The castle (symbol)
The castle Milderhurst plays a very important role in the novel. It is a background for most of the events of the novel, and is presented as a living creature with its sounds, breath, and a keeper of many secrets. Milderhurst is personified into a creature that can feel, speak, hear and even has memory, as it is indicated the place “is a repository for memories, a record and retainer of all that has happened within its boundaries”. It remembers yet the times when great balls have been held, dinners served, the great-grandmother of the three sisters had a great amount of servants, but now there is none. The castle becomes a symbol for memory, for all the events that had happened there, especially during last fifty years. When Percy burns the place she takes away all the memories.
The Book (symbol)
The book Mud Man has a symbolic meaning for Edie, the protagonist. In childhood, this book became determining in her choice of career, and she became a writer. Edie remembers the moment when she hold the book for the first time, “an object whose simple appearance belied its profound power” and she crossed “a tremendous threshold beyond which there would be no return”. The book Mud Man produced such an effect on her that she realized her fate and perceived that “real life was never going to be able to compete with fiction again”. Edie’s way with the words would probably make her a writer anyway, but the Mud Man is a symbol for her, it is the very first book which determined her future.
Gothis motifs (motif)
The novel The Distant Hour is a filled with the motifs of gothic literature. The plot is developed around a secret, and along with the investigation of the secret some minor secrets are added, but in the end all the secrets are revealed. Though for a gothic literature an atmosphere of terror and fear, usually of supernatural nature is characteristics, in The Distant Hours there is no place for supernatural prejudices, as it is the novel of the 20th century, but still ominous atmosphere prevails. And the most characteristic feature of a gothic novel is presented in the novel – it is the castle. Thus The Distant Hours contains many features of a gothic novel, which are transferred into the world of the 20th century.
