My neighbour has no boundaries. Do I put up a fence?

With advice from Hardy and Austen

Neighbouring houses in Hardy: the cause of dispute

Dear Emma,

I am friendly, but not close, with my neighbours. We exchange Christmas gifts and pleasantries in passing, we share extra baking and plant clippings, and occasionally cut each other’s lawns. My dilemma is that we don’t share a common understanding of boundaries in terms of privacy. They have a child who, when they were very small, would stand at our window and stare into it as we went about our day. I would make joking comments to the parents hoping they would correct the behaviour, but they did not. Now the child freely plays sports or runs around our yard, and is often joined by the parents in a game of toss across both properties. One year they set up a Halloween display using our tree to string fluorescent barrier tape across. Is it time for a fence? A confrontation? Or do I suck it up for the sake of freshly baked cookies? Signed, not on the fence (yet).

Dear not-on-the-fence,

I am writing this to you while listening to my downstairs neighbour pump techno music up through the floor at 6pm on a Wednesday. He loves to do this early in the morning too; sometimes from 7am, and it just so happens that my bedroom is right above where the deep reverberations of those basslines throb most deeply. How long have I lived here? Almost two years. Have I breathed a word? No siree.

It’s always good to announce your biases as an agony aunt, and in this type of situation I am a worm. So while most self-respecting modern women would advise you to assert your boundaries in the literal and figurative sense, I do personally wonder about the downsides of creating bad juju with your neighbours - but let’s figure out what will be best for you.

First off, however, let’s spare a thought for the women of Jane Austen’s novels, and indeed the women of the Georgian Era, who due to the concept of ‘morning calls’, had to entertain literally anyone who stopped by. Obviously you could pretend not to be at home, and they had to leave their card first and stuff, but a lot of the time it seems like you just had to grit your teeth and let that dogged suitor or snide frenemy into your living room and give them two hours of your life through gritted teeth. How’s that for no boundaries? At least we’re not them.

The ultimate nightmare neighbour in Austen is, of course, Pride and Prejudice’s Lady Catherine de Bourgh, famously played by Judi Dench in the 2005 movie. Lady Catherine is the pompous, snobby, domineering aunt of Mr Darcy, who becomes neighbour to Elizabeth’s best friend Charlotte Lucas after Charlotte marries Mr Collins. This means that Lizzy, Charlotte, and Mr Collins are all bound to have dinner with her when Lizzy visits - an engagement Mr Collins relishes but the women abhor. Let’s play another tiny violin for the upper-class women of the Georgian Era: so much socialising was done at dinner parties made up of at least 50% people you hated. If you got stuck next to someone crap that’s basically you done for the night.

At one of these enforced dinners with Lady Catherine, the inordinately rich and presumptuous woman violates Lizzy’s boundaries in a more metaphorical sense. Lady Catherine interrogates Lizzy on her lack of accomplishments (like drawing), is shocked to hear she grew up without a governess, and even more horrified that all of the Bennet sisters are ‘out’ (i.e. officially grown up, going to balls, looking for husbands) before the eldest have married. Lizzy navigates all this rudeness in her trademark way - with the kind of off-the-cuff wit we all wish we possessed - leading to the zinger she delivers when Lady Catherine rudely demands to know her age:

"With three younger sisters grown up," replied Elizabeth, smiling, "your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.”

Lizzy is the ultimate example of one potential strategy for dealing with boundary violation: humour (that conceals truth). The trouble is, most of us are not that quick - and it sounds like you already gave jokey comments a good shot. To be fair, Lizzy also has a proper stand-off with Lady Catherine in the end, but by this point she’s not in a neighbour relationship with her, so I don’t know if it counts.

I suppose this is the clincher I keep coming back to. I’d love to tell you to stand up for yourself, and in a situation where you could walk away from the consequences, I think I would. But right now you have an equilibrium in place with cookies and plant clippings to boot. I wonder if the potential gain is worth the potential repercussions. This is not me telling you you need to learn to be more ‘neighbourly’; quite the opposite. In fact, my friend and the excellent author of Night Thoughts pointed me toward a report by The Smith Institute which demonstrates that ‘neighbourliness’ actually increases among communities with good boundaries in place. Funnily enough, the report quotes a proverb from Robert Frost’s poem ‘Mending Wall’ to evidence its point: ‘good fences make good neighbours’. How’s that for full-circle Fictional Therapy? In any case, what I’m saying isn’t that you need to have more good old fashioned community spirit. It’s just that no-one has the potential to ruin your life like a vengeful neighbour.

There is a short story called The Good Doctor by 19th century author Thomas Hardy which offers a terrifying example of the disturbing cycles of vengeance that can be set in motion between warring neighbours. The story revolves around a rich squire whose ire is raised by a little girl who insists on picking flowers on his land. He chases her off his property in a way so terrifying that she contracts a wasting disease which causes her hair and teeth to fall out. Eventually, across generations, this act has terrible repercussions on the squire’s family. But even in the early scene in which the squire chases the girl, we are able to witness the self-destructive consequences of his actions:

Naturally enough, as soon as the girl saw the Squire in pursuit of her she gave a loud scream, and started off like a hare; but the only entrance to the grounds being on the side which the Squire's position commanded, she could not escape, and endeavoured to elude him by winding, and doubling in her terrified course. Finding her, by reason of her fleetness, not so easy to chastise as he had imagined, her assailant lost his temper—never a very difficult matter—and the more loudly she screamed the more angrily did he pursue. A more untoward interruption to the peace of a beautiful and secluded spot was never seen.

Ironically, it is the Squire’s quest for secluded tranquility on his land that leads to its greatest ‘interruption’. The parallel syntax - ‘the more loudly… the more angrily’ - foreshadows the way the two families will now be linked in ever-escalating acts of repercussion. Hardy’s story is strange, superstitious, almost supernatural in tone - yet there is something about its foreboding message that rings oddly true.

Of course I know you’d never chase a child off your land with a stick. And I’m sure there is a way to have the conversation politely that limits potential disastrous consequences. Here’s what I’d really do, because I am, as previously mentioned, a worm: I’d make up a reason for the kids not to be in your yard for a little while and then after three months hope a new boundary has been established. For example: ‘I’m planting these bougainvilleas in my garden and we need to be really careful until they’re grown and strong. I know it’s so fussy and ridiculous but just until then, do you mind asking your kids not to play on my grass/ supervise them when they do/ insert condition you want to propose?’

The real question you need to ask yourself is: how well can you deal with social awkwardness? If you can live with a couple of dark stares, passing comments, or a sudden lack of offers to mow your lawn, then it’s certainly worth asserting yourself. Lots of people are strong enough for this. But if, like me, you would start only leaving your house at night for fear of ever bumping into your neighbours post-confrontation, speaking up may well be a poisoned chalice.

Whatever you choose to do, take time to reflect on exactly why this is bothering you, what you could stomach in the future, and then make a firm decision about your line moving forward. Normally, it is the feeling of lost control that is so peeving in these situations; a feeling exacerbated by reluctance to act. I have to say, not-on-the-fence, that you are actually very much astride it, living in a constant state of will-I-won’t-I that is agonising to maintain. If you can come to a well reasoned decision - even if the decision you make is to do nothing - then whatever the future holds, it will be easier to bear. And you can always count your blessings that you’re not a Georgian woman.

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You can read the full poem by Robert Frost here: ‘Mending Wall’. It’s a very nuanced take on the utility of boundaries. You can read the Thomas Hardy story here: ‘The Good Doctor’.