Throughout the novel, the exterior appearance of the Bain household serves as a symbol for Agnes’s state of being. Catherine is the first to demonstrate this skill, arriving home late at night after Agnes’s curtain-fire episode to find all the lights on in the apartment and a pile of burnt drapery in the street. Without going upstairs, she knows her mother is having a bad night and leaves to find Leek in his hiding spot. Later, Leek is also able to discern his mother’s drunkenness from the exterior of their Pithead house. Whenever he approaches the house to find the lights burning and the curtains flung open, he turns around and walks the other direction. Shuggie also develops the ability to divine Agnes’s level of intoxication before he enters the door. Whenever the lights are on and music is playing, it’s a bad sign, whereas closed curtains paired with the smell of food tends to bode well. Though Agnes tries her best to hide her alcoholism with her well-kept home, beauty, and upper-class manners, the patterns of her addiction are so regular that her children can always tell the truth from the outside of their home when they arrive, so the home itself comes to symbolize Agnes’s shoddy attempts to keep her chaotic personal life hidden.
House Exteriors Quotes in Shuggie Bain
“You three keep your mouths shut,” she hissed. She lowered her head into the cavernous bag and tilted it slightly to her face. The children watched the muscles in her throat pulse as she took several long slugs from the can of warm lager she had hidden there. Agnes drew her head from the bag; the lager had washed the lipstick off her top lip, and she blinked once, very slowly, under the layers of wasted mascara.
“What a shithole,” she slurred. “And to think I dressed up nice for this?”
It was still daylight, but there were harsh lights on in every room, and the curtains lay open in a shameful way. It was a very bad sign. In the front room Shuggie was idling between the net curtain and the glass. His palms and nose were pressed flat against the window, he was rocking his head back and forth in a soothing way, and no one was telling him to stop…Leek picked up his tool bag and turned away from the house.
Every small detail of the house told of what lay within. This evening the curtains were drawn tight against the cold and the lamps were on. His stomach lifted in hope. Shuggie opened the front door a crack, just enough so he could hear the hum of the house. He knew what to listen for.
House Exteriors Symbol Timeline in Shuggie Bain
