This is wholly appropriate given the violence perpetrated on the land and the black body here at Dwaleni and in South Africa as a whole. Higginson did not choose these trees accidentally rather, this type of bloodwood (there are bloodwoods worldwide, but the one in the text is a specific South African variation) is known for its distinctive red sap that gives the tree the appearance of bleeding. We learn they are where Rachel is buried and that they have been around for a long, long time. Patricia comments upon the bloodwoods multiple times, starting with this passage from the novel's very first page. She doesn't know what possessed them to plant those trees. The bloodwoods, solemn as totems, are barely visible above the old dog-run. The fact that they've sat here for so long and that they aren't immediately coming to Durban parallels Patricia's journey from wanting to live ensconced in the comfortable past even though it was not serving her to wanting to move on and leave some of the past behind, albeit in a truer, more authentic way due to Looksmart's visit.
#Dream house days special rooms list full#
They represent the past, as they are cluttering the space, full of inexplicable things, and subject to determination as to whether or not they must be brought into the future or disposed of-just like painful, repressed memories. The boxes are a ubiquitous component of the house, remarked upon by all the characters and occupying a steady and unobtrusive presence in the rooms. In almost every room the floor is filled with boxes, boxes spilling objects from the past whose meaning is unclear to Beauty. That's a big message to take away from an old teacup, but Higginson does it purposefully, paralleling it with other examples of how times are changing. It is a subtle message that she is her own person, that she and other black South Africans are coming into their power, however slowly, and that colonial rule and codified white supremacy no longer hold sway. She also takes a small, perverse pleasure in the fact that she has decided to make it her own and take it with her this is one of the only examples we see of Beauty doing or thinking anything contrary to her general loyalty and honesty, and thus it is significant. It has a faded image of Queen Elizabeth on it and isn't much to look at, but it makes Beauty feel elegant and special. Narrator, 14īeauty enjoys drinking from a cup of Patricia's that Patricia no longer cares for. Patricia and Richard most assuredly do not have a home under this claim, and Patricia hopes desperately that things will be different at Durban.ĭrinking from the cup makes her feel simple, clear, strong. One might see the house, by virtue of the title, as the centerpiece of the narrative, but ultimately the novel suggests that a house is just another building unless there is something warm, loving, and sustaining inside to make it a home.
The story commences on the last day that Patricia and Richard are to spend in the Dwaleni house. One of the central components of the novel is the brittle, painful marriage of Patricia and Richard, which has nearly always been marked by discord.
It has been her technique, perfected over the years, to survive her husband by noticing him as rarely as possible. What is most insightful about this addition to the novel in its revised and updated edition is the revelation of the extent to which the real-life inspiration for the titular domicile took hold of the author’s imaginative spirit. He proceeds from here to describe the farmhouse from his youth as a way of setting the stage for linking the way that reality influences the writing process he sees this as done in both an intrusive way that is sometimes explicit, as well as a way that exerts its power subliminally. These lines are extracted from an opening essay which the author utilizes to help illuminate his process of creation. One such house was a farmhouse in KwaZulu-Natal, just over the hill of the boarding school I attended between the ages of ten and fourteen. Some of them remain with us, and we are able to return to them long after they are gone. Maybe it’s true that they also pass through us. There are many houses we pass through during our lives.
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