ABSTRACT
In the French literary tradition, and particularly that of the novel, windows have offered a privileged means of access to knowledge. Further technical developments and the industrialization of glass production in the nineteenth century were once again paralleled by a proliferation of windows in the house of realist fiction through which the novelist provided characters and readers with precious knowledge. But Nathalie Sarraute's dwellings are reshaped by an imagination that largely excludes windows from their architectural topography. Traces of the more negative connotations of windows and their luminous transparency are scattered throughout Sarraute's work. Sarraute's Parisian flats, whose doors and walls disintegrate so easily under pressure, are home to no one, and are in that sense the reverse of Bachelard's oneiric houses: dystopian rather than idealized images of dwelling space. Lucidity in Sarraute's world offers commonplaces that blind its listeners, and does not provide the insight of which novels might be made.
