ABSTRACT
This chapter draws upon the themes of materialism, nostalgia, and death omnipresent in the novels while reintegrating the home-house motif into the central zone of 1900s–1920s American literature research conventions. In this respect, themes of restlessness, unsettledness, the desire to escape, and dissatisfaction consorting with the protagonists’ yearning for the past and their quest for a home resonate with the instability that characterized the era under consideration. Still, such homes exist only in the protagonists’ nostalgia and sometimes in their filiopietistic impulses for the past or in the communal clan or class. Moreover, houses and homes go well beyond their literal meaning of “dwellings.” While homes (sometimes referred to as OLD houses) are outlined as a means of aide-mémoire that caters to family bonds, lineage, and values of the past, new and modern houses are illustrated as mere spaces and physical structures standing for debauchery and capitalism. In this sense, the home-house contrast conveys a cluster of moral and cultural anxieties (echoed in historical records and in the novels) attributed to materialism and to newcomers, both held responsible for undermining “American” values and initiating a death-like America. It also reveals the American father as a receded, foggy, fading, and sometimes even a sterile barren patriarch. As such, children of the families who reside in houses are largely absent.
