Memory and the Past

At the start of the novel, the author uses Sallie’s return to the Big House in order to instigate her thematic explorations regarding memory. Nine years after her father the Duke sends her away to live with her aunt Faye in Hatfield, Sallie goes back to her childhood home when her stepmother Jane dies. Upon returning to the house in Part I, Chapter 2, Sallie says that “It’s a peculiar feeling to finally see something that has been lodged in your head for so long” (20). Although Sallie has been waiting for this day for nearly a decade, the peculiarity she is experiencing is inspired by her fear. Indeed, she goes on to confess that when she got back, she was afraid that “the Big House would not be as big as my memories made it out to be” (20). Because she has spent...