Meena Alexander’s poetry reflects her multicultural heritage and the tension it creates. Her poems reflect the writer’s subjective response to her experience and also project or create new experiences that underscore the importance of imagination as a lens through which to focus the inner life into poetry. In House of a Thousand Doors, Meena Alexander explores the effects of colonization and exploitation and what lies between the surface of lives.
House of a Thousand Doors is a complex exploration of identity, displacement, and memory through the metaphor of a house. This metaphor signifies the multifaceted nature of an individual’s identity, experienced through multiple cultural lenses and navigations of her diaspora. This is a dream poem in which the poet’s memories about her ancestral house in Kerala fuse with her thoughts about colonial influences in India and the gender discrimination prevalent in the country.
The poet paints a picture at the outset of the poem evoking memories about her ancestral home in Kerala, remembering first that the house has a thousand doors. It symbolically represents India, with borders open to foreign influences, and refers to the multicultural openness of the country ready to welcome foreign cultures and sweeping change from multiple sources.
The poet says that the sills are cut in bronze. Bronze being an alloy is again representative of the amalgamation of different cultures. It is cut out three feet high to keep out snakes. Here the poetess perhaps satirizes the western construction of India as a land of snakes and snake charmers. The owners of the House, that is Indians were judicious enough to do, so and also kept away other repulsive beings like rats or toads.
The visual image of the sun rising on the Kerala coast burning up the land in golden light is breathtakingly vivid. Twilight is the time between dawn and sunrise. It is during that time that the sun rises as though it is burning down the Kerala coast.
The poet remembers further about the structure of her house. Like typical Kerala houses the roof is tiled in red. Contrasted against it is the silver lightning rod pointing up to nowhere. The direction to ‘nowhere’ signifies a lack of hope from the point of view of the displaced Malayali -a sense of homelessness, not belonging to a particular place.
A dream-like vision follows where she witnesses waves lift a silken fan in her grandmother’s hand. The grandmother in the poem is recreated, combining her politically active maternal grandmother Kunju and domestic-bound paternal grandmother Mariyamma. The reference to the grandmother suggests the lost old-world charm that is now captured only in dreams.
In the dream, the light gets more and more intense and bares the grandmother’s image, revealing the naked truth about women who are supposedly protected within the bounds of home, but in fact, the protection acts as a trap. It reveals her as naked as truth itself as contrasted with a made-up world with a superficial coating.
The poet shows the disturbing image of a woman kneeling and begging at each one of the thousand doors, paying her dues. Being a woman in India, her duties and debts are endless. But here, the grandmother is not worried about the doors. Rather she is grateful and blessed that each one exists and pays her due that these doors do exist in her life.
At this point, an auditory image of a flute playing in darkness is heard suggesting a wedding song. The old grandmother is juxtaposed against the young bride, and music is set against ritual. The poet addresses the woman as a ‘poor forked thing’, which refers to the bivalent aspect of womanhood, as both young and old, mother and daughter, synchronization and solemnity.
As an outsider, the poet has observed the plight of women in this country. The woman kneels all her lifetime driven by a patriarchial set-up, and keeps imploring the ‘household’ gods who will not let her in. The woman here also stands for India who stands kneeling before colonial powers, her back bent by oppression. Decades after colonization, the speaker sees her in the same position as she is again suppressed by neocolonialism.
In this poem, Meena Alexander deals with the themes of patriarchy and the boundaries it establishes on women, postcolonial India with its multicultural identity, displacement felt by the diaspora community and their yearning for home, and the multiple identities of women. The poem represents the human condition in the chaotic world of today. It represents the pain of crossing borders. A sense of continuity of relationship with home remains uninterrupted and unbroken. House of a Thousand Doors also signifies that India has importance to both individuality and a feeling of community.
This poem is a testament to Alexander’s knack for translating complex, personal experiences into universal themes that resonate with readers. Drawing from her personal experience of living in different cultures, Alexander challenges the reader to reconsider their perceptions of home, identity, and belonging. It echoes the pain, discovery, reconciliation, and negotiation of self that occurs amid crossing cultures.
Theme and Content
House of a Thousand Doors is a compelling work that explores themes of identity, displacement, memory, and the meaning of home. It’s a reflection of Alexander’s own experiences as an immigrant and her coping with the fragmentation of identity associated with it.
Language and Imagery
The poet’s use of vivid imagery and emotive language draws readers into her introspective exploration of belonging and identity. Phrases such as “dusks taut as a bowstring” and “stars scraped up against a sky trapped under glass” convey emotional depth and complexity, reflecting the psychological impact of geographical displacement and cultural isolation.
Metaphor
In the poem, Alexander uses the metaphor of a ‘house with a thousand doors’ to symbolize multiple identities and multiple possible existences. The house is a symbol of life with many exits and entries – a metaphor for cultural, geographical, and personal transitions. Each door represents a unique experience, a different aspect of Alexander’s identity, and her diverse cultural influences.
Structure and Rhythm
The structure of the poem is free verse, allowing Alexander the freedom to expound on her thoughts and feelings without the constraints of meter or rhyme. This poetic form aptly reflects the fluid nature of identity and the chaos and confusion that come with cultural displacement.