Subject: (urth) Short Story 68: Many Mansions

From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 02:11:07 +0000

Many Mansions

First published in 1977 in Orbit 19,?Many Mansions? is reprinted in *Castle
of Days* for Halloween.

SUMMARY:

The story begins with an old woman speaking to a young female visitor, “the
new woman from the Motherworld”, searching for her friend. It seems that
humanity has split into a group of females grown in vitro and more
traditional male and female colonist group who have settled a foreign
planet. The elderly woman speaks of the war in her own parent’s time
between the grandmother of her visitor’s generation and her people, which
resulted in the retreat to the fens and the death of half the autochthonous
population as well as most of the traditional human settlers. She begins to
discuss the houses and technology of those settlers. The old woman, Nor,
says that her husband Todd built their house thirty years ago.

Nor claims that the young missing woman must have been taken but pretends
to sympathize with her visitor for the hostility she must have faced: “They
know that you’re supposed to help them, to make up for [the war]; and
you’re not doing it now, are you” Just going about looking for your friend.

The old woman admits that her side was defeated, but that they had more
power over machines than the women from the Motherworld. She speaks of
houses with human minds to run them and repair themselves, perhaps with the
human bodies turning to dust within them or disembodied brains: “If there
were people’s brains in them (and I’ve never been sure that was true) then
they must have been women’s brains mostly.”

Nor talks of the moving houses, and how they hid underwater and other
places to avoid being burned by the female soldiers during the war — even
mentioning St. Syntletica’s church ringing from the bottom of Lake Kell.
The houses put up roads, even above the trees, and she says that Todd once
saw an old house at the end of one path that she believes was her own
father’s.

She tells the story of Lily, a young prostitute who sees one of the houses
one night while out after having drunken a little bit. The house has a
yellow light that becomes red and she is tempted to enter it, but flees and
is later found dead with a broken neck near Pierced Rock.

At this point Todd returns and begins speaking. He pours her a drink and
with Todd present the house begins making noises which he tries to explain
away as creaking. He tells the story of the heavy drinking Pim Pintey, who
consumed beverages culled from local herbs and the worms under the “aruum”
trees. Todd digresses about the buildings Pim believes he sees on Nepo Pass
and whether they were of autochthonous or some otherworldly source, all
ruined. Rather interestingly, Todd mentions the roads of the Firstcomers as
being paved over by humanity, but that underneath “you can see the bones of
the old through it. Anyway, that was where Pim was walking, on those big
lava blocks. One up, one down, one sidewise — that's the way the slant of
them always seem to me to run. There's them that will tell you every
seventh one is cracked.” The sight reminded Pim of the Biblical parable of
the man who built his house on rock, and he wanted to go inside and rest
near the fire with his bottle.

Pim didn't go, “but he said he always felt like there was some part of him
that had. That he split into two, some way, coming through the pass, and
the other half was in that house still — wherever it was, for it ain't up
there now or more people would have told about seeing it — doing he didn't
know what.” He watched the lights blink out as he passed. At this point the
house jerks and Todd catches his visitor. Todd remarks that “a lot of [his]
furniture has those little spindly legs on it, just like that table. They
can be tricksy.”

Todd relates that a man named Wolter saw Pim laying inside another house
with someone else beside him, and “he couldn't be certain if either of them
was dead or not. But Wolter ain't to be believed.” Here Todd admits that he
“helped build this place — and it's solid as a rock.”

The visitor pulls a gun and Todd takes it. He says, “I doubt that you'll
remember; and if you was to, you couldn't find us.” The visitor from
Motherworld must have seen the body of old Aunt Enid, whose mind runs the
house and communicates with Todd and Nor through the “mouths — in various
places.”

Here Nor speaks again, saying “That's the last of her — at least for now”.
She knows the visitor is disappointed Todd did not try to stop her, and Nor
hopes she doesn't hit a tree on the way out on her vehicle. Then she says,
“We'll move on now, Enid. You're right, she's not ready yet; but someday —
I suppose it might be possible. Look at that other one. Someday this one
will be ready to seek her peace. Come into a woman. I've said it before and
I'll say it again — that's why we're all so comfortable here: we've been
here before. Feel the motion of her Todd. How easy she goes!”

DISCUSSION:

Just as in “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” where the planets of St. Croix and
St. Anne showed extreme stagnation and extreme adaptability (neither
seeming to function ideally), “Many Mansions” shows humanity splitting into
two ideological factions that ultimately resemble modern humans very little
— indeed, while the dominant group from Motherworld appears to be entirely
female and grown artificially, they are still obviously human. The group
comprised of “natural” breeding with males and females seems to have become
something almost monstrous — mobile crypts powered by the minds of their
victims (of course, this is a very negative surface level interpretation).
The houses are usually categorized as female minds as well, and clearly the
house that is the setting of the story is Nor's Great-Aunt Enid. However,
there is something confusing about the final lines: “Come into a woman. —
we've been here before.” Is Nor talking about the house, referring to it as
a woman, or is the house somehow invading human perceptions? Where have
“we” been before?

The biblical resonance, explored more fully below, involves the idea that
these humans can gain a kind of immortality in conjunction with their
special houses or mansions, echoing the heaven promised to his disciples by
Jesus. In light of the alien presence on the settler?s planet, it is
possible that the humans who consume so many of the indigenous herbs and
worms of the planets are altered in turn and serve as hosts for those — for
it is at least hinted by Todd that Pim’s consumption of local liquor has
attracted the attention of the houses — and Lily, too, is said to have been
drinking before her experience:

“She was carrying a load, if you know what I mean; she told me so herself.
The air was chill, possibly, and it’s likely someone had left a bottle with
her the night before. — Hunted things grow strange sometimes, though I
don’t suppose you’ve noticed.”

 The victorious women of Motherworld are trying to reconstruct and help the
surviving settlers, but there is a kind of ominous possibility that these
settlers have either changed significantly or are long gone.

It is also interesting that the shape of the Motherworld houses are
described as “eggs, or else like nails stood on end” in light of all the
New Testament references throughout and the death of Lily at Pierced Rock,
and to the fact that Nor's father was the carpenter for the house in which
his own aunt lives on, we begin to have a lot of Christ references.

There is some confusion as to whether Todd or his wife Nor’s father built
the house that Aunt Enid animates  First Nor says, “Todd built this thirty
years ago.” Later Todd says, “This one was carpentered by Nor’s dad just
after the War. It’s the cooling off when the sun sets,” but this confusion
is somewhat allayed when he admits that he helped build the house.

Is it possible that running into Nor's father's tall house in the
wilderness somehow conjoined Todd and his father in law, almost like the
possession in the Long Sun books? Probably not.

The eggs and nails that are the homes of the women from motherworld and the
almost womblike homes of the settlers, as well as the feeling Pim gets
passing through Nepo pass (implying descendents) of being split in half (as
cells would during meiosis to form sex cells) gives a rather gravid feel to
the houses when they seek humans, almost like eggs calling to sperm — and I
think it is perhaps this symbol of fertilization, slightly absent from the
text and definitely pulled out of “Motherworld” entirely (what an ironic
name!!!) that gives the final words of Nor some sense: “Come into a woman —
we've been here before” (the womb that brought us to live naturally, writ
in large metaphor).

SETTING:

The in vitro girls clearly operate under a liberated scheme where they
serve no one and no longer have concepts of titles such as “lady”: “It’s
our courtesy, you see, to host strangers. I know you don’t do it, but this
is my house. Now, don’t get angry; I’m a headstrong old lady, and I’m used
to having my own way. Don’t you use [the word lady] anymore” It just means
woman now.

Nor also says, “I don’t know how you feel about morality — with your people
it’s so hard to tell. Todd says we ought to forgive women like [the
prostitute Lily], but then men always do.”

The text says of the authochthons that ?Half ... were killed, like most of
us; those that were left were happy enough to run off into the fens, or lie
around the towns waiting for somebody to rob. We would have civilized them
if you’d given us another century.

The strange roads are also almost magical, and seem to be controlled by the
houses, or even perhaps by the civilization that preceded the autochthons:
“Your patrols used the roads mostly, so we let a lot of them grow up in
trees again. The houses make false ones though, slipping through the
thickets.”

BIBLICAL ALLUSIONS:

There are several obvious and perhaps one or two implied biblical
allusions. The girl Lily, who sells her body, is found dead at Pierced Rock
(and while there is a rock of that designation in Quebec involved in a
story of ill fated love, suicide, and haunting, I feel the more immediate
allusion is probably to the piercing of Christ at the crucifixion,
especially in light of all the other explicit reference to the gospels in
this story). In addition, the house that Great Aunt Enid lives on in was
said to be “carpentered” by Nor's father — certainly not an accidental
description of the action.

The title comes from the gospel of John 14:2 — “In my Father's house are
many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a
place for you.” This takes place at the last supper right after Jesus
declares that Peter will deny him three times — this act of comfort for the
disciples concerning a place for them in heaven takes a much more sinister
connotation in the story, but it does seem to be a kind of immortality.

Because of its mention of wolves and fruit, I am going to include Matthew 7
here in its entirety, though the most pertinent reference, when Pim is
reminded of the wise man who built his house on rock, is Matthew 7:24-27 -

7?Judge not, that you be not judged. 2For with what judgment you judge, you
will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to
you. 3And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not
consider the plank in your own eye? 4Or how can you say to your brother,
“Let me remove the speck from your eye”; and look, a plank *is* in your own
eye? 5Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you
will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

6?Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine,
lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.

7?Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it
will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks
finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. 9Or what man is there among
you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks
for a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11If you then, being evil, know how
to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is
in heaven give good things to those who ask Him! 12Therefore, whatever you
want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the
Prophets.

13?Enter by the narrow gate; for wide *is* the gate and broad *is* the way
that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14Because
narrow *is* the gate and difficult *is* the way which leads to life, and
there are few who find it.

15?Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but
inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16You will know them by their fruits. Do
men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17Even so, every
good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree
cannot bear bad fruit, nor *can* a bad tree bear good fruit. 19Every tree
that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20Therefore
by their fruits you will know them.

21?Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of
heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22Many will say to
Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out
demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?” 23And then I will
declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice
lawlessness!”

24?Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will
liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: 25and the rain
descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and
it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

26?But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will
be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: 27and the rain
descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and
it fell. And great was its fall.

28And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were
astonished at His teaching, 29for He taught them as one having authority,
and not as the scribes.

Interestingly enough, the stone of Nepo Pass (Pass of Descendents) is said
to have “Buildings and walls that run along the crests of the mountains for
as far as a man can see to either side (all tumbledown now, some of that
stone will run like sand if you rub it between your fingers)? and caves
inhabited by ?whippers”. Both rock and sand are invoked in "Many Mansions"
in this scene. Animal remains will be found where sometimes none were
before, and “Some say the autochthons cut the stone and built the buildings
and the walls; some say they only killed the ones who did.” This confusion
also echoes the confusion of the origin of the aborigines and Shadow
Children in ?The Fifth Head of Cerberus, which will be discussed more below.

Also interesting is the claim that every seventh stone in Nepo pass is
cracked — whether this is a biblical reference or not, the book of
Revelations certainly has a lot of sevens. (The next paragraph might be
taking a throwaway line too far, but ...)

Among the numerous sevens, including seals, trumpets, and plagues, the
first resurrection of the dead takes place at the seventh trumpet, and the
ark of the covenant is seen, fulfilling Christ's promise of salvation — and
resonating with the idea of the many mansions He has set aside for those
who follow Him. (In Catholic and Orthodox faiths, the ark of the covenant
is sometimes allegorically used to describe Mary gravid with Christ). The
ark was buried on Mt. Nebo at one point, which resembles Nepo Pass, but
this is in the book of 2 Maccabees and would be a very “Catholic” kind of
association. This would tie together the themes of parthenogenetic
reproduction, the salvation inherent in the term “Many Mansions”, and the
strange reference to every seventh stone being cracked, though there are
some real leaps in that series of religious relationships.

FOLIAGE ON THE SETTLER'S WORLD AND *FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS* PARALLELS:

Since the yeasts were different than they were accustomed to, the settlers
?put other things in them to raise it up, and we use them yet. There’s —
oh, maybe twenty or thirty different herbs and roots and whatnot we favor,
and a little whitey-greeny worm we get out of the mud around aruum trees
that’s particularly good if there’s a den in the roots, and then a fungus
that grows in the mountain caves and has a picture like an autochthon?s
hand in the middle sometimes and smells like haying. Those are poison when
they’re old, but if you get a young one and cut it up and soak it in salt
water for a week before you drop it in the crock, it’ll give you a drink
that makes you feel — well, I don’t know how to put it. Like you’re young
and going to live forever. Like nothing bad ever happened to you, and
you’re likely to meet your mother and dad and everybody you ever liked
that’s dead now just around the next turn in the road. What I’m trying to
tell you is that Pim, when his head was full — which it was most of the
time — was not entirely like anybody you’re likely to have known before.
Now you may say, as a lot did, that it was the drinking that made him see
the houses; but suppose it worked the other way, and it was the drinking
that made them see him?

It is this section of “Many Mansions” that most echoes *The **Fifth Head of
Cerberus*, where trees seem somehow related to the larvae that lives in
their roots, and the pale white maggots chewed by the Shadow Children have
a similar affect on them in “A Story” — that the chewer becomes “God”. The
final analysis of the life cycle of the aboriginals and the Shadow Children
that I found to be probable was a larval stage followed by a metamorphosis,
then an adult sessile stage in which a tree carapace was formed for the
aboriginals, and an infectious blood life cycle for the Shadow Children,
infecting their hosts and vectors but still maintaining a group
consciousness.

It seems that in “Many Mansions” Pim is affected by the worm and herbs he
consumes, and this draws attention to him and “changes” him. Notice the
conjunction of fungus and autochthon?s hands — which, in “Fifth Head of
Cerberus”, were different from human hands. This is not the only parallel
with “The Fifth Head of Cerberus”, as our female visitor is an artificially
produced zygote much as Number Five was. In addition, the format of the
story, with merely three long dialogues with no recorded response from the
visitor, mirrors some sections of the interview transcripts from the
novella “VRT”.

However, there seems to be very few other details for us to draw from here
— do these things involve a similar life cycle, or is it completely
different, involving the caves and the houses somehow? The mobile houses of
the settlers being superimposed on the ancient dwellings of the autochthons
or some other space faring species complicates the issue just as the idea
that the aboriginals or Shadow Children might not originally be from St.
Anne also complicated T*he Fifth Head of Cerberus*.

Aruum trees are mentioned in the text, and a little research on that proved
quite astonishing. In addition to being associated with a type of faux
lily, the arum lily (remember the girl’s name who died), they are all
poisonous (We are assuming that the extra u in the name Aruum is either a
typo or something to draw attention to the name). They are flowers and not
trees, and the largest one has some extremely interesting qualities. The
following subjective report is still fascinating:

“The titan arum flower (*amorphallus titanum* in Latin, or just ?corpse
flower” if you’re feeling dramatic), sounds like a hack writer’s attempt at
science fiction: it’s a massive red flower that can reach 3 meters in
height, but it blooms only once every decade, and when it does, it reeks
like rotting meat. Because it’s so large, and because it blooms so rarely,
it’s become an object of pride for botanical gardens around the world. —
Where most flowers use a sweet scent to attract honey bees, the titan arum
uses the stench of death to attract beetles and flies. It even heats its
spadix — the pollen-covered shaft in the middle of the pitcher — to human
body temperature to simulate a fresh corpse.

Speaking of the spadix, the plant only got the name “titan arum” because
BBC documentarian David Attenborough felt awkward repeatedly calling it by
its Latin *amorphallus titanum*, which translates to “giant misshapen
penis.”

The blooming titan arum may look like a freakishly large lily, but
technically, it’s not even a single flower. A titan arum doesn’t have a
flowering, it has an inflorescence.

The above description was from:
http://thepopcultist.com/2012/10/12/the-titan-arum-a-rare-slow-blooming-and-stinky-flower/

By imitating corpses, the arum draws flies to continue its lifecycle. Is a
similar mimicry occurring with the “houses”, luring people to “pollinate”
them?

NAMES:

Place Names:

Breaker: Probably named after a heavy sea wave that breaks, though it is
conceivable there is a technological basis for the name of this location —
this is where Todd’s family had a house.

Chackerville: a neighboring community, but I can’t make much sense of the
name.

Lake Kell: Kell simply means a Lake or Ravine

Nepo: meansGrandchild or descendent, from the latin nepos. Nepo Pass is
where Pim Pintey sees the house on top of the slanted stone tops.

HUMAN NAMES:

St. Syntletica: born of wealthy parents in Alexandria, this 4th century
saint lived a life of poverty in the desert and resided in a crypt, and
many female supplicants sought her out, but her supposed gifts of
discernment allowed her to see that many were not ready for poverty yet.
This story seems to parallel the call of the houses and those who are “not
ready” for them yet, like Lily, Pim, and the second girl from Motherworld.

Pim Pyntey: Pim is a form of William, and can mean helmut or desire and
protection. I could not find anything on Pyntey but I am assuming it might
have something to do with his drinking habits.

Lily: implies purity

Enid: also means purity, or soul

Todd: The spouse of the old woman’s name is Todd, which means Fox, but the
word Tod can mean Death in German but also has a strange relationship with
the opening quotation of The Fifth Head of Cerberus: “When the Ivy-tod is
heavy with snow, and the owlet whoops to the wolf below, That eats the
she-wolf’s young.”

Nor: depending on its origin it can have several meanings: honored or
honorable from latin, mercy or pity from old Greek. Since it does not have
the last syllable of Nora, even an Arabic root is possible — God is my
light.

Settles: probably just what it seems to be

Dode Beckette: Beckett means bee cottage. This resonates a bit with the
idea of people as pollinators of the houses. Dode means the deceased or
victim of a fatality in Dutch. (Dode is also the name of a village in
England wiped out completely by the Black Death)

Wolter: the name means to rule, army

CONNECTION TO OTHER WORKS:

Wolfe has a tendency to invert and play with themes as he did in his Island
stories, stories which explored isolation in several different ways. This
story, as Borski and others have noted, actually does seem a thematic
inversion of “Fifth Head of Cerberus” where Number Five’s parthenogenesis
is transformed into a world of female control, and, instead of convergence
of alien species into humanity and one another, we get a complete
segregation of old style and new style humans. The strange alien species
are present, but they have been pushed back instead of subjugating and
replacing their colonizers, as in Fifth Head. This future all female world
resonates with several of the stories written by James Tiptree Jr,
especially “Houston, Houston, Do you Read?” with its all female future,
though this story and that 1976 one are more or less contemporary. Wolfe
will play with a dominant female future in “In Looking Glass Castle” and
maybe there are hints of it in “The Eyeflash Miracles” as well. *There Are
Doors* will have a different, more fantastic basis for a female ruled Earth.

For this reason, I call “Many Mansions” the female version of *The Fifth
Head of Cerberus*, and I think it is fruitful to see how Michael Swanwick
does the same thing in *Shadows of the New Sun* in his “The She-Wolf’s
Hidden Grin”. The inversions are quite obvious to those who have recently
read “Fifth Head of Cerberus” (the novella). The story begins “When I was a
girl, my sister Susanna and I had to get up early whether we were rested or
not.” — reversing both gender and the situation of Number Five and David
going to sleep early whether they were tired or not. In his story, the
female Maitresse has no relation to the girls, and is a step-mother and
they are located on 999 rue D?Astarte, and rather than a brothel, it is a
chemist?s perfumery and shop (his truffle concoctions are used in a
sniffing recreational drug). The narrator begins with her dream of the
bas-relief of Romulus and Remus suckling at the she-wolf, casting two
infant girls in their stead, with a giant she wolf breathing down her neck
saying, “You are anxious for me to come out of hiding — Aren't you,
daughter?” At the end of the dream, it is revealed that it is still not
time.

Work is still performed by slaves, and their tutor is one such, though she
can have a bank account (exhibiting much more freedom than the slaves in *Fifth
Head Of Cerberus* seemed to). The planets are still St. Croix and St. Anne,
but this time the tutor, rather than being robotic or unchanging like M.
Million, is Tante Amelie, last in a string of female tutors from St. Anne.
Swanwick does use the heron metaphor for this tutor that Wolfe himself
employed in his description of the abos in the central novella “A Story”.
Aubrey Veil exists in this narrative, and Veil’s hypothesis and the story
of the Frenchman’s Landing on St. Anne is related.

The innovation Swanwick makes to the story involves the nature of the
aborigines (the narrator’s position in the faux debate prompted by the
tutor) that the abos had a space faring origin, descended to Stone Level
technology, and interbred with the human settlers, “producing human
offspring with latent aboriginal genes.” In this story, it is the sister,
Susana, who becomes sullen and moody rather than Number 5 in his responses
to Maitre’s experiments. Her studies on aboriginal traits conclude ?This
implies a congeries of recessive sex-linked genes; they, being dependent on
the x-chromosome, will necessarily appear only in women. — They also posit
that the two species were a case of divergence from a single species, named
H. sidereus (starmen). Susana develops a love for the theater much like the
play that David and Number 5 put on, but hers are stories of empowered or
repressed women protagonists or even early feminist writings. She plays a
part in *The Children’s Hour*, in which a female at an all girl’s school
begins a rumor that two of the teachers are lesbians, which destroys their
reputation. One of the teachers does admit to having feelings for the
other, but winds up hanging herself in the ensuing mess. (Several of the
dramas mentioned deal with suicide of the main female characters: *Madame
Butterfly, The Children’s Hour, Hedda Gabbler, Antony and Cleopatra *all
involve suicide, but even more prevalent are the strong female characters
(both malevolently manipulative and heroically innocent) who have prominent
roles. The plot of *Mrs. Warren’s Profession*, in which the mother runs
brothels while her daughter is an educated modern woman, resonates with *Fifth
Head of Cerberus* itself. In Swanwick’s story, women are far more numerous
than men, and the decrease of males is a problem for the worlds.

The woman in pink is split in twain: first into a woman in black who flirts
with Susanna at mass, and they hold hands, and then Maitresse herself wears
a pink dress. During the final scenes of the story, Tante Amelie takes them
to see an entertainment: combat between two female slaves, who are treated
with the hallucinatory perfume drugs that the girls? father creates, which
are capable of maintaining all sorts of illusions. The narrator is shocked
to find that one of the slaves bears her own face, an echo of the four
armed slave in “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” who bears such a close
resemblance to Number Five. The lesbian relationship blossoming between her
sister and the woman in black comes out in the open, and the resulting
dissatisfaction seems to shake up the household. It is revealed that the
narrator is a failed clone, made in an attempt to produce a male heir. The
other clones were sold. The story ends with the narrator in a dream in
which the she-wolf finally says it is time, and “not so much awakening as
taking [her] dream state with [her] into the waking world,” the narrator
leaves behind her husband and twin sons and casts off the guise of humanity
and roam wild without her human skin, naked and prowling in Port-Mimizon.
She asserts that the time has come for all like her to cast off their
humanity and return to aboriginal existence, though the world seems to
smell always of canvas and bitter truffle.

This ending is meant to invoke the same indeterminacy of “The Fifth Head of
Cerberus” involving who was an aborigine and if there was any way to tell,
but in this case the uncertainty is extended to whether the ending, with
the liberation from human flesh, involves the drugs the narrator’s father
produces which smell of truffles or not — are the narrator’s perceptions of
that aboriginal awakening drug induced?

I lean toward the interpretation that in fact the ending of Swanwick’s
supports the self-destructive abuse of drugs as a coping mechanism, an
escape into fantasy — primarily because of the dramatic works mentioned
earlier in the text. Most of them are tragedies of self-destruction. Even
though this is perhaps historically a larger representative sample from
historical dramas highlighting early feminist obstacles, there are still
stories of empowered and successful women that don’t end in tragedy and
self destruction (ie — stories like *Vanity Fair*, even though they involve
a manipulative woman, still end with her “getting away with it” more or
less). The overall impression of the dramas selected as well as the
relevant plot of *The Children’s Hour *and the damage that occurs after a
hidden relationship comes out leads me to believe the ending is one of
self-destruction rather than release and transformation, though of course
it is quite intentionally ambiguous.

While both Swanwick’s story and “Many Mansions” (probably) are female
inversions of “The Fifth Head of Cerberus”, obviously Swanwick’s is much
more literally derivative of the events and situations, and posits an
entirely different life cycle than that implied in the original novel.
Wolfe’s subtle treatment make it doubtful that the planet in question in
“Many Mansions” is even in the same fictional “solar system” as his earlier
novellas, but there are enough details to show that the autochthonous
repressed population and the augmented humans of his story are at the very
least thematically and symbolically related to his earlier novella, if not
in the same fictional universe as St. Anne and St. Croix.

 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS: Is the transfer from humans to their mansions one
way or is it a two way street, such that perhaps these houses can come to
possess humans again? There seems to be some strange motility to all of the
tables as well as the houses themselves. I remain convinced that somehow
these houses are luring humans to pollinate them just as the arum does, and
the name Beckette with its “bee cottage” resonance kind of solidifies this
idea in my mind. The sterile women from Motherworld can still be used to
“come into a woman”.

Is there really a connection between the worms and vegetation in this story
and “The Fifth Head of Cerberus” or does the alien environment involve a
completely different life cycle? It seems that the themes are the same but
the actual authocthons, perhaps never seen, might not be identical to the
aborigines.

How are the caves of the original inhabitants of the planet related to the
houses that come later? Do they manifest as whatever the ideal inhabitant
would naturally live in as a form of mimicry? Are the houses human
technology or alien? Because of the caves and the hint that eating the
herbs and worms of the planet attract the houses? attention, I incline
toward the belief that they are alien and perhaps even organisms that
invite humans into themselves to live symbiotically (as it is possible that
the worms and herbs symbiotically invade the humans, as the Shadow Children
almost assuredly did on St. Croix in “The Fifth Head of Cerberus”, making
houses and humans alike the many mansions that support life and become one
with their host).

The cryptic ending, while it is clear that the house is animated by Nor’s
Aunt Enid, remains confusing.

Why are both Enid and Lily named after purity? Is there a relationship
between them?

In the final analysis I believe that “Many Mansions” involves a race of
mimicking almost flower like houses that lure humans in to pollinate them,
especially after they have eaten the natural pollinators, the white/green
worms and attract the attention of these “houses”. They might very well
provide immortality to their human symbiotes, however, and fulfill all
these religious promises that the biblical allusions in the text produce.
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 02:13:45 +0000

That one was a bit more involved than I planned it to be ... oh man.  Hope
you guys enjoy it. There was almost no commentary on it.
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 16:51:11 +0000

Two more little things that I think are kind of neat.

Why Halloween?  The "things" are dressing up as comfortable houses to
attract their pollinators: to Lily the house is a safe, fun brothel; to Pim
it is a fireplace to rest, etc. Their mimicry is a kind of costume.

Also, I can't help but wonder about the concept of original sin in a
completely in vitro birth.  Nor speculates that even if the girl is grown
she must still surely have a mother, and I am wondering about the
pollination of the mimic houses as a kind of asexual union as well.  Note
that Nor says she really doesn't believe that human minds are running the
houses, though supposedly she is living in one: "If there were people's
brains in them (and I've never been sure that was true) then they must have
been women's brains mostly."  I also feel that the road in Nepo Pass which
has been built over the original road on the planet is symbolic of the
houses that the settler's construct: they have, in a way, provided a
covering, shape, and form to the houses they built, but perhaps they have
simply built over and through something much older and more foreign -
something using mimicry and disguise to attract humans and lure them in.
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From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 17:43:03 +0000

Also note that the House of Enid does not start to creak and rumble until
Todd gives the visitor a drink of the harder spirits, which are probably
seasoned with the white/green worms - this consumption might catch the
house's attention to some degree, as Todd speculates that his drinking
brought Pim to the attention of the houses in Nepo Pass.

Enid and Lily can signify purity, and both Todd (Tod) and Dode can mean
death - interesting resonances.
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