Explain the importance of Warings in the novel?

Warings is an ‘isolated’ and ‘entirely graceless’ country house belonging to a lonely middle-class widower, Mr Joseph Hooper. It is the place where the whole novel begins with and plays a significant role in the story. In short, Warings is important in several aspects – the setting of the story, the kind of atmosphere and mood it creates, the themes it portray as well as the symbol it represents in the story.

In a way, Warings is the ‘focal point’, where the main characters of the novel, Mr Hooper and his son, Edmund along with Mrs Helena Kingshaw and her son, Charles all play a part in the novel. To put this in simple words, Warings is important because it brings the characters together. It acts as the frame of a jigsaw puzzle, where the characters, which are the jigsaw pieces, fit in nicely.

Different characters come to Warings for different reasons. For Mr Hooper, Warings was a “prepossessing house” which would “lend him both importance and support”. This house would be his “place in the country” which “would make up for a good deal”. To him, Warings lends him family pride to boost his much diminished self-esteem and confidence, helping him to overcome his lack of achievement and sense of failure. However, for Mrs Kingshaw, Warings is the lodging she has been searching for, which she hoped would eventually turn out to be a permanent one. She says that Warings “sounds so much like the home we have been looking for” to Charles and it is clear that she comes to Warings mainly for the money and stability. Warings provides both aspects for these characters – the status and importance for Mr Hooper; stability and permanent shelter for Mrs Kingshaw, causing both parties to come under the same roof. Hence, the old-fashioned features found in the house such as “the oak wall panelling” and the “oak staircase” were only built to create the illusion that the Hoopers were an upper class family who had lived in the countryside for centuries. This is because oak is a kind of wood that is only found in houses built before modern building materials such as tiles were developed.

This is a preview of the whole essay

Secondly, Warings has an important function in creating the necessary and appropriate mood according to the demands of the story. The first scene launched involves events of deaths which occur at Warings. The story commences with the line “Three months ago, his grandmother had died” and then there is the scene of Edmund’s grandfather on his deathbed with Edmund and his father by the bedside. There is a lingering eerie atmosphere as the grandfather is described to have “skin that is already dead”, with “bones of the eye-sockets and the nose and jaw” that “gleamed”. The colours used are colours like “bleached and grey-ish white” and “moth-like whiteness” which are ghastly and ashen, implying that death loiters in the house. Warings is like a house which entertains death. To start with such a morbid and bleak scene prepares the readers that something ominous is bound to happen in Warings and serves the purpose of the art of foreshadowing. Later on, Charles Kingshaw commits suicide and his death is indirectly linked to his stay at Warings (torment he suffers from Hooper). Warings gives the reader the impression of a tomb of death, so it foreshadows the death of Kingshaw, who will be ‘engulfed’ by this death tomb once he enters it.

In addition, the hostile description of Warings creates a foreboding sense. It is described as “ugly”, “entirely graceless”, “rather tall and badly-angled”. This gives us an unappealing and quite repulsive impression of the house. The colours used like “dark red brick” are dull and sinister, which are uninviting. The use of dull colours suggest the austere and bleak mood that revolves round Warings, foreshadowing that disturbing things happen there – things like Hooper’s relentless torment and taunting of poor Kingshaw, the detached relationship between parent and child and the cruel ignorance of adults. The rhododendrons and yew trees are described to have “dark green, leathery leaves and toughness of stem. The trees appear in “gathered shapes”, as though they are armed guards guarding the house from intruders. This mirrors the actual event taking place, that Hooper is jealously protecting his territory with his mindset that “Nobody should come here and that Warings was his house and he “got here first”. Kingshaw is like the intruder who trespasses his territory. Apart from that, the unfriendly illustration of Warings reflects that there is no tenderness or warmth within the house and among the occupants, which especially applies to Hooper’s cold treatment towards Kingshaw. For instance, when Kingshaw arrives, he throws down a paper with the words “I DON’T WANT YOU TO COME HERE” written on it. He initiates the hostility and makes aggressive body language like “raising his eyebrows”.

In addition, Warings brings out some of the themes which have been emphasized in the novel. One of the several themes is concerned with the class-consciousness of people. To Edmund, Warings which is his home, is his castle and represents his weight and worth. When Kingshaw arrives, he starts realising “why it is better to have a house of Warings”. He thinks that “Kingshaw has nowhere” and thoughts like “We live here, it is ours, we belong”. Kingshaw has come with his mother who will work as an informal housekeeper. It is evident that Kingshaw has no home of his own. Here, Warings is shown as the property of the Hoopers, It conveys the theme of British being class- conscious, concerned about their ownership of properties and houses.

The essential theme of isolation is also conveyed through Warings itself. Warings is located in Derne which had become “like an old busy port which has been deserted by the sea” when “people left for the towns. Even in geographical position, Warings itself appears to be isolated from not just the city side due to the sea, it is also solitary compared to other houses, as it is situated “some distance away from any other house”. This parallels with the isolation of the two children, Edmund and Charles. In Chapter 10, for instance, Kingshaw felt cut off from the others when neither of the adults believed in his account of what had happened in the woods. He had felt “himself more than ever removed from them” and “saw that they did not really know him, not any of them”. At that point, even Mrs Kingshaw chose to believe Edmund’s false allegation that Charles bullied him in the woods, which made him feel that “there couldn’t be any kind of truce between them”. The theme of isolation, that Charles is left on his own with nobody on his side, sinks in. Thus, the image of Warings being secluded mirrors Kingshaw being isolated from the rest.

Warings suggest that war takes place there. There is violence and battles and hostilities. (Hooper vs Kingshaw) Hooper is the one jealously defending his ‘castle’ – Warings and Kingshaw is the intruder. “Red Room” the word red suggests bloodshed and someone getting hurt. It is a showcase of dead animals, stuffed animals, moths etc. It is like a display of a hunter’s treasure trove. The Red Room also brings out the idea of a predator and the prey. The part where Hooper locks Kingshaw up in the Red Room – Hooper is the hunter who has captured Kingshaw the prey, like the moths in glass cases, Kingshaw is locked in. The Red Room is a collection of dead moths, stuffed animals (treasure trove for hunter to display his objects of hunt – prey) Red symbolizes bloodshed, implying violence will take place. Warings and people will be hurt or even killed. There are “cases of grey fish”, “stuffed bodies of weasel, stoat, and fox, glass-eyed and posed in stilted attitudes”.

When Edmund touches the Death’s Head Hawk Moth, it ‘disintegrated, collapsing into a soft, formless heap of dark dust’. This foreshadows Hooper’s absolute power/ability to destroy. Warings is Hooper’s territory and Hooper is the predator, waiting to pounce on its victim, the prey (Kingshaw) Hooper will bring about death and destruction. It shows Hooper’s personality and foreshadows the role that he will play in the novel, as the bully and the predator, hunting Kingshaw down in a relentless prosecution. ‘fascinated by them, excited’ The sense of death appeals to Hooper.

Warings is also much like a Gothic mansion, it is isolated enough to stop any outsiders from finding out what Hooper is doing there, it has numerous dark, frightening rooms, and many dead bodies. Immediately the setting and the death of the grandfather sets the setting of the Gothic atmosphere for the whole story, the morbid Edmund thinks that he looks like a skeleton or a ghostly, pale dead moth, even before he dies. For Kingshaw, he feels that “The worst of all was the house, with the dark rooms and the old furniture and the cases of moths, he would always have to come back to it.” Therefore, Warings is the most important place as it is a Gothic house of horrors filled with evil and death. It is a place that Hooper uses to trap and torture Kingshaw.

Esther

Grace

Jin Mei

Michelle