August 18, 2011

• This post was inspired by Jenna St. Hilare, who posted a list of her favorite literary houses--manors, shacks, huts, hovels, suburban homes or mansions that are practically characters themselves.  I liked her answers, and thought I'd work up my own list of my favorite houses in literature.

  --St. Anne's from That Hideous Strength, the house with the mice for clean-up crew and Mr. Bultitude the bear and Dr. Ransom/Mr. Fisher-King/The Pendragon in charge of it all. And men and women taking turns doing the washing-up--we men don't mind doing but don't like to help, don't we?

  --12 Grimmauld Place, from The Order of the Phoenix. Sure it's a dirty disgusting townhouse full of dark wizard stuff, but it's the Order's headquarters, and it was the first place where I finally felt like the good guys were actually DOING something. Plus, clean-up projects can be a lot of fun, when you have friends to help you.

  --The watchtower, from The Last Battle. I'm not sure why I took to this place: it's a rough little outpost with bunks and hardtack and weapon cabinets. I guess I have a weakness for any place that serves as Good Guys HQ (see above). Honorable mention to the magician Coriakin's manor from the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

  --Beorn's house, from The Hobbit. Dogs and sheep as servants, great beehives providing honey, a great big hall for parties, and all the vegetarian tasties you could wish. Also: the first place I felt really safe since Rivendell. Honorable mention to Tom Bombadill's House.

  --House Beautiful from Pilgrim's Progress. Presided over by the four daughters Discretion, Piety, Prudence, and Charity, the House serves as a metaphor for the ekklesia, the community of the church. Christian is fed, instructed, and armed--and leaves the House with the armor and sword he will need later.

  --The Little Houses both In The Big Woods and On The Prairie. The house in the big woods needs its shutters closed so it cannot watch the pioneer family leave; the house on the prairie slowly grows as Pa builds it, but in the end it too must be left behind--the symbol of a year's work, a year's life. Special shout-out to the house On The Banks of Plum Creek, too--I was so enamored of the idea of living with grass for a roof, semi-underground.

  --A three way tie for the houses in Lilith: the owner's house with its mysterious library and hidden portal; the sexton's house with its phantom moon and the rows of the dead sleeping in the endless room; and Mara's house, where the woman who keeps her face hidden comes to the narrator's aid.

  --The House on Ash Tree Lane, from the House of Leaves. At first seeming a source of endless malice and danger, the maze within the house ultimately is the maze within ourselves, or the maze we make OF ourselves. Ever memorable, though I certainly would not like to live in it.

  --Esperanza's dream house from The House on Mango Street. It represents all that she wants out of life, all her dreams of escaping poverty, all her dreams of becoming a writer. A "house on a hill like the ones with the gardens where Papa works," but with bums living in the attic, so "I won't forget who I am or where I came from." "Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before a poem."

  --The Old Manse in the introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse. This is cheating, as it isn't fictional. The house belonged to Emerson's grandparents, and when his step-grandfather died, they rented it out to the Hawthornes. It sat right on the Concorde River, a short walk from where some of the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired. It had a large garden, an apple orchard, a boathouse, and a writing room that caught the sunlight and turned the walls all to golden hues. Hawthorne's life in this house inspired him to write on Edenic themes, because he felt like he was living in Eden, in harmony with Nature. I've visted it, and it is one of my favorite houses in story or life.

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