White Is for Witching

“Miranda can’t come in today Miranda has a condition called pica she has eaten a great deal of chalk—she really can’t help herself—she has been very ill—Miranda has pica she can’t come in today, she is stretched out inside a wall she is feasting on plaster she has pica.”

In its role as antagonist, 29 Barton Road, the Silver House in Dover, attempts to excuse Miranda’s disappearance from the very start. As a personified narrator, the house references Miranda’s experience with pica and acknowledges that she’s imprisoned within its walls.

“Lily was the changer who came home the same. But that last time the signs were bad. When she left, she had forgotten her watch on the telephone stand in the hallway, a brass body with thin leather arms, ticking away Haitian time, six hours behind ours. How could she have forgotten her watch? She never had before. Miri and I had debated leaving it where it was (that seemed luckier), then Miri had confiscated it for safekeeping in case one of the houseguests stole it or broke it or something.”

Eliot describes his deceased mother Lily’s final trip and the symptoms of her unraveling. She dies in Haiti, killed by stray bullets, and the watch she leaves behind symbolizes that her time ran out. Miranda wears the watch long after its battery dies. A link between Lily and Miranda, the watch connects them across time.

“Our new house had two big brown grids of windows with a row of brick in between each grid. No windows for the attic. From the outside the windows didn’t look as if they could be opened, they didn’t look as if they were there to let air or light in, they were funny square eyes, friendly, tired. The roof was a solid triangle with a fat rectangular chimney behind it. Lily bounced out of the van first and I scrambled out of the other side and crooked my arm so as to escort her to the door. The house is raised from the road and laid along the top of a brick staircase, surrounded by thick hedge with pink flowers fighting through it.”

This quote describes Miranda and Eliot’s initial reactions to the Silver House in Dover. Their observations emphasize the human-like quality of the house, highlighting characteristics like its “eyes.” The image of pink flowers fighting to escape the hedge that surrounds the house foreshadows the house’s imprisoning of Silver women.