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The Limits of Vision
Finally available again in the United States, The Limits of Vision is Robert Irwin's irrepressibly entertaining and imaginative novel about a young housewife named Marcia and the war she wages against dirt. Set over the course of a single day as Marcia goes about her quotidian activities--having the girls over for coffee, tidying the house, making dinner--it becomes increasingly clear that her sanity is unraveling at an alarming rate. Irwin is at his creative best here, as he describes Marcia's conversations with Mucor, the "mouthpiece for the Dirt, the Empire of Decay and Ruin, the Principle of Evil," as well as such scientists and artists of the past as William Blake, Charles Dickens, Leonardo da Vinci, and Charles Darwin.
- GenresFictionLiterary Fiction
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
4 people are currently reading
164 people want to read
About the author
Robert Irwin
105 books137 followersRobert Graham Irwin was a British historian, novelist, and writer on Arabic literature.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 29, 2024
The Limits of Vision is an existential tale of a housewife obsessed with cleanliness. And the heroine is unbelievably imaginative…
And her fancies tend to be quite intellectual: she takes a bath with Leonardo da Vinci, William Blake writes poems for her, she poses to be painted by Pieter de Hooch and she digs the ancient midden in the Gobi Desert with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
But she has a powerful antagonist Mucor – a sinister microbial genus of mould – who is a quintessence of all the filth of our lives, whom she talks to and fights against.
However hard we attempt to achieve order and cleanliness, entropy eventually takes over.
Philip says that I am a bit inclined to let my fancies take a hold of me. It must be true. I do love him when he says things like that.
And her fancies tend to be quite intellectual: she takes a bath with Leonardo da Vinci, William Blake writes poems for her, she poses to be painted by Pieter de Hooch and she digs the ancient midden in the Gobi Desert with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
…the numbers of men on earth in each generation increase geometrically, yet the rate of man’s increase can never equal the rate of increase of his rubbish. The earth is made of his rubble, the seas are filled with his effluent. Man toils and crawls over his own garbage like an insect…
But she has a powerful antagonist Mucor – a sinister microbial genus of mould – who is a quintessence of all the filth of our lives, whom she talks to and fights against.
It’s always the same problem, I find. I clean the house and I get dirty. The bath cleans me and it gets dirty. Then I clean the bath again. Who shall clean the cleanser?
However hard we attempt to achieve order and cleanliness, entropy eventually takes over.
May 30, 2011
The narrator of this short novel is very intellectual and very well-read. I can't help relating to that (although I'm not familiar with some of the topics discussed, particularly semiotics). Her head is full of interesting ideas, drawing from anthropology, art history, evolutionary theory, the memoirs of explorers and generals, and much much more; and integrating them into her own unique perspective. She has a great ability with words, a rich vocabulary, and an overflowing imagination; in particular, she has an ability to find rich visual patterns and put them into words.
The tragedy, unfortunately, is that these abilities serve an existence dominated by enormous anxiety. Dirt and decay are an overwhelming obsession -- one that is by no means unknown in psychiatric annals, but here put into very personal terms. As always, the emotions (fear and disgust) are universal, their interpretation is up to each person, shaped by cultural background and life experiences.
It is an essentially gendered anxiety. She has placed herself in a role she wholeheartedly believes in, that of HOUSEWIFE, and firmly identifies it as female. She has ideas of heroes, and I couldn't help noticing that every one of them is male. She does conceive of herself as fighting a battle; perhaps that's why she insists, to her coffee circle companions, that she wants to talk about housework. She cannot be male, she cannot participate in any activity she's read about, she wants to carve out a unique type of heroism. Or am I totally off track?
But when she experiences sexual attraction, it is not Levi-Strauss or Foucault that come to mind, but From Here to Eternity! Inevitably, however, sex brings her back to ideas of dirt and fungus, and back to detailed (though not expert) discussions of fungal reproduction. (The bathtub scene with Leonardo of Vinci is a tour-de-force, in my opinion.)
It is the triumph of both the author and his main character to turn everyday horrors into a rich field of imagination.
It's worth noting that Irwin was himself a househusband, staying home, writing, and doing housework while his wife was a member of Parliament.
The tragedy, unfortunately, is that these abilities serve an existence dominated by enormous anxiety. Dirt and decay are an overwhelming obsession -- one that is by no means unknown in psychiatric annals, but here put into very personal terms. As always, the emotions (fear and disgust) are universal, their interpretation is up to each person, shaped by cultural background and life experiences.
It is an essentially gendered anxiety. She has placed herself in a role she wholeheartedly believes in, that of HOUSEWIFE, and firmly identifies it as female. She has ideas of heroes, and I couldn't help noticing that every one of them is male. She does conceive of herself as fighting a battle; perhaps that's why she insists, to her coffee circle companions, that she wants to talk about housework. She cannot be male, she cannot participate in any activity she's read about, she wants to carve out a unique type of heroism. Or am I totally off track?
But when she experiences sexual attraction, it is not Levi-Strauss or Foucault that come to mind, but From Here to Eternity! Inevitably, however, sex brings her back to ideas of dirt and fungus, and back to detailed (though not expert) discussions of fungal reproduction. (The bathtub scene with Leonardo of Vinci is a tour-de-force, in my opinion.)
It is the triumph of both the author and his main character to turn everyday horrors into a rich field of imagination.
It's worth noting that Irwin was himself a househusband, staying home, writing, and doing housework while his wife was a member of Parliament.
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December 9, 2019wild ass little book imagines what wittgenstein's mistress might have been if confined to the realm of domestic chores
April 26, 2025
While the book didn’t fully resonate with me, I appreciated the sharpness of its satire in certain moments. It had thoughtful and funny insights, even if the overall experience felt a bit uneven
February 28, 2008
This book is told from the point of view of Marcia, a British housewife whose boredom with her daily household routines causes her to develop a crazed fantasy life where she hobnobs with great intellectual figures of the past (Blake, da Vinci, Darwin, Dickens, etc.) as she summons all of her will to try and defeat the evil Mucor (acc. to Wikipedia this is the name of a common species of household mold or mould as the Britishers would have it.) who is working to slowly bring all of the world down into dirt and decay. Everyday chores, like doing the dishes, take on an incredible drama as she fights to keep Mucor at Bay. She seems to be sort of paralyzed by a microscopic vision of the world-- every hair and fleck of dust symbolizes for her a whole world of dirt and mites and filth that is pulsing with an urge to reproduce and dominate. Some of the passages where she describes these things are pretty interesting.
But in general, the idea is, I suppose, that this housewife is having delusions of grandeur, and that's where all of the "geniuses" come in. Those passages were generally over my head, making references to literature and philosophy that I didn't get and just generally seemed like they were straining with all of their might to be incredibly clever.
The whole thing has this sort of tongue-in-cheek tone-- clearly it is meant to be funny. What wasn't clear to me was whether we were supposed to be laughing with Marcia, delighting at the increasingly over-the-top interactions she is having/creating with the great minds of Western culture, or if Marcia herself was supposed to amuse us because of the pathetic waste of a mind that a housewife is and how ridiculous her fantasies are-- how silly it is to imagine taking care of a home as anything with any sort of importance at all. Taken that way, it is kind of tragic and cruel.
The end has a silly twist that seems sort of taken out of A Streetcar Named Desire and sort of taken from any lame primetime soap.
All in all, I say "meh".
But in general, the idea is, I suppose, that this housewife is having delusions of grandeur, and that's where all of the "geniuses" come in. Those passages were generally over my head, making references to literature and philosophy that I didn't get and just generally seemed like they were straining with all of their might to be incredibly clever.
The whole thing has this sort of tongue-in-cheek tone-- clearly it is meant to be funny. What wasn't clear to me was whether we were supposed to be laughing with Marcia, delighting at the increasingly over-the-top interactions she is having/creating with the great minds of Western culture, or if Marcia herself was supposed to amuse us because of the pathetic waste of a mind that a housewife is and how ridiculous her fantasies are-- how silly it is to imagine taking care of a home as anything with any sort of importance at all. Taken that way, it is kind of tragic and cruel.
The end has a silly twist that seems sort of taken out of A Streetcar Named Desire and sort of taken from any lame primetime soap.
All in all, I say "meh".
March 13, 2022
I read this years ago and was captivated; re-reading it today, not so much. I had the same experience with "The Arabian Nightmare." This one's a brilliantly written monologue from a woman descending into housecleaning-obsessed madness -- brilliant but not particularly appealing. It helps to know that Irwin wrote it at a time when his wife was going to work every day and he was staying home and doing the chores.
December 28, 2021
Если бы вместо пяти звезд было пятьдесят, я бы отдала их все «Пределам зримого». Отдельно хотелось бы отметить Мукора Карамазова ))) И то, как Ирвин свел в одном тексте Достоевского и Дикенса и напрямую заявил, что русский писатель «вдохновлялся» английским коллегой. В школе нас такому не учили. Роман «Пределы зримого» не изменяет канонам (и их пренебрежением) постмодернистского постмодернизма от первой до последней строчки и остается открытым для свободной интерпритации читателем.
December 30, 2019
A day in the life of housewife Marcia, who sees dirt in a way few others do, and who, while doing the housework, chats to Blake, Leonardo, Dickens, Darwin... and Mucor, fungal god of dirt. Early on in the book, I was reminded of Nicholson Baker's "The Mezzanine" in the way that Marcia zooms in on the tiniest of details, but while Baker's character subjects the minutiae to extreme logic, Marcia spins further and further out of whack, with baroque visions taking over her and Philip's house.
Want to read
November 19, 2021Review in White Dwarf 77 May 1986 [scanned].
October 6, 2022
Gorgeous gorgeous
December 22, 2020
This is an astounding, daring and funny book. The hardest trick the author pulls of is not to patronise and belittle the protagonist. Yes, she's a suburban housewife obsessed with cleanliness to the point of insanity, but she's not stupid or trivial and she turns out to have quite some insight into the lives of her friends and their view of her.
The heroine believes that in cleaning her house she is fighting the powers of darkness. OK. My copy has a recommendation from Jeanette Winterson on the cover, which should be some evidence the book isn't the misogynist sneer it might sound like.
It's hard to explain more about this book without spoilers. I definitely recommend it.
The heroine believes that in cleaning her house she is fighting the powers of darkness. OK. My copy has a recommendation from Jeanette Winterson on the cover, which should be some evidence the book isn't the misogynist sneer it might sound like.
It's hard to explain more about this book without spoilers. I definitely recommend it.
February 5, 2016
I just can't recommend this book enough. Read it and you'll see why.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews