A Study Guide for Hannah Green's "The Dead of the House"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Hannah Green's "The Dead of the House," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jun 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535836135

Book preview

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The Dead of the House

Hannah Green

1972

Introduction

Hannah Green's only novel, The Dead of the House (1972), has been praised for its evocative language and lyrical prose. The novel originally appeared in the New Yorker as a series of shorter fictional pieces. It was published as a novel in 1971 to critical and commercial praise; when it was reprinted in 1996, the novel was discovered by a new generation of readers.

The novel is the story of a girl's passage from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. Moreover, it is a much broader history of her entire family. The Dead of the House also paints a rich picture of an older American family and its place within the history of America. In addition, it hearkens back to the mythology of the American West.

Author Biography

A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Green was born in 1927. Her father was a foreign copyright and trademark agent, like his fictional counterpart in The Dead of the House, and her mother was a homemaker. She attended Wellesley College, studying with Wallace Stegner and receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948. She later went to Stanford University, receiving a Master's degree in 1956. While at Stanford, she studied with the celebrated Russian writer, Vladimir