. On the one hand, the Lit Fic Purists insist on reading her novels as literary fiction, and believe the popular genre elements are irrelevant gimmicks that undermine any claim to seriousness. On the other hand, the Pop Fic Purists object that her novels are lit fic dressed in superficial genre trappings – they don’t do the things expected of popular genre, and thus fail to satisfy. One frequent criticism made by the latter group is the failure to resolve the mystery; another is the failure to make the story really scary; yet another is the failure to commit fully to the supernatural. Of course, each of these is only really a failing if the intention was to write a book in the corresponding genre (mystery, horror and supernatural respectively).

A more positive response to The Little Stranger depends on being open-minded and flexible about genre. Those who can do this I call the Genre-benders. The genre-bender can adapt to shifts in story mode, and might even be prepared to view a book in several different genre modes simultaneously. The more inquisitive genre-bender might start to ponder what the author is trying to achieve by this genre ambiguity, this playing with genre expectations. And I might too, but that is for another day…