Gallant

The titular house is a profoundly Gothic feature of the novel: It is decaying; it has a doppelganger; and even its very architecture is Gothic. The house also plays into another distinctly Gothic trope—it creates a feeling of entrapment for those who live in it. Olivia often feels literally trapped by Gallant. As she tries to escape the master through a secret passage, she crawls “on hands and knees through the pitch-black tunnel, and she tries not to think (sic) of a grave, of a tomb, of being buried here, under the house” (309). This imagery of graves and tombs associates Gallant not only with death, but with a sense of unyielding permanence, the feeling of being caught in a place that will never allow for growth or change. This sensation is reinforced by the rest of the imagery connected to Gallant’s interiors, from the pictures of all the Priors encased in their frames and displayed on the walls, to the closets full of Grace’s dresses that have gone untouched for decades and wait for Olivia to literally step into her mother’s role.

Olivia’s emotional experience of Gallant shifts over the course of the novel. By the end of the