Trying to actually use my brain today

My online bookgroup started a discussion about whether place can be character. The thread began when one of the members heard an author's talk (Geraldine Brooks) in which the author said she thinks of place as a character when she researches/writes.

So far, so good. But of course a couple of people objected to this statement, the most succinct objection was: "Setting is a character. Plot is a character. Who really needs characters any more? She shouldn't be trying to write novels unless she knows the difference."

It occured to me that the distinction between actor and actant in Greimas's 'actantial model' might be useful, so this is what I posted:

I wonder if it might help to think of A.J. Greimas's model of actants as a way of having your cake and eating it too.

Greimas differentiates between actants and actors. Actants are figures or types, like hero, or villain, or princess, or troll... (he developed the theory in response to Propp's work with fairytales). Actants are what drives the action - think of fairytales - the king demands that his sons perform an act, which starts the story off (and usually the youngest one is the only one who is successful). When they meet an old crone/wise woman/sage and receive a magical talisman, that's another actant. The actant is a role or a type and whatever it does, it moves the story forward.

Actors on the other hand are individual incarnations of these roles. Thus, actors can fulfill several actant roles.

In this model then, couldn't place fulfill an actant role? If you think of fairytales again, say Hansel and Gretel, the witch's house fulfills an actant role as a temptation. If Hansel and Gretel hadn's stopped to eat the house, then they wouldn't have gotten caught, and the story would be a rather dull one about children wandering around in a forest. The house isn't a character, since it isn't internally motivated to tempt the children, but by acting as a temptation, it drives the narrative forward.

It doesn't just work for fairytales either. Think of the house in _Amityville Horror_, or the Congo in _Heart of Darkness_; without those specific places, the narrative would unfold very differently, would it not?

In this model, characters are still characters, but it is still possible for a place to play a role that's more important than just simply backdrop (however beautifully written or exotic that backdrop might be).

Just wondering...

What do you think?