Setting

Question 1

The Tallis house

Answer 1

The Tallis house in part 1 creates a closed narrative. It serves as the central setting for the story, representing the upper-class family’s wealth and social standing, and acting as a microcosm of the societal structures of the time, with its grandeur and isolation reflecting the complexities of the Tallis family dynamics and the events that unfold within its walls;it is essentially a character in itself, symbolizing the family’s decline and the consequences of their choices.
The Tallis house issymbolicof the family’s success. Significantly, the Tallis money has been made in‘patents on padlocks, bolts, latches and hasps’(p. 19), which may suggest to the reader the locked-down and exclusive nature of their lives.
During the war, the house is forced to take in evacuees, causing irreversible upheaval (p. 278). The house’s conversion to a leisure facility and hotel is symbolic of the changing social structure in England.

‘Morning sunlight, or any light, could not conceal the ugliness of the Tallis home’ ‘lead-paned baronial Gothic’ 2:19 - foreshadows the ugly events that will occur here.

Question 2

The Island Temple

Answer 2

‘Sometime in the late nineteenth century clumsy repairs were made with unpainted cement which had turned brown and gave the building a mottled, diseased appearance. Elsewhere the exposed laths, themselves rotting away, showed through like the ribs of a starving animal.’ ch7p72
The Island temple built in the lake has fallen into a state of disrepair having been neglected by the Tallis family & it’s faded granduer is symbolic of the family’s steady decline in status.

‘The temple was the orphan of a grand society lady, and now, with no one to care for it, no one to look up to, the child had grown old before its time, and let itself go.’ ch7,p73
Personification is used to describe the temple as“the orphan of a grand society lady… with no one to care for it, no one to look up to”amplifying the theme of the absent parent. It is also described as having“grown old before its time, and let itself go”which can be read as being symbolic of Lola, or Briony, after the climactic event in Part One. It is significant that the island temple will be the setting for the crime which is approaching.

Question 3

Robbie’s house

Answer 3

Robbie’s house, his mother’s bungalow, is full of confined and“narrow”spaces:“his small bedroom, his bathroom and the cubicle wedged between them he called his study”.
The obvious contrast with the sprawling spaces of the Tallis household illustrates the class divide between Robbie and the Tallises. ch8p78