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In The Dream House, the Wileys’ farmhouse represents how the past inevitably affects the present; while people’s lives do change, it’s impossible for anyone to have a completely “fresh start.” As the novel begins, white South African farm owner Patricia Wiley notices mist creeping into her house, which she has lived in for years. The mist suggests Patricia cannot see the house clearly—and, by implication, that she cannot see her own past clearly. Shortly after, readers learn Patricia is selling her entire farm, including the house. By selling the house, Patricia is clearly trying to make a fresh start.
In addition, when the novel reveals that the house stands on the most elevated spot on the farm, literally allowing Patricia and her white English expatriate husband Richard to look down on the Black workers they employ, the novel reveals the house symbolizes not only the Wileys’ past but also South Africa’s past of white supremacy under apartheid. Patricia has sold the house to a development company that employs Looksmart, a Black man who grew up on the Wileys’ farm during the last years of apartheid. After entering the house uninvited—symbolically invading Patricia’s past, which she is trying to escape—Looksmart tells Patricia about Richard’s long-ago murder of Black farm worker Grace. Thus, Looksmart forces Patricia to confront her complicity in the violent racism her past contains.
At the novel’s end, Patricia gives the house keys to Looksmart and departs, a gesture that suggests real historical change has occurred: a Black person now controls the house and farm whose layout has symbolized racial inequality. Yet, as Looksmart explains to Patricia, Looksmart’s development company plans to renovate the Wileys’ house and build similar houses on their farmland for rich white people moving fleeing South African cities to avoid close contact with Black people. Although apartheid laws have been repealed, South Africa has not attained a “fresh start” or left racist attitudes and racial segregation in the past. Many white South Africans still indulge in racist attitudes and live in racially segregated areas, even if no one is legally enforcing the segregation—as the fate of the Wileys’ house demonstrates in miniature.
The Wileys’ House Quotes in The Dream House
The The Dream House quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Wileys’ House. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
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She doesn’t know what possessed them to plant those trees. To protect them from the wind, the sun, the view? It hardly matters now. Soon the trees will be cut down and cleared away, along with everything else. The people who come to live here afterwards will know nothing about any of them, and maybe it will be better that way.
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The problem of what to do with the past would have to carry on in the future.
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Chapter 2
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As she speaks, she recalls the times he used to tease her, when teasing—no doubt learned in part from her—was the mode between them. At the time, their world seemed to permit little else: it didn’t even allow them to touch. But now there is no affection in this echo of their old style. Today everything between them seems to bristle with innuendo and hurt.
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Chapter 3
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He’s never understood the workings of the house. The fact is it was never his house, but hers, handed down from her father. While he was there on good behaviour. Which is why he thinks he chose bad behaviour.
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He was a fool for coming here. But what did he expect? A miraculous transformation? People like her are still sitting in their houses. People like him are still looking in.
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Each time, the house is less built. Is it that he is going further back in time? Is he going backwards the more he runs? If so then when will he stop? What is he aimed at? He stands on the large concrete slab in the middle of nowhere and ponders this, and eventually he sits.
It is not so much that he is dead. It is more that no one appears to have been born. They still have their whole lives ahead of them. Nothing that needs to be undone has yet been done.
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Chapter 4
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It may be his dream house—this house transformed almost beyond recognition—but it still comes from her. Perhaps too much from her. Perhaps even today he’s too attached to his pain—and all he’s managing to do is reproduce it, with slight variations, all across the valley.
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Nothing has ever come back to her. Everything around her—and much that has been happening in the country at large has only confirmed this—has only ever held evidence of loss or decay.
But recently she has also been observing all the new buildings starting up out of the earth, and the green crops of weeds appearing in the most improbable places. A few days ago, when she and Bheki were driving into the village, she noticed a cloud of yellow butterflies hovering around the weeds and spilling over across their path. Bheki drove on through them as though they weren’t there, and neither of them said a word about it, but in that instant Patricia saw that there was an altogether different way of viewing the world: as an inexhaustible source of renewal and growth.
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Get the entire The Dream House LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Wileys’ House Symbol Timeline in The Dream House
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Wileys’ House appears in The Dream House. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
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...
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Chapter 2
Looksmart. Since Looksmart encounters no security entering the Wileys’ house through the back, he considers whether the Wileys might have already moved. But he hears...
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Beauty has noticed the houses being constructed on the property are built on the model of the Wileys’ house. She...
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In her house, Beauty puts on an anorak she got from a “stable girl[] from England—one of the...
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...he tells her he didn’t wear the suit for her. She mentions she’s leaving the house the next day, and he says that he knows she has sold the farm. When...
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Chapter 3
Richard. In the present, Richard thinks that he has always felt alienated in the farmhouse, since it belonged to Patricia through her father, whereas he lived in it “on good...
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As alienated as Richard feels from the farmhouse, it shocks him to find the driveway and gate gone. He sees a house with...
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...in the rain, spies a man (Looksmart) sprinting onto the veranda “as if the whole house is on fire.”
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...his decision to come: “Nothing has changed. People like her are still sitting in their houses. People like him are still looking in.”
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Beauty. When Beauty returns to the house to tell Patricia she can’t find Richard, Patricia demands the “truth” about Grace’s death. Patricia...
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Chapter 4
Beauty takes Richard to her half-built house, dries him, and changes him into some of her clothes. He asks: “Is this our...
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...footing, Patricia tells him he was “the only child ever to be happy in this house [. . .]. You were like the sun [. . .]. My son.”
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...Patricia the papers, plans for the community. Patricia says she hopes the builders raze her house—a comment Looksmart thinks “aspire[s] to speak for him” but doesn’t express his feelings. He gives...
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Patricia. Patricia wonders whether Looksmart’s “dream house,” the Wileys’ house renovated and reproduced in other houses, is just a reproduction of Looksmart’s...
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...company involved. She says she’s glad he’s involved and suggests that once she leaves the house, he’ll be free of “everything—that’s dead.” He says he isn’t sure; since coming to the...
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Richard. Richard knows he’s not in his house because “the black girl” (Beauty) is sitting on the bed. He feels as though he’s...
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Beauty. Beauty follows Richard out of her house but can’t see him in the dark. When she goes to the Wileys’ house check...
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Richard. Richard enters the house carrying a stone “the size of a human skull.” He sees a well-dressed Black man...
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Chapter 5
...into the kitchen for breakfast and notices the room looks rundown. She’s never renovated the house. She’s only recently realized life’s goodness is something she should have worked to maintain, not...
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...other car, greets them. Jokingly, Patricia asks whether he’s checking that they’ve really vacated the property. Apparently not hearing her well, Looksmart apologizes, saying he didn’t realize they’d still be here....
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