Place and Space in Christine Brooke-Rose’s Life, End of

Christine Brooke-Rose’s Life, End of is a literary narrative, based on the author’s autobiographical experience, of the suffering caused by a combination of a cardio-vascular condition with a neurological illness - polyneuritis. This chapter¹ focuses on one aspect of her trajectory: the superposition of a constriction of what Michel de Certeau calls ‘place’ and an expansion of what he calls ‘space.’ For de Certeau, ‘place’ is an institutionalized location, planned ‘from above,’ governed by the law of the ‘proper,’ and static. By contrast, ‘space’ is a location experienced ‘from within,’ subjectively created by the movements operating in it, and dynamic. Life, End of traces the shrinking of place available to the ill protagonist who can no longer drive a car, can no longer use the upper floor of her house, has difficulties in negotiating even areas needed for the most elementary activities, like the bathroom. The confinement of place, however, is countered by an expansion of space in three main ways: 1) books and television provide intertextual spaces that open up onto the world; 2) imagination (e.g. of the ‘figures’ she sees on the wall opposite her) expands the horizon beyond the boundaries of physical place; 3) the writing of the text we read, with its proliferation of language and abundance of puns, many of them multilingual. I situate the analysis within the debate between Elaine Scarry and David Morris concerning the relation between pain and language. While Scarry maintains that physical pain does not only resist language but actively destroys it, Morris emphasizes the meaning-generating quality of pain. Brooke-Rose’s text is more in tune with Morris’s position, opening up a linguistic space of meaning and play within the constriction imposed by suffering. Therein lies its phoenix-like quality.