I'm interested in the mother in literature. What I'm particularly interested in is where the house is given the attributes of the mother in her absence. I know Angela Carter uses this, so has Bruce Chatham (in On The Black Hill) to a certain extent,but has anyone else got any ideas... or knows of any essays on the subject I'd be really grateful.

Nuala O'Faolain has written about this in her autobiography, Are You Somebody? and White Oleander springs to mind as well...also Edna O'Brien's Girl With Green Eyes centres on the missing mother very much. And I've just finished reading the wonderfully bizarre Running With Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs, whose mother features hugely in the book, partly in absence and partly in the grip of extreme mental illness.