Avilion, the large, austere house in which Iris and Laura Chase are raised, symbolizes the rigid social expectations placed on them as children of a wealthy manufacturer. It also represents the estrangement and trauma of their family, which is itself a kind of doomed love. The house was designed by Iris and Laura’s grandmother Adelia, a high-society woman from Montreal who prided herself on her good taste. Although Adelia dies before Iris and Laura are born, thanks to growing up in Avilion they feel as if they are raised by her. As Iris writes, “And so Laura and I were brought up by her. We grew up inside her house; that is to say, inside her conception of herself. And inside her conception of who we ought to be, but weren’t.” In this way, the house represents both Adelia herself—and, more specifically, Adelia’s class position, expectations, and tastes. She seems to spiritually inhabit or haunt the house even after her death, influencing Iris and Laura despite the fact that they never met her. They feel the pressure to emulate her in a way that shows how identity can be passed between people (even those who have no direct contact).
Yet Avilion’s ultimate fate also indicates the limits of such emulation and influence. Following the fall in fortune of the Chase family, the house is sold and becomes a nursing home called Valhalla (in Norse mythology, Valhalla is the resting place of those who die in war). The home is particularly bleak and thus comes to represent the fall from grace of the Chase family—particularly Iris, who is in the only member of her family present to witness Avilion in its new state following Laura and Aimee’s deaths and Sabrina’s estrangement.
Avilion Quotes in The Blind Assassin
She wasn’t married, she was married off, said Reenie, rolling out the gingersnaps. The family arranged it. That’s what was done in such families, and who’s to say it was any worse or better than choosing for yourself? In any case, Adelia Montfort did her duty, and lucky to have the chance, as she was getting long in the tooth—she must have been twenty-three, which was counted as over the hill in those days.
When I was the age for it—thirteen, fourteen—I used to romanticize Adelia. I would gaze out of my window at night, over the lawns and the moon-silvered beds of ornamentals, and see her trailing wistfully through the grounds in a white lace tea gown. I gave her a languorous, world-weary, faintly mocking smile. Soon I added a lover. She would meet this lover outside the conservatory, which by that time was neglected—my father had no interested in steam-heated orange trees—but I restored it in my mind, and it supplied it with hothouse flowers […]
In reality the chances of Adelia having had a lover were nil. The town was too small, its morals too provincial, she had too far to fall. She wasn’t a fool. Also she had no money of her own.
And so Laura and I were brought up by her. We grew up inside her house; that is to say, inside her conception of herself. And inside her conception of who we ought to be, but weren’t. As she was dead by then, we couldn’t argue.
Although I was beginning to like him better, I’m ashamed to admit that I was more than a little skeptical about this story. There was too much melodrama in it—too much luck, both bad and good. I was still too young to be a believer in coincidence. And if he’d been trying to make an impression on Laura—was he trying?—he couldn’t have chosen a better way.
I look back over what I’ve written and I know it’s wrong, not because of what I’ve set down, but because of what I’ve omitted. What isn’t there has a presence, like the absence of light.
You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t’ necessarily get you the truth.
Avilion Symbol Timeline in The Blind Assassin
