Throughout the story, the titular house of "A Haunted House" represents safety, contentment, and the recovery of lost things, and in particular the ability of love to offer all of these things. From the beginning, it is clear that whatever the ghosts are searching for is somewhere in or associated with the domestic space of the house—"It's upstairs," "And in the garden"—indicating the symbolic significance of the house as a place that protects and safeguards important things like the "treasure." Also, before the reader learns what the ghosts are looking for, Woolf uses the house and its safe and comforting atmosphere to reassure the reader that this ghost story is not a frightening one: "the house all empty [...] only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm." The house seems to "pulse," "beating softly.” This pulse is not at all malevolent. Quite the opposite, it connects the house to the beating of a heart, and, further, to the love that is commonly believed to be associated with the heart. In fact, it is notable that when, in the distant past, the husband of the ghost couple loses his love because of the loss of his wife, he leaves the house, symbol of all that love has been to him, to go travel. And he can only be reunited with his love and achieve contentment again when he returns to the house and to his love.
The House Quotes in A Haunted House
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.
"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."
"They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it," one would be certain [...] And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm.
So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs.
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long years—" he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—" Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."
The House Symbol Timeline in A Haunted House
