The House Behind (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Lydia Davis
- First Published: 1997
- Type of Plot: Allegory
- Time of Work: The 1990's
- Setting: Saint-Étienne, France
- Principal Characters: The narrator, M. Martin
- Genres: Short fiction
- Subjects: Class conflict, France or French people, Murder or homicide, Twentieth century, Class consciousness, Poverty or poor people, Fear, Upper classes, Death or dying, Lower classes, Working class, Apartment houses, 1990’s, Western Europe or western Europeans, Houses, mansions, or manors
- Locales: France
The Story
The narrator lives in a house at the rear of a courtyard and can look across to the bathroom and kitchen windows of the house in front. The dwellers in the front house—many of them high civil servants—enjoy greater economic and social advantages than their neighbors to the rear, who tend to be store owners, salespeople, retired postal workers, and single schoolteachers. The people in front occupy comfortable, spacious apartments; those in the rear endure small, awkward quarters. These differences create resentment in the house behind and condescension in the one...
[The entire page is 1332 words long]
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