symbolreader

Snails and hermit crabs both carry their homes, but in distinctly different ways. A snail’s shell grows with it, a steadfast and secure refuge crafted by nature. In contrast, the hermit crab embodies adaptability, seeking shelter in the discarded shells of other sea creatures. As it grows, it must continually search for a new, unfamiliar home. This symbolism of home extends into astrology, where the sign Cancer, represented by the crab, is closely associated with the concept of home.

Home is a universal and potent symbol, adaptable to countless entities: a country, a planet, a family, a person, a belief system, or even the human psyche – both conscious and unconscious. The body itself is often seen as a temporary home for the soul. In Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Quasimodo’s cathedral was described as his “egg, nest, house, country, and universe.” (1) On a larger scale, the recent reopening of the rebuilt Notre Dame in Paris marked a profound spiritual moment, restoring a cherished sanctuary for many.

Some of the most beautiful reflections on the spiritual meaning of a house can be found in Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, where he writes, “the house shelters daydreaming.” Bachelard observes that even the humblest dwellings possess their own unique beauty. Certain homes seem to bring the soul of their inhabitant to the surface, like a hidden pearl made visible. Although most of us keep moving house in the manner of the hermit crab, we carry our stories with us, for as Bachelard writes, “an entire past comes to dwell in a new house.” 

This evocative line came to mind as I was reading Safekeep, an extraordinary debut novel by Yael van der Wouden. Published in 2024, it was shortlisted for this year’s Booker Prize. If you plan to read it, skip this paragraph, as it contains significant spoilers.

The novel is set in 1961 in a quiet, rural area of eastern Holland. The setting feels steeped in the lingering shadows of the past, even though there are no visible traces of the war. At the heart of the story is a large country house, home to the main character, Isabel, who lives there alone. She deeply cherishes the house and its garden, devoting her days to meticulously maintaining it – inventorying every item, polishing the tableware and cutlery. Her attachment to the house borders on obsession:

“She went around the house and closed everything, locked everything – the shutters and the curtains and everything that could be pulled over herself like a cloak. For a moment, for a brief and raging moment, she thought: Let him. Let him try to drag me out of here. She saw herself clawing into the walls, taking root.”

The house once belonged to Isabel’s late mother. The family had moved there in 1944, when Isabel was a young girl. She has only vague memories of the house being filled with objects and furniture, as though it had already been lived in. At some point, this realization hits her with full clarity:

“An odd angle of a thought that hadn’t struck her before – they’d moved into a finished house, a full house. Nearly everything laid out: the sheets, the pots, the vases in the windowsills.”

Isabel’s solitude is disrupted when her brother Louis, the rightful owner of the house, arrives with his new girlfriend, Eva. Louis is soon called away, leaving Eva behind with Isabel. Eva finds it hard to tolerate Isabel’s presence – her loudness, her constant touching of everything in the house Isabel holds dear. However, over time, the two women grow closer, gradually united by an unconscious, shared love for the house:

“Isabel was wiping gently over the ear of a milk jug.

Eva said, “You do that with such care.” It came out quietly.

Isabel held the jug in the dip of her palm. The night had made the space between them odd, hushed. Isabel met Eva’s gaze and said, ‘A house is a precious thing.’”

Now for the biggest plot twist – and a major spoiler: Eva is Jewish, and the house once belonged to her family. They lost it when her father was taken to a concentration camp, which led to his inability to pay the mortgage, allowing the Dutch government to seize the property. Eva recalls:

“I was born in this room, and these walls were witnesses, and this desk, and these windows too. The house wants me here, even if no one else does.”

What I found most compelling in the novel is its haunting atmosphere, where the house symbolizes the childhood and past of both women, and how the unconscious mysteries of the past continue to shape their present. The way they are both so deeply attuned to the house makes it feel like a character in its own right. The novel also explores how Europe is still grappling with its Nazi past. The most powerful moment occurs when Isabel sees a Hebrew scripture quote in a synagogue:

”The Hebrew scripture was inlaid in what once must have been a gold-painted stone but was now graying, dull. She stepped closer. In Roman letters, the quote announced itself: Isaiah, 56:7. Isabel drove back home. Her Bible she kept in her room, on her shelf. … Isabel found the quote. ‘For my house will be called’, she read, finger next to the number seven, ‘a house of devotion for all.’ She sat on the edge of her bed. She touched the page, and it was thin, and the letters so black against the grain of the paper. She touched the word house. She touched the word devotion.”

Isabel was as if frozen in the house, trapped by trauma she had not caused directly but in which she had unconsciously participated. Eva, in contrast, brought life and movement into the house. She became the key to resolving their shared trauma – Isabel’s latent guilt and Eva’s victimhood.

In a well-known psychological experiment, children are asked to draw a house. Bachelard explains how traumatized children depict their houses:

“If the child is unhappy, however, the house bears traces of his distress. In this connection, I recall that Francoise Minkowska organized an unusually moving exhibition of drawings by Polish and Jewish children who had suffered the cruelties of the German occupation during the last war. One child, who had been hidden in a closet every time there was an alert, continued to draw narrow, cold, closed houses long after those evil times were over. These are what Mme. Minkowska calls ‘motionless’ houses, houses that have become motionless in their rigidity. ‘This rigidity and motionlessness are present in the smoke as well as in the window curtains. The surrounding trees are quite straight and give the impression of standing guard over the house’.”

It is no surprise that, in depth psychology, the house symbolizes various layers of the psyche. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung shares one of his most significant early dreams:

“I was in a house I did not know, which had two storeys.  It was ‘my house’.  I found myself in the upper storey, where there was a kind of salon furnished with fine old pieces in Rococo style.  On the walls hung a number of precious, old paintings.  I wondered that this should be my house and thought, ‘Not bad’.  But then it occurred to me that I did not know what the lower floor looked like.  Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor.  There everything was much older.  I realised that this part of the house must date from about the fifteenth or sixteenth century.  The furnishings were medieval, the floors were of red brick.  Everywhere it was rather dark.  I went from one room to another, thinking, ‘Now I really must explore the whole house.’  I came upon a heavy door and opened it.  Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into a cellar.  Descending again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room which looked exceedingly ancient.  Examining the walls, I discovered layers of brick among the ordinary stone blocks, and chips of brick in the mortar.  As soon as I saw this, I knew that the walls dated from Roman times.  My interest by now was intense.  I looked more closely at the floor.  It was of stone slabs and in one of these I discovered a ring.  When I pulled it, the stone slab lifted and again I saw a stairway of narrow stone steps leading down to the depths.  These, too, I descended and entered a low cave cut into rock.  Thick dust lay on the floor and in the dust were scattered bones and broken pottery, like remains of a primitive culture.  I discovered two human skulls, obviously very old, and half disintegrated.  Then I awoke.”

The house thus symbolizes both the personal and collective unconscious, and in its symbolism, it is as vast as the psyche itself. The earliest home for us all was the womb, a concept revealed through children’s games:

“… like the animals who instinctively make the homes in nests, burrows in the earth, the hollows of trees, caves and clefts, many of the first homes of our devising were intimate, encompassing womblike structures.” (2)

We long for home, a place where we feel familiar, accepted, and at peace. This longing is deeply tied to the Greek concept of nostos – a homecoming, like Odysseus’s return to Ithaka after a long and treacherous journey. (3) Nostos also meant “return to light and life.” (4) The home, then, becomes a beacon, a lighthouse, a safe haven to which we return to find solace after straying from our path, much like Odysseus. The word nostalgia is etymologically connected to nostos, combining the Greek word algea (pain) with nostos (homecoming). This connection reflects the emotional ache of longing for a place that feels like home.

In the context of refugees and the homeless, this yearning for home takes on a more urgent and painful dimension. For those displaced or without shelter, the concept of home transcends a physical space – it becomes an almost existential need for belonging and security. The house, much like the hearth it used to contain, represents “the living centre,” (5) where the soul seeks nourishment and protection, a place to heal from the trauma of loss and displacement.

Notes:

(1) Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Translated by Maria Jolas. Beacon Press, 1994.

(2) Ronnberg, Ami, ed. 2010. The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images. New York: Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS).

(3) Nagy, Gregory. The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013.

(4) Ibid.

(5) Ronnberg, Ami, ed. 2010. The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images. New York: Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS).