Hundreds Hall Thirty Years Later
The book is not just a standard haunted house tale. The house is a metaphor for the state of England. The story opens with the memory of the narrator as a ten-year-old viewing the house through the fantasy perspective of someone seeing impressive and mistaking it for grandeur. Thirty years later when he returns, however:
“What horrified me were the signs of decay. Sections of the lovely weathered edgings seemed to have fallen completely away, so that the house’s uncertain Georgian outline was even more tentative than before. Ivy had spread, then patchily died, and hung like tangled rat’s-tail hair. The steps leading up to the broad front door were cracked, with weeds growing lushly up through the seams.”
The persistent recurrence of references to decay begins here. The reference to Georgian architecture is also a reference to a short period following the loss of the colonies to America when many Britons feared that the glory days of the empire were over. Ivy is symbolic of immortality or eternity and the fact that it has died in patches is another image pointing up the metaphorical aspect of the house. And, of course, cracks and weeds are highly suggestive of neglect and age. And one meaning of rat's-tail is synonymous with "end of the rope."
The Title, Explicated
Imagery is called upon to help explain the meaning of the title. While the author could have simply have the narrator explain it more directly, the choice was instead to hand it over to a person other than the narrator. Through conversation, the other person conveys in much more figurative language (drawing upon medical terminology and allusions to Shakespeare and horror stories) exactly what is the origin of the “little stranger” and in the process making it infinitely more satisfying:
“The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of those corners. Let’s call it a—a germ. And let’s say conditions prove right for that germ to develop—to grow, like a child in the womb. What would this little stranger grow into? A sort of shadow-self, perhaps: a Caliban, a Mr Hyde. A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away: things like envy, and malice, and frustration.”
Roderick the Gloomy
Sense imagery is used effectively to describe Roderick upon the narrator finding him locked in a room described as gloomy. The gloomy aspect of Roderick is not so directly addressed, but instead communication through the senses:
“Even in the poor light and from a distance I could see how unwell he looked…the greasy yellowish-white of his face, and his swollen, sore-looking eyes. There seemed to be traces of soot, still, in the pores of his skin and in the oil of his unwashed hair. His cheeks were unshaven, the stubble growing patchily because of his scars; his mouth was pale, the lips drawn in. I was struck, too, by the odour of him: the odour of smoke and perspiration and sour breath. Under his bed was a chamber-pot, which had evidently recently been used.”
The Ghost of Britain Past
As indicated, the story is not just about a haunted house, but about a country haunted by the ghosts of its past. Taking place in the 1940’s, the issue of what is causing the strange happenings is inextricably linked to the end of England as it had been known and the recognition that great and lasting change was on the horizon. This aspect of the novel is foreshadowed with the introduction of Roderick very early on. Roderick’s words act as imagery that implicates him as a solid symbol of that past and the victimization felt by those who had been privileged to the lowering of the status to merely equal with everyone else.
“One of our maids! I like that. There’s only the one: our girl, Betty. Some stomach problem, it seems to be. I don’t know. My mother, my sister, and I tend to manage without doctors as a rule. We muddle through with colds and headaches. But I gather that neglecting the servants is a capital offence these days; they’re to get better treatment than us, apparently.
