64 pages • 2 hours read
Lisa JewellThe House We Grew Up In
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Bird Family Home
The settings in the book, particularly the Bird family home, underscore the secretive and complex family ties and the characters’ different perspectives. When Lorelei and Colin first start their family, their house represents hope and the chance at a new life. It is in “one of the prettiest villages in the Cotswolds” (1), an idyllic and desirable area of England. The house symbolizes Lorelei’s mental state, and as she becomes increasingly entrenched in her trauma, the house becomes dirtier and more cluttered. This sense of emotional paralysis is enhanced by the gentrification taking place around the house. Lorelei references “ghastly gastro pubs” and resents the change (163), while Vicky approves of a new café in the village. As Lorelei becomes more isolated, the house is described as lodged “like a rotten tooth” (5) between the neighbors’ freshly decorated houses.
The house becomes increasingly unlivable in tandem with Lorelei’s isolation. As family members leave, their rooms become overrun with junk. Only Rhys’s room has not been touched, and its shrine-like state, frozen in 1991, symbolizes the way the Bird family has not moved on from his death. Lorelei’s resistance to change in the house—from Maddy’s desire to take over Rhys’s old bedroom to Vicky’s attempts to clear out some garbage—represents her inability to confront her trauma. Likewise, her attempts toward the end of her life to start clearing out the house parallel her emotional growth; she is confronting her past and healing. The house’s symbolic arc and the family’s emotional arc are complete at the end of the book; the house is emptied, they uncover the cause of Rhys’s suicide, and they begin to reconcile their differences.
The other family members’ homes and locales symbolize their arcs as well. Meg lives in an uncluttered home with “forks and spoons all sat in soldier-like rows in the cutlery drawer” (108). Lorelei has multiple plates, bowls, and cups, but Meg has precisely eight of everything. Their contrasting domiciles represent how Meg seeks control by doing the opposite of what her mother does, symbolizing her desire to create a healthier family dynamic. Beth tries to do the same, but her mother’s influence has left her unsure of who she is. This is symbolized in how she mimics her mother’s style, displaying other people’s heirlooms bought in second-hand shops. She describes her home with her partner as “A doll’s house. It was where I lived when I was pretending to be a person” (419). When the family house is cleared, she can finally begin to find herself. She redecorates in her own style, and she and her newborn daughter symbolize a more positive future.
Hoarding
When Meg and Molly return to clear the house after Lorelei’s death, the house smells of dead paper and dust downstairs and old flesh and unwashed things upstairs. The Council described it as the “most extreme case of hoarding” they ever encountered (28). There’s no electricity, the windows are covered up, the kitchen and bathroom are unusable, and Lorelei lived her last days in a single chair in the living room. Her hoarding symbolizes her inability to cope with past secrets and family trauma. Lorelei started collecting things as a child because of her difficult upbringing, and the addiction continues into adulthood.
Without the proper support system to process her trauma, attempts to clean up the house are viewed as attacks. This symbolizes how treating symptoms will often not fix a problem alone, and root causes must be addressed. When Vicky and Colin try to throw away an old towel belonging to Rhys, she makes this connection clear: “Take the fucking towel…Just take it. And take my fucking heart out of my fucking chest cavity while you’re about it” (216). Things replace people in her life because they are easier to control and have tangible connections to the past.
Lorelei’s mental health improves when she begins speaking with Jim. Their romantic connection provides Lorelei with emotional intimacy and a sense of safety, which allows her to reveal traumas that she concealed from everyone else: her sexual assault, her violent father, and Rhys’s sexual advances toward her. When Jim accepts her, she can release some of her shame and hurt; in parallel, she gets rid of some possessions for the first time in decades. As hoarding symbolizes holding on to trauma, cleaning and selling items represents coming to terms with the past and looking toward the future. By the end of the book, all the secrets have been excised, just as the house is clean, livable, and ready for new memories.
Easter
Most of the sections in the 1980s and 1990s occur around Easter. This is when the family gathers together, and Lorelei is the hostess at the center. She maintains control by serving the same meal every year and holding the Easter egg hunt. Any attempt to change the routine is met with resistance. Easter is a moveable date, and even though Rhys died on March 31st, Easter Sunday is the day chosen to visit his grave. Lorelei never does this though, consumed instead with providing a joyful experience for others. In refusing to engage with Rhys’s death, she is caught in a loop of trying to pretend her son didn’t die.
In Christianity, Easter includes Christ’s death on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. It symbolizes hope over despair, life over death, and the forgiveness of sins. Its regenerative themes correlate to Lorelei’s passion for the holiday; she cultivates her family life to compensate for her rough childhood. Rhys is not a Christlike figure who dies for the sins of others, but through his death, the family manages to forgive themselves and each other and go forward into a more hopeful future. Even Lorelei, who dies alone, comes to a place of acceptance and understanding when she copes with Rhys’s death.
Rainbows
Rainbows display a spectrum of light, usually after rainfall, and result from sunlight being reflected in raindrops. Conventionally, they symbolize hope, but Lorelei’s obsession with rainbows evokes the false hope provided by smoothing over problems. Their colorfulness appeals to her innocent nature. At the same time, it’s impossible to find the end of a rainbow, showing the futility of her attempts to ignore the past. Lorelei tries to create a perfect world for her loved ones. Rainbows appear in her kitchen, where “Dust motes sparkled in the midday sun like clouds of glitter” (27) and there are “teetering arrangements” of bowls, “in every colour of the rainbow” (86). Even as she ages, Lorelei clings to the past and childish clothing, wearing her favorite rainbow-striped angora cardigan and using the online dating name Rainbowbelle. Vicky says, “You had to have a core of pink fluff and fairy dust to hack living with Lorrie” (210), signifying how her gradual withdrawal into a fairy tale world leaves no room for anyone else.
Birds
Birds are mentioned several times in the book. Most literally, the family’s last name is Bird, so birds symbolize family ties. Meg and Beth have what Lorelei calls the “Bird face” (6), taking after her father, aunt, and grandmother. The family lineage creates continuity between generations, underpinning the importance of blood ties.
Birds also show how difficult it is to escape from the past (or the family nest). When Colin suggests spending Easter in Greece rather than adhering to tradition, Meg sees a magpie outside. In the childhood nursery rhyme, one magpie symbolizes sorrow, indicating Lorelei’s unaddressed trauma and foreshadowing the family’s future. Before discovering her brother’s body, Meg watches the birds in the trees outside—“a cluster of tits and sparrows, all jostling about for space,” while Lorelei and Vicky “squawk […] and shriek […]” like birds downstairs (59). When Meg, Beth, and Rory all leave home, Lorelei tries to “accept the beating wings of my baby birds as they flew” (306).
When the family starts to communicate only by email, their email addresses incorporate birds and symbolize their attempts to escape. Beth’s is “Bethanbabybird.” She was the oldest when she left home but is unable to form her identity outside of her mother’s influence. Meg uses her full name, MeganRoseLiddingtonBird, indicating how she has linked her family with Ben’s. Rory’s is more straightforward: RoryBird2. He is still part of the family but lacks his sisters’ implied sentimentality. After their mother’s death, the Birds fly back to the family home, coming together once again.
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By Lisa Jewell
