The Jolly Corner

The jolly corner, Spencer Brydon’s childhood house, is in part a symbol of traditionalism, particularly in the face of industrialization and urbanization. The house is quite large, secluded from the rest of New York, and has the trappings of a bygone era, including marble floors and crystal silverware. The house seems out of place in turn-of-the-century New York in the same way that Brydon himself is an outsider, and Brydon’s insistence on keeping the house the same suggests his nostalgia for the past. This also links the house to The Fear of Missed Opportunity, as it reminds Brydon of a time when his whole life was before him. Tellingly, the house is full of doors that Brydon prefers to leave open: “The difficulty was that this exactly was what he never did; it was against his whole policy, as he might have said, the essence of which was to keep vistas clear” (Chapter 2, Paragraph 14). Ostensibly a means of facilitating his hunt for his alter ego, this “policy” of open vistas suggests Brydon’s fear of closing off any possibilities.   

Given the house’s traditionalism, it is ironic that the jolly corner is home to Brydon’s alter ego: a figure at ease in modern New York because he, unlike Brydon, has spent his entire life there.