Class and Temporal Disorder in The Little Stranger

Abstract

The Little Stranger (2009) depicts the story of the old gentry Ayres family in Hundreds Hall, an eighteenth-century magnificent estate that has lasted long past its former glory in the late 1940s Warwickshire. Faraday, the first-person narrator in the novel, a country physician summoned to treat a new maid in Hundreds Hall, became entwined with the obscure fate of the estate thirty years ago. Through deliberate contacts with the Ayres family, Faraday gradually befriends them. Yet Faraday's frequent visits and aggressive interference with the household chores triggers a sort of temporal disorder from the Ayres family. Since the house is intertwined and laden with secrets and tricks, as if there is a sinister presence, the Ayres family members lapse into their underlying fear and anxiety so that their lives oddly fall apart; at last, it leads to the inevitable collapse of the Hall. This paper examines different layers of temporal disorder which exerts profound influence on the protagonists in Hundreds Hall in The Little Stranger.