70 pages • 2 hours read
Rachel BeanlandThe House Is on Fire
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Fallibility of the Powerful
The fire creates a huge rent in the fabric of Richmond society. As the repercussions of the tragedy ripple out in the days afterward, it becomes clear to the main characters that the foundations on which their society is built are far less solid than they once believed. Sally is exposed to this as the men around her fail the women they are supposed to protect, leaving her and Mrs. Cowley to bridge the gap. This is clearest when Dr. Foushee defers to Archie when Mrs. Crowley advocates for amputating Margaret’s leg; his judgment is valued above hers, but it might cost Margaret her life. Gilbert also recognizes this when seeing Samuel Jefferson’s free papers. Having never thought about running before, the fire and its consequences place him in a position to help Cecily run. As he forges her free papers, he realizes that “all any of these documents are is words, and not even very mysterious words. Words like free and rights and liberty. How can it be that so few words, scratched on a piece of letter paper, are what’s separating Sara and him from a life of freedom?” (317). Gilbert wants to hope for freedom, but his owner, Kemp, is not a principled man and refuses to sell Gilbert his freedom out of spite. After trying to do things the legal way, Gilbert sees the value in fleeing. Likewise, Cecily’s escape proves that people like Elliott, who have immense power, are not the inherent arbiters of life. He has power, not because he is naturally better with it but because of the chance of his birth. Due to luck, circumstance, and her and her family’s care and intelligence, Cecily is able to escape his reach. By the end of the novel, Elliot’s outward appearance parallels his corrupt nature, creating an opportunity for others to question his influence.
The actions of those in power show the desire to quickly put the fire behind them, showing their uselessness in a crisis compared to the four protagonists, who spring into action and take accountability. While this might be attributed to attempts at effective crisis management, it is also to avoid acknowledging the blame that belongs to those in power. For example, when Sally confronts Tom Marshall about how he escaped the theater, he claims he just “pushed and shoved, like everybody else” (178), deflecting blame by artificially shrinking his social position; in a crisis, he is a common man. However, Sally’s actions are a direct counterpoint to his quotation; many people helped, and most of them would not be considered leaders by society. Sally’s trip to the capitol is further demoralizing, as she sees how quickly the men are trying to move on with no thought to those who are still injured and dying. This reaffirms their narrative of the white men as heroes of the evening but does little to actually help those affected. Even Ritchie, who seems dedicated to revealing the truth, is willing to adapt his story to more quickly wrap up loose ends. He is also unconcerned about the falsely accused Black men, highlighting how a sense of justice can be compromised by racism or other biases. Jack’s realization that men like Placide “shouldn’t be treated like they can do no wrong. In fact, that might be the worst thing for them” (352) shows his own understanding of how people with power are not necessarily good or moral. While he defers to authority figures at first, he ends the novel by coming clean and adhering to his own morals, allowing the truth to emerge despite the powerful’s efforts to conceal it. The power structures in Richmond are not overthrown at the end of the novel, but each protagonist has more faith in themselves after being failed by them.
The Power of Narratives
In the aftermath of the fire as people look for someone to blame, competing narratives battle to become the definitive record. Much of Jack’s arc and morality surrounds this competition, forcing him to question how far he is willing to go and what he will risk to expose the truth. The theater company, scared of its own culpability, is aware that the first cohesive and easily digestible narrative presented will hold a lot of power. The attempts to spread the false story of the slave revolt prove this; by the time the first post-fire meeting at the capitol occurs, many of the crowd have clung to the revolt narrative, even though no one witnessed these events. Men like Kemp are also eager to seize upon this story as it allows them to exert power over others, namely enslaved people. Already invested in the narratives of racism, the townspeople are primed to believe the theater company’s story, even though the details are presented inconsistently. Notably, Ritchie is able to counter this narrative because another newspaper prints the true account first, providing a new reliable story to believe.
Not only does the overarching narrative have power, but so do the individual ones. The story of Gilbert’s bravery and heroism is powerful enough to, however briefly, overcome prejudice. As he is applauded the morning after the fire, he recognizes this, thinking that “Everybody in this city has lost somebody in that fire, and if these men can stand before him on this sad day and demonstrate their gratitude, like he is an honest-to-God citizen of this city and not just somebody’s property, then maybe there is hope for him after all” (153). Men like Kemp recognize this power, and part of his anger at Gilbert getting recognition is from the loss of control this represents. Some of the individual narratives that emerge also deny agency to others. For example, Archie Campell’s obfuscation of what he did to escape the theater allows him to retain power over Margaret, which he should have lost by stepping on her and leaving her to die. Archie conceals his actions because they run counter to how gentlemen are supposed to behave. The truth comes out too late, after he has already denied Margaret a life-saving amputation because a wife with a disability would not fit into his narrative of a perfect family.
The fire also exposes how many people do not have their stories told. Sally struggles against the erasure of women’s experiences in the fire for much of the novel, telling newspaper editor Ritchie that he should “Interview [the women]. I dare say a few of us can even write” (218), to no avail. The villainization and scapegoating of the Black population of Richmond lead to many individuals like Cecil being falsely imprisoned. Their stories are ignored even by people who seem to want the truth to come out, like Ritchie. Finally, the fire also alienates people from their own stories—the burned girl at Mrs. Cowley’s gets no name, her injuries robbing her of a past as well as a future. The knowledge of her suffering is described as being useless, erasing her, like countless others, from the fire’s historical record.
Tragedy Further Marginalizes People
The tragedy of fire becomes amplified when considering the fates of women in comparison to men. Once the situation is clearly dire, many men in the theater drop their performance of chivalry and look out for themselves; Tom Marshall admits that he pushed his way out of the theater “like everyone else” (178), and Archie climbs over Margaret to save himself rather than helping ensure her safety. Sally’s journey through the narrative explores the ways many of society’s expectations make situations more dangerous for women. This ranges from small things, like the women’s shoes being “made of silk and lined with linen, are as pretty as they come, but they are no match for the terrain” (3), which hampered women’s attempts to escape, but it also includes the way women are essentially men’s property. This is clearest in two situations: Margaret’s best chance at survival is an amputation, but the doctor defers to her husband, who won’t allow it; and Cecily, who has been sexually abused by Elliot her whole life, will be given to him as a wedding present. Their taught dependence on men harms them too—as Margaret says, she feels like she has “been sold a false bill of goods” (308) regarding her life, as the men who are supposed to protect them in exchange for obedience have failed. Archie jokingly being the gentleman as they walk to the theater and taking the lead to break the wind apart from them feels like a ruse when he later steps on his wife to save himself. It is made clear through the tragedy of the fire how dangerous the misogynistic society is to the women in it.
For enslaved people like Cecily, Della, and Gilbert, the world is already dangerous and is made even more so due to the fire’s aftermath. Even though few Black people died in the fire compared to the number of white people as the gallery was evacuated calmly and easily, the story of the riot of enslaved people made up by Placide and Green has great consequences. Innocent men like Cecil, Cecily’s father, are picked up by the violent slave patrol and jailed for a crime that was never actually committed. The possibility of mob violence that Jack sees in the meeting at the capitol building also exposes the danger that the fire has created for the Black population of Richmond: “The crowd is in an uproar now, everyone relieved to have found someone to blame for the fire and its resulting destruction, and Jack feels a paralyzing sense of guilt. What has he done, allowing this lie to take root and grow?” (189). Jack recognizes the danger of the cover-up, acknowledging that the white population doesn’t need much prompting to enact violence on Black people. As such, the enslaved and free Black people alike must spend the days following the fire in fear of wrongful persecution. They are also prevented from grieving properly, like when Cecily is forced to miss what he thinks is his daughter’s funeral because he is in jail. The tracing of women’s and Black people’s narratives in this novel showcases how bias, discrimination, and social hierarchies are exacerbated by tragedy.
