Previous
Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Dream House, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Privilege, Understanding, and Historical Change
Truth, Accountability, and Memory
Parental Love vs. Romantic Love
Rebirth and New Beginnings
Humor, Ignorance, and Denial
Summary
Analysis
Patricia. Patricia looks out her window onto a stand of bloodwoods. She can’t remember why the trees were planted, but they’ll shortly be cut: “The people who come to live here afterwards will know nothing about any of them, and maybe it will be better that way.” Though Patricia has sold the property, she hasn’t said to Richard they’re moving. She says they’re traveling to the sea when he asks about the boxes.
That Patricia can’t remember why the trees were planted suggests she’s old and her memory is failing. Her thought that “it will be better” if the people who move into her house “know nothing” about who lived there suggests that bad things have occurred in the house and that Patricia wants a fresh start. Patricia’s deceit of Richard implies that there is some distance between them and that Richard is either very young or somehow cognitively impaired.
Themes
Patricia calls Beauty, whom she knows will be on her way to help Richard put clothes on. Since Beauty rarely answers the first time, Patricia calls again. Beauty replies, “Mesis?” Patricia thinks once they reach Durban, Beauty should study English and learn to drive so she can find good employment. Once Patricia and Richard die, “the girl will need to move on.”
Mesis is an honorific in isiZulu, like “Miss” or “Madam.” When Beauty speaks in isiZulu, it suggests she is an indigenous African person. Patricia’s desire that Beauty study English and learn to drive suggests her concern for her employee—but also reveals that Beauty is underprivileged and that Patricia hasn’t yet tried to help. Patricia’s anticipation of her own death reveals her old age. It’s unclear whether she calls Beauty “girl” due to a large age difference between them or to racism—if Beauty is a grown woman, then Patricia’s language is infantilizing and possibly racist. Patricia’s desire that Beauty “move on” hints she desires a new beginning not only for herself but also for the other people who live in her house.
Themes
Patricia asks Beauty to bring Richard out to eat with her. Glancing in the mirror, Patricia notices she’s now too large to be entirely reflected. She says she needs to visit Mr. Ford. Beauty replies she’ll inform Bheki. As Beauty fetches Patricia’s walker, the Rottweiler Ethunzini barks outside—but the women ignore the noise, as the elderly dog barks at all sorts of things.
That Patricia checks her appearance in the mirror immediately before telling Beauty that she wants to visit Mr. Ford suggests Patricia’s physical self-consciousness. It also suggests that Patricia may have romantic feelings for Mr. Ford. Patricia’s walker indicates Patricia is not only old but physically disabled. When Patricia and Beauty ignore the noisy dog, the reader can infer the two women are used to ignoring annoyances and other ugly realities of their situation.
Themes
Patricia, entering the breakfast room, notes her elderly Alsatians used to greet her there. The week before, Patricia ordered them shot. Though she hasn’t yet ordered Ethunzini shot, a grave has been dug. Patricia, who has always owned many dogs, resolved to sell the farm a year and a half earlier, when her final Chihuahua died. On that day, Patricia told Bheki to bury it among the bloodwoods, “where all the other dogs had been buried.”
The repeated references to Patricia’s dogs suggest their symbolic importance. Since Patricia has always been a dog owner, their deaths indicate a dramatic change in her life, one that could mean a fresh start or could simply foreshadow her own death.
Themes
Get the entire The Dream House LitChart as a printable PDF.
Noting a gas smell, Patricia muses how she has wished for the house to burn down “with all of them inside it.” Richard appears in pajamas and demands to bring the dogs to his father’s house. Patricia finds this funny. She reminds Richard his father died. Noticing Richard’s hands, she wonders how long it has been since he really touched her.
Patricia’s occasional desire that the house burn down indicates how violently she desires a fresh start—yet her desire that it burn down “with all of them inside it” hints that a fresh start is only possible through death. From Richard’s demand to visit his dead father and his assumption that they still own multiple dogs, the reader can infer Richard suffers from cognitive impairment, possibly dementia. That Patricia chooses to find Richard’s memory loss funny, meanwhile, shows how she uses humor as a coping mechanism. Finally, when Patricia wonders how long it’s been since she and Richard touched, the reader learns their marriage is strained.
Themes
Richard asks about their TV. Patricia reminds him it has been boxed up—they’re departing the next day. She expects Richard to yell or break something; instead, he asks whether they’re dead. When she denies it, he asks her to tell him once they are. She says: “If I can, Roo, I will.” Heaping sugar onto her oats, Patricia thinks it may kill her, but since she’ll die anyway, “it’s better to die of something you like.”
Richard’s question about whether he and Patricia are dead reveals the extent of his cognitive impairment, but it also suggests he and Patricia may be metaphorically “dead” too—for example, they may be emotionally or spiritually “dead.” Patricia’s jokes about death further show how she uses humor as a coping mechanism. Her ability to joke about Richard’s cognitive impairment, meanwhile, hints that she may not like him much.
Themes
Richard tells Patricia he dreamed they were dead but that no one had informed them. When he again asks whether they’re dead, she tells him, “Not quite.” She’s in the habit of using humor to shut him up. He tells her an ambulance is coming: “I said I have two dead children for you to pick up.” She replies: “What do you mean two?”
Patricia jokes that she and Richard are “not quite” dead to end his questions, revealing that she uses humor as a weapon against her husband as well as a coping mechanism. The exchange between Patricia and Richard about dead children is mysterious: her surprise that he’s talking about two dead children hints that at least one child has died on the farm.
Themes
The interior of Patricia’s 25-year-old Mercedes-Benz car has been badly damaged by her dogs—Patricia often leaves them in the back seat to “protect” the Mercedes while she and Bheki run errands. Though Patricia and Bheki are a fixture in the town near the farm, the town is gentrifying, and they and the damaged car no longer look like they belong.
Patricia’s car is a luxury brand, a Mercedes-Benz, but the car is old and damaged. These details imply that Patricia has lived a privileged life but lost wealth and status over time. That Patricia, Bheki, and the car don’t look like they belong in the gentrifying town reinforces this implication. That Patricia leaves the dogs to “protect” the car, which they then damage, suggests Patricia fears the wrong things: she thinks danger comes from outside, from strangers, when it actually comes from within.
Themes
Bheki has said he will continue to work for Patricia and Richard when they move to Durban. Though Patricia wanted to pay for Bheki’s education when he was young, he cared more about cars and used to wash the Mercedes all the time. Noting this, Patricia taught him how to drive—and when she became too disabled to operate a car, he became her driver.
Durban is the third-largest city in South Africa, very different from the rural farm where the characters live. This difference again suggests Patricia is looking for a fresh start. Yet she is bringing along her driver, Bheki, which hints that she isn’t making a completely fresh start. Patricia’s story about Bheki’s past may not be reliable. She believes he cared about cars more than school, but perhaps he cared about the wealth and status that cars represent. If so, paying for Bheki’s education would have helped Bheki more than teaching him to drive.
Themes
Finding Bheki outside, Patricia tells him to drive her to Mr. Ford’s and asks him to fill the gas tank while she’s visiting, since they’ll need it for the journey to Durban. Bheki rarely leaves the farm, and Patricia doesn’t know how he feels about the move, since he discusses logistics with her but almost nothing else.
Patricia’s lack of knowledge about Bheki’s inner life hints at two ways her economic and racial privilege blind her to others’ reality. First, as a rich white employer, Patricia doesn’t need to understand her working-class Black employee to get him to do what she wants. This suggests that Patricia’s privilege removes one major motive for her to understand her Black servants. Second, Bheki doesn’t tell Patricia about himself. This could be because Bheki doesn’t want to give Patricia any more power over him, suggesting that Bheki’s lack of privilege motivates him to withhold the details of his inner lives from his privileged employer.
Themes
It’s raining. As Bheki drives down the farm’s muddy driveway—surrounded by construction—the car skids off the road. Patricia yells at Bheki to be careful. He gets back on the road and drives with “exaggerated” caution, which Patricia interprets as a tacit claim the accident was the fault of the road or the construction. She wonders whether Bheki is happy they’re leaving.
The minor conflict between Bheki and Patricia over the car skidding illuminates the complicated racial and economic power dynamics that govern their relationship. The luxury car suggests wealth and mobility. Now that elderly white Patricia is too old to drive, it is her Black employee Bheki who actually controls the car—yet Patricia still feels empowered to criticize his driving from the backseat. If the reader views Patricia and Bheki’s relationship as representative of racial relations in post-apartheid South Africa, this incident suggests that racial inequality lingers in South Africa, even after the end of apartheid gave Black South African people more legal rights and access to economic opportunity.
Themes
Patricia herself is mostly happy to leave. Her father gave her the farm after she married Richard—her “mismatch”—but it only made money after Patricia took it over from Richard in the 1970s and focused on breeding Welsh ponies. Until Richard got sick, he took care of chickens and a few cows. When Patricia asks Bheki whether her father would be unhappy about them selling the farm, Bheki says nothing. Patricia, used to Bheki’s non-responses, “us[es] this vacant space to talk freely.”
Patricia thinks of Richard as her “mismatch”: she judges her marriage negatively despite its longevity. Patricia and Richard inherited wealth (the farm) from her father, but they managed the farm badly. This reveals both their economic privilege and their lack of know-how. That Patricia uses taciturn Bheki as a “vacant space” into which to pour her own thoughts, shows how her privilege and power over him allow her to ignore his inner life.
Themes
Patricia asks Bheki whether he recalls her father. When he says yes, she talks about her father’s “hard work,” care for his family, and the dinners he threw at the house in Durban. After Patricia mentions that you can see the harbor from the Durban house, Bheki quietly says he doesn’t like sea views. Patricia goes on speaking, saying her father didn’t like Richard but agreed to the marriage after he found out Patricia was pregnant. Bheki comments: “They say he was a good man.” Patricia replies: “The one good man in my life.”
Patricia praises her father’s “hard work,” which suggests she believes his wealth and success were due to his own efforts. Yet her father was a white landowner profiting off the labor of Black farm workers in a country that legally discriminated against Black people until the 1990s, when apartheid-era laws were repealed. This historical context reveals Patricia is misjudging the reasons for her family’s wealth. That she talks over Bheki when he finally does speak—to say he doesn’t like sea views—further demonstrates her blindness to those less privileged than she. Finally, Patricia’s claim that her father was “the one good man in [her] life” reveals her longstanding dissatisfaction with Richard.
Themes
Beauty. Beauty is still afraid of Richard, though he needs her to bathe and clothe him. Sometimes in the mornings, he has an erection, which she ignores. Though he mistakes Beauty for his mother and looks for things that aren’t there, they both know “he is the one with the power.”
Richard’s dependence on Beauty in his old age suggests a second infancy, a kind of rebirth; Richard’s habit of calling Beauty “mother” reinforces this idea. Yet Beauty’s fear of Richard and their shared knowledge that “he is the one with the power” due to his economic and racial privilege challenges this “rebirth.” Despite Richard’s dependence and dementia, his and Beauty’s shared past spoils their present interactions.
Themes
In the kitchen, Beauty drinks tea from a gold-rimmed cup with a faded image of the Queen of England on it. Meanwhile, Richard searches the boxes. Beauty muses that even before his decline, he searched for “bad news,” which strikes her as wrongheaded. She believes everything has a positive side, Richard included.
The faded teacup suggests Patricia and Richard used to have money but have fallen upon hard times. Beauty’s private judgments on Richard highlights that the old couple’s employees know and think things about their employers that their employers have never realized.
Themes
Beauty finds Richard, pantsless, holding a box. She asks him what he wants in isiZulu—the language she uses when they’re alone. She leads him to his room, gets him into pants, and asks him in English to zip up his fly. She recalls a joke the family’s employees tell: Richard “is the one who can never keep his zip up.” When he does nothing, Beauty zips his fly.
Patricia and Richard’s employees joke that Richard “can never keep his zip up”—a joke that hints Richard was repeatedly unfaithful to Patricia before his decline. The joke suggests the couple’s employees use humor as a coping mechanism to deal with their employers’ foibles; it also suggests that employees see their privileged employers far more clearly than their employers see them.
Themes
Patricia. Patricia and John Ford have been having an affair for more than 30 years, though without much physical contact in 15. They met when John was an English teacher at the village school. He became headmaster and then retired. Cancer killed his wife while he was headmaster. Patricia likes John because he’s well-read, whereas Richard is uneducated and resentful. Though an atheist, Patricia attended chapel to hear John sing and receive communion from him.
Patricia’s odd affair with John Ford reveals her tepid interest in romantic love—and her passivity. Though she explicitly likes John for being more educated than Richard, she seems never to have considered leaving Richard for John even after John’s own wife died. Yet she continues her affair with John for 15 years after they’ve stopped having sex, hinting that she’s not so much passionate about him as used to him.
Themes
Patricia comes to see John because he asked her to on the phone; she believed they’d already said their goodbyes. He meets her at his door. Using her walker, she follows him to the veranda. Once they stopped having sex, she stopped entering his bedroom; she believes he chose to stop, though she can’t remember when or why. Patricia notices his dead wife Anna’s roses need attention—but she doesn’t mention it. She and John don’t talk about Anna due to the “afterglow” tragic death has given her.
Patricia can’t remember when or why she and John stopped having sex, which reveals both her failing memory and her lack of emotional investment in her romantic life. That she and John never discuss John’s dead wife Anna, meanwhile, hints that perhaps John cared more about Anna than Patricia cares about Richard.
Themes
John asks whether Patricia is leaving “without a backward glance.” She replies: “backward glances only crick the neck.” When she asks why he called, he claims it was an emotional decision. She promises to call him weekly from Durban, though she suspects he’ll enjoy solitude. She believes he’s an arrogant man who “withhold[s] himself” from everyone. He tells her only to call if she has something to report; she says that won’t happen, and they “sort of” laugh.
Patricia’s claim that “backward glances only crick the neck” implies she doesn’t care about in the past—though her past-haunted relationships with Richard, John, Beauty, and Bheki suggest otherwise. Her negative judgement on John as someone who “withhold[s] himself” suggests she has found her affair as well as her marriage unsatisfying. Patricia and John’s “sort of” laughter when Patricia denies anything worth reporting will happen to her in Durban implies that they’re using humor to cope with their advanced age and the little life left to them.
Themes
Patricia was taking an intelligent boy who lived on the farm, Looksmart, to interview at the school when she met John. Patricia immediately knew John was attracted to her. He got Looksmart a scholarship, talked to Patricia about Looksmart’s education, and eventually began taking her to a hotel.
John seduced Patricia by helping a child she was responsible for get an education. This fact hints that Patricia has strong maternal instincts and may be more emotionally invested in children than in her husband or her lover.
Themes
John suggests that Patricia should put Richard in a home in Durban. Patricia is annoyed at John’s hypocrisy, disparaging her husband while worshipping his dead wife. She says she won’t put Richard in a home but jokes that she’ll hire a nurse so she’ll only have to see him once in a while. John gives her a letter but asks her not to read it until she’s reached Durban. As she leaves, she wonders why John called, perhaps to “explain why he never loved her as much as he loved his wife.” Annoyed, she resolves not to read the letter.
Again, Patricia makes a joke to hide from or cope with unpleasant feelings—in this case, annoyance at her lover for disparaging her husband. And again, her reactions to romantic disappointment are muted. When she thinks about how John “never loved her as much as he loved his wife,” she’s irritated—not devastated. This fact suggests she wishes John had loved her more due to her ego, not her own passionate love for him.
Themes
Beauty. Beauty, noting Patricia doesn’t have a plan for what to pack and what to leave, thinks: “The problem of what to do with the past would have to carry on in the future.” Beauty has started throwing the Wileys’ useless possessions away without their knowledge, believing they’ll be thankful in the future.
In contrast with Patricia, who has just claimed that “backward glances only crick the neck,” Beauty knows that “the problem of what to do with the past would have to carry on in the future.” Beauty knows this because, as a domestic employee, she is in charge of packing Patricia and Richard’s possessions—their physical history—for the new house. That Beauty, Patricia’s employee, recognizes the relevance of the past as Patricia does not is further evidence of Patricia’s racial and economic privilege, which is what allows her to disregard the past.
Themes
After lunch, Beauty leaves the Wileys’ house with the gold-rimmed Queen of England teacup. Though she tells herself that the cup is another possession the Wileys don’t use, she knows she’s stealing. Nevertheless, she finds the cup beautiful and “feels for it” because of how highly Patricia used to value it and how often she used to use it.
Though this passage doesn’t specify what Beauty “feels for” the cup, her desire to preserve it suggests she sympathizes with it somehow. Beauty’s ability to sympathize with the cup—an object Patricia used to value but doesn’t anymore—may explain why she can also sympathize with Patricia and Richard, two elderly white people who have largely lost their undeserved wealth and feel socially obsolete.
Themes
Construction workers have razed the rondavel where Beauty used to live. She now lives in a partially constructed house on the property that lacks electricity, plumbing, and doors. Beauty longs for her own house—for which Patricia started a savings account for her 15 years ago. Beauty will have everything she wants in the house except a husband: she loves Bheki, who doesn’t love her. People on the farm call her “Inyumba”—“the barren one.”
Though Patricia’s decision to sell the farm caused construction workers to raze Beauty’s rondavel, Patricia seems not to have considered letting Beauty stay in the main house. She may not even have considered where Beauty would stay in the interim between the farm’s sale and the Wileys’ moving day, revealing once again Patricia’s blindness to the facts of her employees’ lives. Patricia’s lack of consideration is at odds with her having started a savings account for Beauty—which suggests Patricia wants to be considerate of others but doesn’t always manage to do so. Beauty’s unreciprocated love for Bheki and her insensitive nickname continues the novel’s pattern of failed romantic attachments.
Themes
Bheki enters Beauty’s room without seeming to notice the stolen teacup. Though Beauty has known Bheki her whole life, she has difficulty knowing what he’s thinking. The one thing she’s sure he cares about is his young disabled son Bongani. When she asks Bheki where he’s been, he tells her about taking Patricia to see John. Beauty reflects Patricia will be glad to leave John, who belongs to her history.
Beauty is sure that Bheki cares about his son, however she can’t tell if he cares about his son’s mother, which suggests a pattern in the novel: romances matter less than parent-child relationships. Beauty suspects Patricia doesn’t want to see John anymore because he’s part of her old life; this suspicion shows Beauty has correctly identified Patricia’s desire for a fresh start and emphasizes that the Wileys’ employees understand their employers far better than the Wileys’ understand their employees.
Themes
Patricia. Patricia asks Richard where he’s going with a spade and demands Bheki go with him. She believes Richard wants to dig up Rachel, buried near the bloodwoods. Rachel’s headstone bears only one date, her birth- and death-date. Bheki often takes Patricia to the headstone, at her request. She asks Richard whether he remembers they’re departing tomorrow.
This passage does not explain who Rachel is, but it contains several clues. That Rachel’s birth- and death-date are the same implies that she’s one of the “dead children” Richard and Patricia discussed at breakfast. Since Richard and Patricia both visit Rachel’s grave, the reader can infer Rachel was their baby. The passage perhaps suggests that Patricia and Richard’s marriage failed because their baby died. That Richard may want to dig Rachel up suggests the importance of rebirth and resurrection in the novel.
Themes
Patricia recalls a night she and Richard stayed out on the beach talking. He told her about his childhood in Yorkshire; she told him about hers in Durban. Both their mothers died young; that was the only thing they had in common. Before sunrise, they had sex because they had nothing else to say. After sex, they swam. Patricia thinks it was “paradise”; she and Richard “have never spoken in quite the same way since.”
Early in their romance, Patricia and Richard bonded over their dead mothers. This one memory in all their unhappy marriage seems to Patricia “paradise,” and they’ve never managed to talk to each other “in quite the same way since”—showing again how parent-child relationships are centrally important in the novel.
Themes
At teatime, Richard puts his boots on. Patricia asks Beauty to go tell Bheki to accompany Richard. After Beauty leaves, Patricia suggests Richard remove his boots and take a bath. Instead, he leaves with the spade. Patricia thinks she might shoot him if she had a gun. She calls to him; he doesn’t answer. She calls to Beauty; she doesn’t answer either.
Patricia’s sudden desire to shoot Richard—like her occasional wish that her house would burn down—betrays both her dislike of her husband and her unexpressed feeling that only death or destruction can adequately change their lives.
Themes
Looksmart. Looksmart, driving toward Dwaleni Farm, notices the sign is faded since the last time he saw it. Everything else looks the same. On his six-hour drive, he listened to 80s music, chatted to Noma about school, and had a fight with his wife. He contemplates how he still feels, when he travels in white spaces, like he’s going to be asked to leave. Seeing the farm’s ruined driveway, so unlike what he remembers from childhood, Looksmart isn’t shocked: he’s aware the farm has been under construction. Yet he feels “the project he has been managing for more than a year already appears to have failed and been discarded.”
Looksmart seems to have a bad relationship with his wife, with whom he fights. This detail reinforces the novel’s pattern of failed romances. That Looksmart, who grew up on the farm, has been “managing [its development] for more than a year” yet hasn’t visited until now suggests a past conflict between Looksmart and the Wileys that the narrative has yet to reveal. That Looksmart is still uncomfortable in white spaces long after South Africa repealed its laws enforcing racial segregation, meanwhile, illustrates how past injustices linger in the present.
Themes
Looksmart believes he’s visiting the farm “out of nostalgia for a time when he could hate properly.” Though hatred fueled his early accomplishments, he’s gained his later accomplishments, including his daughters, after his hatred burned out. Parking the car at the Wileys’ house, he contemplates leaving and going to his hotel. He wonders whether the Wileys or Grace—who is dead, but whom he longs to see—have motivated his visit. He wonders, also, whether he “has enough hatred left in him for this encounter.” He resolves not to “spar[e]” either “the old woman” or himself.
That Looksmart is visiting the farm “out of nostalgia for a time when he could hate properly” suggests that when he lived on the farm, he hated someone there. His resolve not to spare “the old woman” suggests he hates Patricia—which is unexpected, since she remembers him as a child she cared for. Looksmart’s tumultuous quasi-filial relationship to Patricia, together with his thoughts of his own daughters, again emphasizes the importance of parent-child bonds.
Themes
Patricia. Patricia hears a car coming but is distracted by possessions she’s examining, including a “used ticket stub for a play called Dream of the Dog.” Again, she contemplates burning the house down. Patricia calls to Beauty, tells her Richard has left the house carrying the spade, and suggests Beauty or Bheki get him. Beauty volunteers. Patricia thanks her in isiZulu and suggests she look at Rachel’s grave before checking where the animals used to be kept. The dog Ethunzini barks. Beauty, looking out the window, tells Patricia there’s a car outside. After Beauty leaves, Patricia calls for her when she hears the flyscreen in the back of the house open.
Since Looksmart was driving toward the house in the previous scene, readers can infer it’s his car Patricia hears. Previously, the novel has associated cars with wealth and status; Looksmart’s car suggests he has come up in the world since he left the farm. The ticket stub for Dream of the Dog is a winking allusion to Craig Higginson’s own work; he based this novel on his play, Dream of the Dog (2007). The suggestive name of the play, together with the dog barking at Looksmart’s approach, foreshadows the importance of dogs to the coming meeting between Patricia and Looksmart.
Themes
