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Ivy Compton-Burnett’s novels are invariably set in the late Victorian period, within the confines of a country house where patriarchal power holds sway. The plight of the family imprisoned therein is dramatically thrown into relief both by the narrowness of the setting and by the use of dialogue. This theatricality is particularly striking in A Father & His Fate (1957), where narrative trappings are reduced to a bare minimum, leaving the characters’ pronouncements to ring out even more starkly in a relentless war of words. A subversive polyphony confers authority upon the utterances of the powerless, undermining the site of power represented by the father-figure, whilst the latter’s discourse is further weakened by being subjected to an internal dialogisation. Consequently, within the echo-chamber of the novel, power is disseminated into a plurality of sites. Dialogic devices not only partake in Compton-Burnett’s singular modernity but, porous and fluctuating, may also be seen as opening up the claustrophobic stage on which her human drama is enacted.