Houses, Rooms and Hidden Spaces

A cutaway makes visible the rooms and connections that an exterior view conceals. Original illustration.

A house is both a building and an arrangement of spaces. Its rooms may be connected, separated, shared, private, occupied or unused. A person can belong to a household while having access to only part of its building.

Houses therefore provide a rich subject for comparing enclosure, access, familiarity and concealment in stories and everyday language. This page explores those arrangements without assigning a universal meaning to any particular room.

Background

A room is an enclosed part of a building, but room can also mean available space or opportunity. This movement between physical space and possibility is present in ordinary expressions such as room for improvement.

The location and connections of a space matter as much as its name:

• Attic: a space beneath the roof, reached by an upward route.
• Cellar: a space below ground level, reached by a downward route.
• Corridor: a passage connecting other spaces.
• Threshold: the boundary at an entrance.
• Window: an opening that may permit sight and light without permitting passage.
• Hidden room: a room whose presence or entrance is concealed from someone.

These features can be compared with Containers, Stairs and Ladders, Doors, Gates and Thresholds and Locks and Keys. A cellar's position alone does not establish what it means in a particular person's account or a particular story.

Access, visibility and permission

Arrangement	Distinction worth preserving
A locked room	The room and its entrance may be known, while access is prevented.
A hidden room	The observer may not know that the space exists.
A forbidden room	A rule restricts entry, whether or not the door is physically secured.
A room visible through a window	Seeing into a space and being able to enter it are separate possibilities.
An open door too small to pass through	An opening exists, but its dimensions do not fit the traveller.

Examples in literature and culture

Bluebeard: the forbidden chamber

In “Blue Beard” in the 1922 Harrap collection of Charles Perrault's fairy tales, the husband gives his wife keys to the house but forbids entry to one small room at the end of a gallery. She enters and discovers evidence of his previous murders.

Commentary: physical possession of a key and permission to use it are separate features of this telling. The lavish public rooms and the concealed chamber belong to the same house. See the existing Bluebeard article for the story's wider context.

Alice: the door that opens but does not admit

In Chapter I of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Alice finds a small door behind a curtain. Her key opens it, and she can see a garden beyond, but she cannot fit through the passage.

Commentary: the key resolves the lock, but not the problem of scale. Seeing a desired place, opening its entrance and being able to enter it are three distinct events.

Idioms

• Room for manoeuvre: freedom to change a plan or choose among possible actions.
• Put your house in order: attend to problems in your own affairs or organisation.
• Under one roof: within the same building or household.
• A skeleton in the cupboard: a concealed, potentially embarrassing matter from the past.
• Bring the house down: provoke an enthusiastic audience response.
• Make yourself at home: an invitation to feel comfortable and welcome.

The range of these uses matters: the same architectural vocabulary can concern privacy, hospitality, performance or organisation.

Related pages

Containers | Doors, Gates and Thresholds | Locks and Keys | Stairs and Ladders | Bluebeard | Paperhouse

Browse the library

Metaphor Atlas | Subject index | Earth, landscape and place | Stories and literature