I found the discussions this week some of the most interesting of the course thusfar, especially in the case of discussing Laurence Housman's The House of Joy. What made this novel and this discussion stand out to me was that through viewing and analyzing the different images that are included in the book for various fairytales, it was easy to recognize imagery that had the same thematic implications throughout the entire book. This is something that I had not considered when reading it on my own, however since the discussion I have gone back to the book to discover more connections that I can make between all of the images and their individual themes. One theme that stood out to me the most was the depictions of homosexuality as being natural and beautiful, and I was able to notice the idea throughout many of the images, even if it was not explicit. When considering the context for The House of Joy and who the author and illustrator is, you begin to recognize just how much an illustration can illuminate its text, and bring about ideas never explicitly mentioned in the text itself. This is definitely the case for Housman's works, and I would argue that he has a beautiful method of expressing themes to his audience that would otherwise not be explicitly said. It is easy for us to recognize these themes by looking at the images a our own time, however it makes me curious to know about the reception of this book, and especially its images.

With our discussion of the image for Luck of the Roses, initially I just assumed that the house in the illustration was representative of the couples desires to have their own children and live together in the home, as these ideas of domesticity are outlined in the text. However, we know by reading the story that it is not possibe for this couple to have children, and so they tend to their roses, and later the rose fairy, instead. It was not until one of my fellow classmates mentioned that the house also references the inability of conception, or the fear of not being able to have a child, that is often associated with homosexuality. Considering how the couple is depicted I did not think of this before, however after having that discussion I entirely agree that this would have been an idea that Housman was trying to imply in his work. The couple shares a domestic desire that is expected of couples everywhere, and as my classmate mentioned it is often a fear of heterosexual parents that their homosexual child will not have a family of their own. In this case not only does the house represent doestic desire but it also represents what is expected of all couples, to settle down and have children, when more often than not that is not the case. I believe that Housman was trying to make a critique of heterosexual domestic values through this imagery and with his characters as a whole, and I think that the imagery of the house is a near perfect way to make this critique.