The Outcast of the Outskirts: Space and Alienation in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s and E.L. Doctorow’s “Wakefield”
Barney Warf and Santa Arias, scholars who specialise in the spatial turn and human geography, state that “space is a social construction relevant to the understanding of the different histories of human subjects and to the production of cultural phenomena” (1). They explain that “geography matters, not for the simplistic and overly used reason that everything happens in space, but because where things happen is critical to knowing how and why they happen” (1). Following this line of thought, it is worth considering why Nathaniel Hawthorne , an American writer associated with New England, sets “Wakefield” in London. Similarly, it should be noted that E. L. Doctorow sets his contemporary reinterpretation of Hawthorne’s tale back in the United States, outside the New York City, somewhere in the suburbs. At the time when Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales were published, London was the largest city in the world and the heart of the Industrial Revolution. According to Andrea Chiurato, apar...