The House of Doors

“We showed that German writer around when he was in Penang—what was his name, dear? Hesse, wasn’t it? Yes. Hermann Hesse.”

Robert highlights several qualities about European society in colonial Penang and the colonial mindset. His offhandedness suggests haughtiness, as if visitations from literary figures is common or expected. For a German author like Hesse to be shown around by an Englishman (two groups that experienced lingering animosity in the post-World War I-era) suggests the insularity of European society in colonial Penang, in which white Europeans, regardless of national origin, were conferred “insider” status, as opposed to “outsider” Asians.

“Less than a decade ago the only illumination after sundown came from oil lamps and candle-flame. Recalling those days, I was flooded with a powerful yearning to sit in the shadows again, like a Buddha in an abandoned temple at nightfall, remembered only by the flame of a guttering candle lit by a passing pilgrim.”

Lesley’s longing for a time before electricity came to Penang uses terms that are at once self-aggrandizing and culturally appropriative. Rather than exhibiting respect for another culture’s religion, Lesley’s characterization of Buddha in a temple connotes a vague mysticism that suggests she sees Buddhism merely as “other” rather than a faith worthy of fair consideration. Additionally, her connection of Buddha with a pre-electricity time relies on the racist colonial view of other cultures as backwards or inherently more archaic that European cultures.

“[Gerald and Willie] stayed in hotels and rest houses and, when those were not available, in the bungalows of Residents and District Officers.”

Gerald and Willie’s travel lodgings imply the privilege experienced by white travelers in colonized areas of Southeast Asia, and how the tight European community proved willing to open their homes to strangers merely because they were white, rich, and famous. The pervasiveness of these officers—even more widespread than hotels or rest houses—further indicates the expansiveness of colonial authority.

“The answer was obvious, the look he gave me said. ‘The urge to confess, of course. For some people, getting away with a crime is a heavier…burden to bear than the fear of being caught.’”

The use of the terms “confession” and “crime” both suggest the great weight that Lesley puts on to her own story, which stands in proximity to events of historical significance only by chance. Though her story could be considered a “confession,” as adultery transgresses social rules, it is not literally a “crime.” In the end, the novel largely sees other people’s crimes confessed, such as when Robert reveals William Proudlock’s role in the shooting of William Steward.

“It was something that had never occurred to [Lesley] before: we all had the power to change our pasts, our beginnings—or our perception of them, at least—but none of us could determine how our stories would end.”

The aside in this excerpt indicates the difference between what can literally be changed of a person’s past and what cannot; while the perception may alter, the events themselves will not. The novel’s commitment to storytelling over factuality suggests, however, that the perception of the past may matter more than the events themselves. The novel is less explicit on the last part of this claim; Willie suggests that the writer alone can determine the end of the story, while Lesley’s “ending” suggests that one’s story doesn’t actually end at all.

“Looking at him, a longing for the man’s simple life gripped Willie. Envious of a native fiddling with his balls under a tree, he thought. How the mighty have fallen.”

Willie engages in various false and racist suppositions, and he demonstrates the colonial mindset. First, he equates simplicity with goodness and assumes a man’s life simple at a single glance. Second, he implies a connection between nativeness, simplicity, and crassness (“fiddling with his balls”). Third, he imagines himself (a white man) in an elevated position of “the mighty.” This racist, colonialist way of thinking characterizes Willie’s perspective of Asians in Penang—as worthy of literary attention, but not as anything approaching equals.

“‘Marriage changes a…man.’

‘Not as much as it changes a woman.’”

Willie and Lesley’s respective comments on marriage illustrate the novel’s pessimistic stance about the institution while reiterating the gendered inequality suffered by women in marriage, which the men around Lesley are incapable of imagining. While the novel does support Lesley’s view that marriage weighs disproportionately on women, it further asserts that compulsory heterosexuality (though not in this term, which is anachronistic to the 1920s) harms all under its grip.

“‘Where does a story begin, Willie?’ I asked.For a while, he did not say anything. Then he shifted in his chair. ‘Where does a wave on the ocean begin?’ he said. ‘Where does it form a welt on the skin of the sea, to swell and expand and rush towards shore?’”

Willie, who regularly aggrandizes the role of the storyteller, fashions the story as a natural, powerful force that is at once magical, unknowable, and unstoppable. This implies that the same qualities are projected onto him, as the conduit through which these stories appear.

“The owner, a Hainanese former chef who had never been to England, had decorated the place according to his idea of how a café in London would look.”

This excerpt illustrates the corollary to the colonial mindset that Lesley, Willie, and their white associates experience, in which the colonized subject is asked to embody the mentality of the colonizer. To appeal to the comfort (and money) of rich and powerful Europeans, the Hainanese cafe owner is asked to imagine Europe relocated in Penang. The phrase “his idea,” however, suggests that, according to colonialism’s exclusionary hierarchies of race and power, this idea will never be sufficient. This quote also speaks to the theme of Gender, Race, and Equality in a Colonial Mindset.

“I do not belong to the Christianity of the churches. I belong to the Christianity of Jesus, who was a revolutionary himself.”

Sun, who regularly presents himself as different from the leader of the Taiping Rebellion, Hong Xiuquan, who presented himself as the brother of Jesus Christ, here exhibits an ironic twist in comparing himself to Christ, another revolutionary. Sun, who is regularly praised in the novel for his compelling speechmaking, thus gets to appear akin to a prophet who garners Christlike adoration while avoiding the criticisms of hubris that come with claiming divinity.

“‘Mrs. Proudlock claims that she was dining alone at home that evening,’ Hereford continued […] ‘yet she was attired in a tea gown, a tea gown that was cut very low.’ He cleared his throat ostentatiously.”

The prosecutor in the Proudlock case makes a suggestive comment about Ethel’s clothing to claim that if the man she killed, William Steward, did attempt to rape her (something which the prosecutor further expresses as doubtful), her clothing might have invited such an attack. This sexist framing is frequently condemned by feminist thinkers who point out that the implication “she was asking for it” places the blame for sexual violence on the victims and survivors rather than the perpetrators. This quote also speaks to the theme of Gender, Race, and Equality in a Colonial Mindset insofar as gender is concerned.

“The next morning he left England on the first boat and, with an immense feeling of freedom and relief, rushed headlong towards war.”

Tan uses ironic juxtaposition between freedom and relief and the perils of war to emphasize how trapped Willie feels in his marriage to Syrie. While the horrors of war do somewhat undermine this feeling as naive, Willie also meets Gerald in the war, leading to an affair that gives him some of the freedom his relationship with Syrie lacks.

“He and his friends […] were reeling from the death knell that rung across England by poor Oscar Wilde’s fate. […] What did he—or anyone else—care about the abduction of some Chinaman by his own government?”

This excerpt highlights the significance of the Oscar Wilde trials on gay men in England, who perceived Wilde’s incarceration as a sign that they were liable to come under attack as well; if a prominent man like Wilde could be jailed for “gross indecency,” what hope did a regular citizen have? Willie’s framing of “anyone else” in the second sentence also elides that by “anyone,” he means “anyone that matters to him,” a group which specifically concerns white Europeans. The framing to Sun Yat Sen as “some Chinaman” is dismissive and racist, showing the disregard Willie holds for the politics of a group he considers inferior to himself.

“‘It was a different world in those days,’ said Robert.”

Robert’s response to Lesley’s reminder that Francis Light swindled land away from a biracial “Eurasian” woman implies that Robert thinks that injustice has decreased in the time since Light’s crime; in a novel that takes place in a still-colonized Penang, this claim emerges as naive and ignorant. In a historical novel, additionally, it poses the question that if Robert thinks (incorrectly) that injustice has faded in the century prior, what might modern white people with colonial or neo-colonial privilege incorrectly see as an injustice of the past that actually endures into the present?

“Whenever he uttered something like that, or whenever I watched him in a heated discussion with the others at the reading club, a sudden realization would strike me: But…he’s Chinese. Then a second later the shock would face away, and he would just be Arthur again, just a man I knew.”

Though Lesley often fails to see a connection between race and gender when it comes to the pursuit of equality, she here illustrates that she does recognize, at least in part, the way ideologies of race influence ideologies of gender and vice versa. Her contrast of “Chinese” with “just a man” implies that her vision of “man” does not include the quality “Chinese;” gender is thus, for Lesley, inherently a racialized concept.

“‘The whispering tree,’ I murmured. How strange, that with just a few words something which I had always found unattractive was now transformed into a thing of beauty.”

This excerpt speaks to the transformative power of storytelling, which ripples throughout the novel. Once Lesley learns of the whispering tree legend about the casuarina tree, she finds it a thing of beauty; this leads her to share the same legend with Willie, who in turn uses the tree to give title to his short story collection. It also illustrates the exploitative nature of Willie’s writing—neither Lesley nor Arthur ever receives any credit for this knowledge, while Willie earns a fortune off it.

“‘Nobody will give two hoots about the trial—or Ethel—once it’s over,’ I said. ‘By the end of the year they would have forgotten about her. She could return to her old, normal life. And that’s how it should be.’”

Lesley, here in conversation with Arthur, shows the depth of her faith in white privilege, not only in asserting that Ethel will be able to return to her previous life after standing trial for murder, but in her assessment that this result would be correct. This statement comes at the end of the chapter, indicating that Lesley is not only confident enough to make this assertion in front of Arthur, a man who does not share the same privilege, but that her recollection of the story does not merit the inclusion of his response.

“‘By marrying Robert, you have given him a haven. You have kept him safe from speculation and gossip. But most of all, safe from…being locked up in gaol.’

‘We’re wives,’ Lesley said. ‘Not martyrs.’”

Lesley’s rejection of Willie’s romantic vision of the role that wives of gay man played in protecting their husbands in the years where gay sex was punishable by law in England demonstrates that, though the burden is felt unevenly, anti-gay laws are cruel to more than the people they aim to punish directly. A society in which compulsory heterosexuality is both legally and socially enforced, the novel suggests, renders marriage a dangerous institution for men and women alike.

“It shouldn’t be allowed to happen to a European woman.”

In addition to articulating a clear vision of racial privilege as something white colonizers in Malay openly claim as their due, this excerpt shows the faith these colonizers have in legal authority, here amorphously described via “allowed.” The passive voice in this sentence elides who, exactly, is doing this allowing; the vague pronoun “it” suggests the view that white inhabitants in Malay consider this authority—which must always work in their favor—as totalizing.

“How ironic that Robert and I each had our own Chinese lovers. We had this unusual thing in common, but we could never discuss it.”

Lesley here misuses “irony,” and in doing so reveals her own biases. Her notion of what is “usual” or “unusual” about having an affair with a Chinese man assumes a white person (and a white person in a community largely made up of other white people) as “normal.” That she can do so while having lived her whole live in Chinese-majority Penang suggests both the insularity of her community and the force of her white-central colonialist ideology.

“What sustained a marriage, kept it going year upon year, I realized, were the things we left unmentioned, the truths that we longed to speak forced back down our throats, back into the deepest, darkest chambers of our hearts.”

Lesley’s view of silence within her marriage varies considerably in different portions of the novel; at times she resents the silence between her and Robert, while at other times she embraces silence with a sense of resignation, as in this excerpt. After Robert’s death, she finds she misses silence between them. This shifting perspective casts doubt upon Lesley’s assertion that she has figured out what sustains marriages.

“As I looked at the men and women around me—so young, so fired up with purpose—I knew that I did not belong there anymore. Perhaps I never did.”

Lesley again shows her blindness to issues of race as she visits the Tong Meng Hui headquarters and feels she doesn’t belong based on age. The second sentence in this excerpt suggests a partial understanding—if she never did belong, not even when she was younger, was there some other difference that kept her apart from those who suffered under colonial rule?—but she never fully reaches an articulation of this viewpoint.

“Never before had he seen so many races of Asiatics in one place: Malays and Chinamen and Javanese and Bengalis, Siamese and Tamils and many others he couldn’t identify.”

Willie here exhibits a flattening of national and ethnic identity—via the archaic term “Asiatics”—to unify a racial “Other,” that he immediately follows with a divisive categorization via smaller ethnic groups (again, using archaic and racist terminology). This at once shows his racist impulse to hierarchize different racial groups and demonstrates an urge toward categorization that was used to defend many racist colonial policies.