A house means a family house, a place specially meant for putting children and men in so as to restrict their waywardness and distract them from the longing for adventure and escape they've had since time began.
Interpretation
A house serves as a space for family and stability, guiding individuals away from their natural desires for adventure.
In this quote, Marguerite Duras reflects on the role of a house as not just a physical structure, but as a nurturing environment meant to contain and shape family life. It suggests that a home provides boundaries that help individuals—especially children—navigate their innate impulses for exploration and adventure, emphasizing the balance between safety and freedom in a familial setting.
In practice
This quote can be used in discussions about the importance of family in shaping one's identity.
Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God. It doesn't comfort man. On the contrary, it encourages him in his folly, it transports him to the supreme regions where he is master of his own destiny.
What she said was always strange. It had happened long ago. It seemed insignificant. And yet it was something you remembered forever. The words as well as the story. The voice as much as the words.
I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.
Perhaps someone will have seen mine, the one I’m waiting for, just as I saw him, in a ditch when his hands were making their last appeal and his eyes no longer could see. Someone who will never know what that man was to me; someone whose name I’ll never know.
Stormy skies, says Ernesto. He grieved for them. Summer rain. Childhood.
A prolonged silence ensues. The reason for the silence is our growing interest one for the other. No one is aware of it, no one yet; no one? am I quite sure?
We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do.
I love my daddy. My daddy's everything. I hope I can find a man that will treat me as good as my dad.
All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
It's interesting that I had such a close relationship with my grandfather. Because your parents always judge you: they say, 'You shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that.' But with your grandparents you have a feeling that you can say anything or you can do anything, and they will support you. That's why you have this kind of connection.
Women without children are also the best of mothers,often, with the patience,interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts. Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply into the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortuante who feels witnessed as a peron,outside relationships with parents by another adult.
A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnessary.
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