‘The street is not neutral ground’: Pat Barker’s Blow Your House Down and the exploration of public spaces as battlegrounds shaped by male violence and state control.

Abstract

Pat Barker’s 1984 novel Blow Your House Down is a haunting exploration of the lives of several women working as prostitutes in a northern industrial city, set against the backdrop of a ripper-like serial killer who preys upon them. In the novel, public spaces become sites where class and gender hierarchies are enforced through both social judgment and physical threat. As women occupy public space most visibly, as factory or sex workers, they are therefore the most exposed to violence, stigma, and state regulation. This article will focus on Barker’s portrayal of the streets as places of patriarchal control hidden under the guise of order, and how the women in this novel fight to regain their space within a society that seeks to banish and manipulate them.