摘要：The semiotic approach to the concept of the Victorian house as a triadic relationship reveals the house as a space of becoming, functioning either as an iconic, symbolic or indexical sign in relation to its inhabitants. The current paper aims at reconstructing the semiotic process/semiosis through which a house can act as an image for the owner, or can be experienced as a prison, or interpreted as a symbol. Textual support will be provided by 19th-century English novels such as Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and Dombey and Son, novels written by the Brontë sisters and Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native.
