Remembering Atonement in Atonement

Abstract

This article looks at the way in which the archetypal Victorian house with its multiple repressed histories informs the novel Atonement. Questions of guilt, of not waking up in time from the dream of the nineteenth-century and failing to atone for the sins of the war and of class struggle are central to McEwan’s work of fiction. The view from the upper stories of the Victorian house affords a view of dangers past and of those to come but the Anglo-Saxon and protestant distaste for personal atonement means that action is rarely taken. Practices of scapegoating and averting the gaze are two strategies of avoidance that replace true atonement in the novel and prevent the important stage of regeneration. The article also looks at the post-war desire for renewal as it was expressed both in society (the festival of Britain of 1951 for example) and also in late twentieth century British literature. The case for McEwan’s own need for atonement as a writer is also briefly made.