personifications

   It is a fairly common human practice to endow an inanimate object with a human personality and address it directly. We mutter to a machine that suddenly refuses to function: ‘What’s the matter with you, you stupid thing?’ A golfer selects a favourite club and says silently: ‘Come on, Calamity Jane, get me out of this.’

   It has also become fairly common for people to address things which, while not inanimate, are nevertheless unable to hear what is said, as far as we know, and are certainly unable to reply. Thus the owner of a house-plant who asks it how it is doing today and says: ‘I’m sure you’re thirsty, here’s some water for you,’ perhaps adding a personal name to this statement.

   No-one would think Jane Austen’s Marianne strange when, in Sense and Sensibility, she bids farewell to Norland, the house she loves: ‘Dear, dear Norland,’ said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there, ‘when shall I cease to regret you, when learn to feel a home elsewhere? Oh, happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence, perhaps, I may view you no more! And you, ye well-known trees - but you will continue the same! No leaf will decay because we are removed, rior any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer!’

   Countiess people must have said ‘Goodbye, house!’ when on the point of moving to a new home. Countless people must also have murmured ‘Goodbye, London!’ or whatever city they are leaving as their aircraft took off. Vocatives which occurred as a result of personification have not been dealt with separately in this book.