43 pages • 1 hour read
V. E. SchwabGallant
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Gallant
The titular house is a profoundly Gothic feature of the novel: It is decaying; it has a doppelganger; and even its very architecture is Gothic. The house also plays into another distinctly Gothic trope—it creates a feeling of entrapment for those who live in it. Olivia often feels literally trapped by Gallant. As she tries to escape the master through a secret passage, she crawls “on hands and knees through the pitch-black tunnel, and she tries not to think (sic) of a grave, of a tomb, of being buried here, under the house” (309). This imagery of graves and tombs associates Gallant not only with death, but with a sense of unyielding permanence, the feeling of being caught in a place that will never allow for growth or change. This sensation is reinforced by the rest of the imagery connected to Gallant’s interiors, from the pictures of all the Priors encased in their frames and displayed on the walls, to the closets full of Grace’s dresses that have gone untouched for decades and wait for Olivia to literally step into her mother’s role.
Olivia’s emotional experience of Gallant shifts over the course of the novel. By the end of the narrative, Olivia has chosen to embrace Gallant as her home. In her willingness to be permanently ensnared by the house, Gallant’s presence in the novel shifts from menace to coziness. In the Epilogue, Olivia works the rose garden and comes home to find Hannah cleaning and Edgar humming while he makes stew (332). For Olivia, the house only felt like it was entrapping her when it reminded her of the fact that much of her family’s very dangerous history was unknowable to her; just as Olivia was ensnared by a past she could not control, she was also menaced by the house itself. In exploring that history—and the house along with it—Olivia is finally able to change her relationship to Gallant and even find comfort in its walls.
Grace’s Journal
Grace’s journal, like the house itself, is a very Gothic feature of Gallant: It is the embodiment of a suppressed history, and it even has a double. Outside of being a Gothic attribute, though, Grace’s journal also serves as a representation of Olivia’s shifting relationship to her family’s history. Through the beginning of her time at Gallant, Olivia struggles to understand what the journal has to say about her mother’s history and mental health. She is obsessed with trying to understand—obsessed to the point that she memorizes the journal’s contents—and she is deeply protective of the information the journal contains.
Her relationship to this history is forced to change, though, through her trials in shadow-Gallant. Just as confronting the master shows Olivia that aspects of her past she thought she understood aren’t actually true, the master’s house quite literally robs Olivia of the green journal. At the end of the novel, the master still has possession of it. Olivia’s act of copying the contents of the green journal into the red journal demonstrates a shift in Olivia’s attitude toward the journals and toward her familial histories: What she would have once seen as an act of defacement becomes instead an act of ownership. Olivia lets go of the idea that she needs to protect and perfectly preserve a history she doesn’t fully understand; instead, she records this history on her own terms.
Ghouls
The “ghouls” of Gallant function much as ghosts do in Gothic literature: They are pieces of a gruesome past that persist into the present, haunting those who are able to see them. It’s notable that Olivia is the only character (other than the master) who is able to see the ghouls. This is, in part, a function of her lineage: the ghouls are creatures of the master’s shadow realm, and Olivia is part shadow. Symbolically, though, Olivia’s relationship to the ghouls at the start of the novel speaks to her status as a character who is defined by a past that is both terribly present and deeply inaccessible. Olivia sees ghouls wherever she goes, but she cannot touch them or (initially) communicate with them. In fact, while at Merilance Olivia deals with ghouls by scowling at them until they leave her alone (11). Her approach to dealing with this troublesome, invasive past is to try to make it go away, to bury itself until she has the resources to deal with it.
Olivia’s relationship to the ghouls, and to her own history, shifts dramatically over the course of the narrative. As Olivia learns more about her mother’s past through Hannah and the red journal, and she begins to interact with her mother’s ghoul rather than forcing it to leave, Olivia learns that the ghouls can become sources of knowledge. Her mother’s ghoul helps her understand that her father drew the pictures in the green journal, and it eventually shows her the way to crossing the garden wall. After she crosses, Olivia finds that the ghouls can be sources of power: They help her escape the master and, eventually, defeat him. Olivia’s willingness to face—and accept—the grim pieces of her history gives her the power to finally be at peace with her present. This emotional truth is reflected by the choice Olivia makes at the end of the novel to spend the rest of her days among the ghouls of her mother, uncle, and cousin.
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By V. E. Schwab
