‘Home’ and the loss of a home in Hilda Bernstein’s The world that was ours

Feminist and postcolonial critics have, for some two decades, been questioning the concept of ‘home’ and the ideological uses to which its preferred meanings have been put in contexts of nation- or community-building. Their questions are prompted by the increasing mobility of populations and the concomitant multicultural composition of societies. Considering the fictional versions of ‘home’ in world literatures in English, Rosemary Marangoly George has argued that ‘home’ ‘immediately connotes the private sphere of patriarchal hierarchy, gendered self-identity, shelter, comfort, nurture and protection’ (1) and that to meet this ideological requirement ‘the notion of home is built on a pattern of select inclusions and exclusions.