Adam: I felt like in the film, the world of the Paperhouse is more of an internal space. It felt more like a psychological space, than a tangible space, perhaps. Ren: Is the horror increased by imagining them hopping along, or does it make them less horrifying? Anomalous Art: Marianne (unintentionally at first). The more she learns about her drawn world, the more easily she learns to manipulate it.

Escape Into Night (TV Mini Series 1972– ) - IMDb Escape Into Night (TV Mini Series 1972– ) - IMDb

And it’s the distinctly unsaid that makes the story so potent: if the features of the nightmare world are dependent entirely on the drawings in Marianne’s sketchbook, then what exists beyond that? When Mark and Marianne escape the house, and set up a John Wyndham-esque “cosy apocalypse” homestead, barricaded into a lighthouse of her creation, what lies across the ocean that they wistfully gaze out upon? It’s a book filled with questions, and lesser authors might have unwisely attempted to provide logical, join-the-dots answers. In comparison to what is shown today this was truly terrifying, and very imaginative. I've never read the book though. Adam: I think it becomes a bit more about abandonment anxiety. More about her frustrations at his absence than any violence? I don’t know. It does feel like an odd choice, and then it does then put the rehabilitation of the father, and the restoration of the father-daughter relationship, to the forefront of the narrative. I must say, the TV show makes this distinctly less “weird” by confirming that Marianne fell off a horse and broke her leg; if she’s hallucinating, it’s because of the boredom of bed (like in the classic Victorian metaphor-for-the-lives-of-women short story the Yellow Wallpaper). If the book features a mystery malady instead, that’s a lot more interesting; and there’s also a political dimension to that, especially in the way that women with mystery maladies like MS/chronic fatigue/fibro are undermined as “hysterics with a mental health problem” rather than people experiencing a genuine health crisis; it spirals out into all sorts of ideas culture has about both good health and also women. Very much like Yellow Wallpaper, actually.Maybe Marianne is travelling to another planet, or to the underworld where the dead are, or to purgatory, or a parallel excistence? The narrative doesn’t rule it out. Maybe the actual dreamer is elsewhere? Again, the narrative doesn’t rule it out.

Marianne Dreams – The Haunted Generation Marianne Dreams – The Haunted Generation

I’ll draw a picture of Mark feeling quite well again. Only I suppose then I’ll have to dream about him again, and I don’t want to. I don’t see why I should have to dream about him - why can’t he get well without my having to see him? Perhaps I could just draw him looking quite well, but not in that house, which is where I always seem to get to. And then he probably wouldn’t believe I’d done anything about it, he’d think it had all just happened, and what I’d done didn’t make any difference at all!’ Adam: I like how they’re established as obviously dangerous, but we don’t really see how they would kill anyone. But it would probably be horrible. There’s a bit later on where they mangle the bicycle, and we don’t know how they mangle the bicycle — Ali: And the book had more of a sense of being kind of an adventure. There’s the threat and they’re trapped in the house with the stones around watching them, but there’s also solving the problem of what to draw that’s going to enable them to escape. They come up with the idea of bicycles, and they make their escape —Marianne peered out, more cautiously than ever. The people stood in strangely stiff, unyielding positions. She looked fixedly at one to see him shift his position, give some indication that he was alive. But he stayed absolutely still. So did the others. Storr continued writing novels into her eighties. [3] She died at her London flat in January 2001. [1] Work [ edit ] Ali: I think actually that some of the strongest elements of the film are the parts that are about the fantasy, the visual elements of these dream-like things that have been shoved together and are the wrong shapes.