Caleb Williams and the spatial orders of the social self

Drawing on the interconnected domains of literature and political history underlying most critical interpretations of Caleb Williams, but prioritizing a cultural studies approach, this essay aims to map out the spatial geography of Godwin’s powerful and innovative tale of (im)mobility, (self)imprisonment, detection, pursuit and flight through the privileged focus of the discursive construction and discursive policing of the house, understood in its dual function as spatial location and affective trope. By spotlighting the evolving symbolic status of the house in this novel, I shall point to the way in which Godwin’s internalization of spatial categories within his psychology of the self is paralleled by a simultaneous erasure of the materiality of the house.