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This essay will explore how literary characters inhabit circumscribed and confined spaces in three novels: Marlen Haushofers, The Wall, Tove Janssons, The Summer Book, and Roy Jacobsens, The Unseen. Through the use of ecocritical theory and Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, the essay will examine the border between house and exterior landscape, between human and non-human. Seeing as The Summer Book as well as The Unseen take place on islands in the archipelago the essay will make use of island-literature studies. Since the chosen material is extensive, the analysis will look at certain key aspects of the novels that illustrate how the characters dwell, such as; the function of borders and the role of the intruder, the anthropomorphic portrayal of domestic animals, the relationship between identity and place as well as the depiction of time.