Starling House

“It’s something about the way the shadows fell in Eden, after Eleanor died. It’s the way everything soured: the river ran darker and the clouds hung lower; rich coal seams went dry and healthy children sickened; good luck went bad and sweet dreams spoiled. It’s the way Starling House crouches just out of sight, watching us all. It’s the way the fog still rises, on chill and rotten nights. Some people think it’s just weather, but my granddaddy always said it was her: Eleanor Starling, whittled down to nothing but malice and mist, still thirsty for Gravely blood, haunting the town that still hates her.”

This excerpt from Bev’s story about Starling House adheres to many of the conventional imagery and symbolism that is characteristic of the Southern Gothic genre. From the gloomy atmosphere to the foreboding tone and physical setting, the passage is designed to create a sense of tension and suspense that is steeped in long, bitter histories and hidden shame. The quote also establishes Eden’s general perspective on Eleanor and Starling House, for the townspeople associate both with the “bad luck” that Eden continually experiences.

“They didn’t like anything ugly or unfortunate, anything that took the shine off the story they were telling about themselves.”

Opal makes this comment about the citizens of Eden after hearing Calliope’s story and recognizing how the town has corrupted it in order to show its most powerful inhabitants in a more favorable light. This passage therefore highlights The Interplay of Truth, Stories, and Power, for Opal’s observation is meant to emphasize how profoundly the story of Starling House has changed over time due to the townspeople’s willful attempts to ignore the ugly truths of their past.

“When most people in Eden talk about their roots they’re waving rebel flags and making bullshit arguments about the Second Amendment, but it sounds different in Charlotte’s mouth. It makes me think of an apple seed spit carelessly by the side of the road, sprouting despite the bad soil and the fumes, clinging hard to the only patch of earth it was ever given.”

This quote touches on the theme of Grappling with the Past, emphasizing Eden’s horrible history and acknowledging that certain people refuse to see the truth of their hometown’s hidden crimes and injustices over the years. However, this quote also shows that people can move on from the past without forgetting it. Charlotte is a prominent avatar of this more balanced view, for her role as librarian allows her to know the full history of Eden and also to find ways to recontextualize these truths from a more modern perspective.

“I walk to work with the collar of Arthur’s coat turned up, thinking about Bev’s story and Miss Calliope’s truth, trying to decide if they’re the same thing. It’s like one of those optical illusions that’s either a cup of wine or two faces about to kiss, depending which way you turn it. The Gravelys are either victims or villains; Eleanor Starling is either a wicked woman or a desperate girl. Eden is either cursed, or merely getting its comeuppance.”

This quote of Opal’s gets to the heart of the discussion of truth that the author explores throughout the novel, for it touches on how two disparate stories can represent the truth from different angles. Unlike most people in Eden, Opal tries not to believe every story about Starling House, for she knows that the truth must be far more complex than any one story. With this more balanced and analytical approach, Opal is able to weigh both the positive and negative aspects of Eden.

“I think: He can’t leave. It sounds like he tried, but he’s bound to that house in some way I don’t understand. Trapped in this town, just like me, making the best of the messes our mothers left us.”

This passage highlights Opal’s thoughts about Arthur when she first begins to understand that he is somehow bound to Starling House. At this same point in the novel, Opal begins to perceive key similarities between herself and Arthur, yet her observation of these similarities also allows her to discern the many differences between them, for Opal soon goes on to articulate the jealousy she harbors of Arthur’s privileged life.

“I have the fanciful idea that if I dug a knife into the crown molding I would find green wood and sap. If I laid my ear on the floor I would hear a great rushing, like a pair of lungs drawing breath.”

Opal makes this comment about Starling House as she comes to the end of her cleaning endeavors. Not only does this excerpt show elements of the Southern Gothic genre by presenting the haunted house as a living entity, but it also shows how Opal gives new life to Starling House. The house is personified throughout the novel and takes on an air of quasi-sentience in many different ways, yet even these early efforts that Opal makes to know the house better serve to imply that with her presence, Starling House appears to be more alive than ever.

“Then he closes his eyes very deliberately, and I recognize this, too; this is what it looks like when you swallow all your hunger. When you want what you can’t have, so you bury it like a knife between your ribs.”

Opal makes this observation about Arthur when she finds him beside his parents’ grave and recognizes that he has feelings for her. Opal continues to see the similarities between herself and Arthur, and in doing so, she begins to feel sorry for him. Just like her, Arthur is convinced that he has no right to pursue his own dreams and must only focus on fulfilling his self-appointed role in life; while Opal dedicates herself to safeguarding Jasper, Arthur devotes all his energy to protecting Eden from the ravages of the beasts.

“Once there was a little girl named Nora Lee who had bad, bad dreams. The dreams were full of blood and teeth, and they frightened her very much, but I will tell you a secret: she loved them, too, because in her dreams the teeth belonged to her.”

The opening lines of The Underland are written in a Gothic tone and highlight Nora Lee’s unrestrained rage. Nora Lee (an anagram for Eleanor) is as angry with the world as the book’s author is with Eden itself, yet this quote reveals that Nora Lee’s bad dreams have been harnessed to provide her with an uncanny source of protection, avenging her for the many traumas that the Gravely family has perpetrated upon her. This passage also highlights just how powerless Nora Lee and Eleanor both are, for they only have power in the world of their imagination.

“That’s how the history of Starling House feels to me now, like a story told so many times the truth is obscured, caught only in slantwise glimpses. Maybe that’s how every history is.”

The more Opal learns about Starling House, the more she believes that the whole store is more complex than any one version she has discovered so far. Opal knows that she wants to hear Eleanor’s version of the truth, and only then will she know the whole story. Yet she also considers whether the whole truth can ever be revealed, suggesting “Maybe that’s how every history is.” Thus, the author uses Starling House to advance her own philosophies surrounding the unreliable nature of any given history, for all histories seek to illuminate certain aspects while obscuring others.

“People have told me that my whole life, you know that? People who love me, people who hate me. All of them seem to agree that I don’t belong here.”

This passage represents Jasper’s retort when Arthur tells him to leave Eden. Throughout his life, Jasper has had everything decided for him, and everyone believes he is either too good or not good enough for Eden. This quote highlights the fact that Jasper is highly concerned with choice, a lesson he teaches Opal toward the end of the novel.

“A Warden falls. The house calls someone new—someone lost or lonely, someone whose home was stolen or sold or who never had a home in the first place. It calls them, and they come, and they are never homeless again.”

This quote details the process of how the house finds a new inhabitant. All Wardens of Starling House are ostracized or shunned by their communities, and the house acts as a sanctuary for them. Just like all the past Wardens, Opal and Arthur eventually find a home in Starling House and let it become an “Eden” for them.

“All this time I told myself I was saving him, shielding him from the messy shadow of Starling House, but apparently he’s already in it neck-deep, and the only person I was saving was myself. I didn’t want to tell him he was actually a Gravely, or even a student of Stonewood Academy. I didn’t want him to belong to anybody but me.”

This excerpt comes just after Opal realizes that Jasper has also had dreams about Starling House. This crucial information causes her to recognize how few choices she has given Jasper about his own life. Just as she is unable to ask others for help, Opal is also used to controlling her world, and by extension, she also tries to control the people in it as much as she can. This realization about Jasper shows her that she does not have as much control as she believes.

“A home, a name, a family. The word ‘family’ sets another montage off in my head, except this one isn’t imaginary. I see Bev, jabbing her finger in Constable Mayhew’s face; Charlotte, asking me to come with her; Jasper, pretending to sleep so that I can pretend to sleep. Arthur’s coat neatly folded on the couch. Arthur’s hands tangled in chicory and Queen Anne’s lace. Arthur’s face turning up to mine while the poppies bow around us.”

Throughout the novel, Opal has rejected the idea that she has any family beyond Jasper. However, here she finally recognizes that a family can consist of newfound relationships, and she realizes that her friends in Eden have become a family of sorts. The repetition of her references to Arthur also shows how much she has come to care about him and how much she wants him in her life.

“I tilt my head, studying Don Gravely—my great-uncle, I guess. This man who looked away while we lived on ramen noodles for eleven years, who would have kept on looking away if it weren’t for his bank account and his business plans. And why not? We share a little blood, maybe a curse, but he’s never stayed in town long enough to know what it’s like when the mist rises. There’s nothing that ties us together except a name I didn’t even know I had. It occurs to me, looking at those eyes, chips of cold limestone, that the Starlings probably had it right. That the only name worth having is the one you choose.”

Much like the previous quote, Opal uses this moment to further consider the importance of found family, even over the family she is related to by blood. The language she uses in this quote minimizes Don Gravely’s association with her, yet this excerpt also shows Opal’s inherent connection to the Starlings, for she clearly feels more like a Starling than a Gravely.

“It’s suddenly vital to me that he understands, that he knows there are no scales balanced between us, no debts; that I’m nothing like our great-uncle, offering kinship only on certain conditions. That I love him, and love wipes every ledger clean.”

Throughout the novel, Opal is always concerned with what she owes others. However, this quote shows Opal discovering just how wrong she was about the transactional nature of relationships. It also reveals how her outlook on the situation has influenced Jasper, for he feels that he owes her everything because she has always dedicated all of her efforts to him. Finally, however, Opal understands that this balancing of scales is not how unconditional love works.

“For a moment, or maybe a season, I am Starling House. I am an impossible architecture, a thing built from the dreams and nightmares of ten generations. There are wisteria roots wrapped around my bones and coffins buried beneath my skin. I sigh and the curtains billow. I curl my fist and the rafters moan.”

This quote resembles others in which Starling House is described as a living thing. However, it also shows Opal’s connection to the house, especially once she officially becomes its Warden. Leaning into conventions of fantasy literature, Harrow highlights just how intrinsic Opal’s link to Starling House is.

“I think of the Gravelys with their grand columned house and their Sunday dinners, surrounded by an entire town that admires and resents and relies on them, that never thinks for a single minute about this place. This mine, buried beneath them like a body, like a sin tucked under a mattress. I have the sudden, ugly sense that Eden deserved every year of foul luck, every bad dream, every Beast that padded down the streets.”

Throughout the novel, Opal grapples with Eden’s past and the “bad luck” it faces in its present. Especially once she learns of Nathaniel Boone’s story and what the enslaved men experienced at the hands of the Gravelys, Opal is tempted to embrace the same rage that Eleanor has toward both the Gravelys and the town. In the following chapters, both women must come to terms with Eden’s past and find ways to acknowledge that it can be better in the future.

“This is my story. No one listened to it before, and if they listened they did not believe it, and if they believed it they did not care. I am certain you are the same, but I will tell it anyway, because it has been so long since I had anyone to tell.”

Eleanor begins her story to Opal with these lines. In the Underland, she has convinced herself that no one cares about her story, for she does not know about the posthumous success of her book. This belief reflects the poor treatment that Eleanor received in life, for so many of the things she experienced could have been prevented if anyone had listened to and believed her at the time.

“They simply told themselves a different story, one that was easier to believe because they’d heard it before: Once there was a bad woman who ruined a good man. Once there was a witch who cursed a village. Once there was an odd, ugly girl whom everyone hated, because it was safe to hate her.”

Eleanor makes this assertion about the townspeople’s belief that she was not a Gravely, even though they all knew she was. Eleanor suggests that this lie was easier for the people of Eden to believe than the ugly truth that her uncle intended to marry her in order to steal her money. The last sentences of this excerpt also reflect the cyclical nature of the oppression that Eleanor faced, for she is just one of many powerless girls whose stories were not believed by those around them.

“His smile faltered, but just for a moment. It’s difficult for predators to imagine teeth closing around their own throats. They don’t have the right instincts.”

Eleanor tells Opal this after describing how she threatened her one remaining uncle with the same fate as his brothers. Just as with other instances of power, this quote shows that the powerful are able to live without fear because they know they control of the narratives that surround them. However, this quote also shows how the uncle’s lack of “instincts,” for his assumption that nothing can hurt him ultimately causes his downfall.

“Of course they knew. My father greeted me by name on the riverboat. Half the county called me ‘the Gravely girl’ rather than learn my name. But when my uncle John asked them to look aside—when they weighed my life against his coal company, his generous donations to charity and his big white house on the hill—they did not hesitate.”

Eleanor makes this comment when Opal asks if the people of Eden knew that Eleanor was in fact a Gravely. Yet again, Eleanor’s response emphasizes the ways in which people in power are able to manipulate dominant narratives to hide their crimes and craft a thin veneer of respectability that, with repetition, solidifies into a widely accepted “fact.”

“And I think: The only monsters here are the ones we make. That Beast is just a little girl’s dream. So are the walls around us, the windows, the sky. Well, I have dreams, too, even if I spent half my life trying to forget them. I ignored them and mistreated them, did my best to burn them, but they persisted. Even now I can feel them just beneath the surface of my skin, hungering. It’s easy, really. All I have to do is want.”

This is the secret of the magic of the Underland, which Opal only realizes once she believes that she cannot escape. This is also the moment in which Opal realizes that she is allowed to pursue her own dreams, for doing so is the only way to forge a new future. This moment in the text is a turning point in the novel, for it demonstrates a great change in Opal’s character that she in turn uses to help others.

“So I should let their descendants go unpunished? Let them profit off their father’s and grandfather’s sins?”

Eleanor asks this of Opal, yet these questions reflect some of the core concerns of the novel. Opal never tells Eleanor that she should either forget the past or forgive those who have wronged her. Instead, she chooses to tell her only that she “deserve[s] better” (326). With the novel’s highly nuanced explorations of the ways in which the past can influence the present, Harrow also implies that it is possible to move on and hope for a better future while still honoring the events of the past.