Gallant

“Olivia has been buried alive.

At least, that is how it feels.”

Here, Schwab uses hyperbole and metaphor to describe Olivia’s experience of working in Merilance’s kitchen. This hyperbolic statement serves to introduce one of the novel’s more Gothic themes—The Perils and Powers of Inheritance and the ensuing sense of entrapment that defined Grace’s existence and that Olivia must grapple with.

“I am so happy. I am so scared.

The two, it turns out, can walk together, hand in hand.”

Grace’s journals are full of pithy observations about the experience of living at Gallant. Here, her assessment that fear and joy can be intertwined reflects one of the primary motifs of the novel—the Gothic double, inherent in Gallant and Grace’s Journal.

“[S]he twirls across the floor and flings herself onto the bed. She expects to rouse a plume of dust, but there is none, only her limbs sinking into soft down. She lies there, arms spread like a snow angel.”

The level of detail that Schwab gives to this passage, in which Olivia steps into her mother’s bedroom in Gallant for the first time, emphasizes how new a life of comfort and luxury is for Olivia. She’s never experienced anything other than misery at Merilance, so it follows that she would indulge in the comforts of Gallant.

“But for all she tried, the grim gray building never played its part. It was too cold, too hollow, too much itself, and every night when she climbed back into bed, she was reminded that Merilance was a house, but it would never be a home.”

Olivia’s reflections here on the distinction between “house” and “home” set up the narrative for its exploration of what “home” means. Here, Olivia already knows that a “home” must be more than a physical space, but she hasn’t yet experienced enough to know why Merilance doesn’t feel like a home.

“That word again—safe. But what is safe? Tombs are safe. Merilance was safe. Safe does not mean happy, does not mean well, does not mean kind.”

Here, Hannah’s desire that Olivia and Matthew stay safe helps Olivia reflect on what she desires out of her time at Gallant. Because of her experiences at Merilance, Olivia knows that safety alone doesn’t create fulfillment—what does bring her fulfillment she still has yet to find.

“They reminded her of the diagram in the old anatomy text, the muscles and tendons of the throat laid bare. Cut here to silence a voice.”

In this flashback, Olivia decides not to maim the Matron’s piano by cutting its wires. This moment is a prime example of how Olivia feels and expresses empathy: She sees her own vocal cords in the piano wire, and can’t bear to silence even an inanimate object.

“In daylight, the resemblance is obvious in the width of his brow, the slop of his cheek—but so are the differences. His eyes are bluer in the light, his hair a warmer shade, the light brown shot through with gold.”

Though the book is written in third person, Schwab stays close to Olivia’s perspective throughout. Here, Olivia’s descriptions of Matthew reflect the way in which she sees the world as a visual artist—she sees him as though he is a drawing.

“‘Put the right words into the world,’ he says, ‘never know what you’ll catch.’”

Here, Schwab uses Edgar’s dialogue to create a tonal juxtaposition. Edgar intends this statement to be empowering, but (unbeknownst to him) Olivia is haunted by not knowing who brought her to Gallant. This juxtaposition of positivity and fear creates a sense of unease.

“Her voice is soft, familiar, not high and sweet, but low and soothing.

The faintest rasp, like gravel, in her throat.”

Here, Olivia dreams of what her mother’s voice might have sounded like. It’s notable that Olivia doesn’t romanticize her mother’s voice, even in her imagination. This speaks to Olivia’s shifting mindset at this stage in the novel as learns more about her family’s difficult and deeply troubled history.

“She goes to the bathroom sink, brushing the dried blood away as if it was dust. She rinses her palms, waits to see if it will bleed again, but it doesn’t. She runs a thumb over the narrow line, the scab like a raised red thread, a vine, a root.”

The similes here, as Olivia tends to the wound she got from the roses by the wall, are notable. “Dust” and “thread” are both mundane, household objects that draw parallels between Olivia’s body and Gallant; similarly, “vine” and “thread” liken her to the garden. Even at this stage of the novel, Olivia is inextricably tied to the house.

“[S]he has the strangest feeling that if she does, the house will snatch it up, swallow it down into the cracks between the wooden boards, the gaps between the floors….”

Schwab anthropomorphizes the house consistently over the course of the narrative. Here, the house is figured as being able to consume, erase, and destroy its inhabitants.

“But I never thought of it as still. It’s…something in you goes quiet, to make room for the song.”

This passage, in which Matthew teaches Olivia the piano, offers some of the only insight into Matthew’s interiority. His assertion that playing music makes something “go quiet” speaks to the inner turmoil he faces routinely.

“Edgar is humming softly in the kitchen, but the low crackle of wood draws her toward the sitting room, where she finds Hannah tucked in a chair, feet propped before the fire, a novel open in her lap.”

For all that the novel is a Gothic horror narrative, it also figures Gallant as a surprisingly cozy setting. Even in the midst of the fear Olivia is experiencing in the house, she still finds small pleasures in living in the manor.

“I suppose there is no real need to write to you this way now. Perhaps I am writing for myself. It is a habit hard to shake.”

The novel is intimately concerned with how and why people communicate. Olivia is only able to learn about her mother through her writing, and her mother was only able to express herself to Olivia’s dad in writing. Grace’s reflection on why she writes suggests that the process of communicating largely in writing served her in ways other than just speaking to Olivia’s father—it suggests she found it useful for her own thought processes.

“It is only a matter of time and I am so so so tired it is hard to know sometimes I am sure I am awake, only to find myself waking….”

Schwab uses strikethrough in order to communicate how the nightmares are fracturing Grace’s thought processes. Grace is no longer expressing herself in a fluent, cogent manner by the end of her life; her thoughts are jumbled and often conflicting.

“One has snagged on a nearby thistle.

One has caught against a sturdy reed.

One she plucks out of the air as it sails past.

One lies dampened in the dirt.”

Here, Schwab describes Olivia losing the green journal in the shadow-realm. The technique of separating each sentence into its own paragraph, and repeating “one,” emphasizes how important each individual page is to Olivia—and how crushing each loss feels.

“Only two things stop her: the cold that lingers on her skin; and the way the rose leans forward, as if reaching, hungry.”

Here, Schwab anthropomorphizes a rose. This anthropomorphizing serves to blur the boundaries between what is real and what isn’t as Olivia begins to cross the garden wall; it also reinforces the idea that Gallant yearns to erase and destroy the Priors.

“Olivia Prior has never been a quiet girl. She has always made a point of making noise, everywhere she goes, in part to remind people that just because she cannot speak, does not mean that she is silent.”

This passage emphasizes the notion that Olivia’s disability does not silence her literally or metaphorically. Olivia consistently finds ways to communicate—more ways than the rest of the inhabitants of Gallant—and this is one of her great strengths.

“When people see tears, they stop listening to your hands or your words or anything else you have to say. And it doesn’t matter if the tears are angry or sad, frightened or frustrated. All they see is a girl crying.”

In the novel, neither Olivia nor Hannah deals with explicit sexism, but in passages like this one Schwab reminds the reader that Olivia has dealt with sexism in her life. This is one of the ways in which Schwab makes Olivia’s experience feel real and lived-in.

“‘Everything casts a shadow,’ he begins, ‘even the world we live in.’”

Here, Matthew pithily summarizes one of the novel’s major motifs: that doubling creates an uncanniness, and that everything in the world has the potential for that uncanniness. This is reflective of his experience, having lived at Gallant his entire life.

“But she doesn’t. She can’t. She has never been a Merilance girl.”

Here, Schwab uses Merilance as a shorthand for the characteristics that Olivia rejects—submission, silence, and disconnection. Olivia forges her own definition of what living at Gallant will mean, and this is formed, in part, in opposition to her experience at Merilance.

“The thing beyond the wall can strip life from this world, but in that world she can give it back. Is that a weapon, or a weakness? She doesn’t know.”

The weapon and weakness dichotomy here (underscored by Schwab’s alliteration) speaks to one of the major developments of Olivia’s character throughout the novel. She learns how to find power in the aspects of her life that society expects will doom her.

“I am simply nature. The cycle. The balance. And I am inevitable. The way night is inevitable. The way death is inevitable.”

This excerpt from one of the master’s monologues foreshadows what Olivia discovers at the end of the novel—that he cannot simply be killed. The master figures himself as something essential to the functioning of the world; though Olivia stops the master from achieving his goals, she does eventually have to accept the ways in which he is integral to Gallant.