The incredible weaving and intricate artwork of Laurence Housman’s House of Joy was truly a sight to behold for this week’s reading. I was familiar with his art from beforehand through Goblin Market, but seeing him illustrate his own writing here is wonderful. A writer who can illustrate his own work truly encapsulates a vision well realized. The sweeping detail and fluid use of languid poses and compositional elements sets his illustrations apart, along with the vivid allusions to women’s rights and same-sex love. 

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.

I personally liked Houseman’s fairytales especially as they seemed very different from the other works we’ve read in class. It’s interesting to know that he’d been influenced not only by Oscar Wilde’s arrest but his sister’s participation in the women’s movement. I’ve personally always liked fairytales because they were this space that were catered to children (most of the time) but with Housman actively throwing in messages of shedding the constraints of traditional Victorian notions—it’s nice to see.

Something that I found really interesting during this weeks discussion of Laurence Housman’s The House of Joy was how Laurence’s own sexuality influenced the illustrations even when the illustrations depicted heterosexual couples. Kyle brought up a really interesting point during Alicia’s presentation on “The Story of the Herons” about how the the Prince Heron’s longing to return to his old life as a bird could be read as a gay man longing to be freed from a heterosexual relationship.

This week we discussed Laurence Housman’s The House of Joy published in 1895. Before reading the story, I was interested to see how Housman balanced the amount of authority he gives to both text and image in conveying the themes in the story as he himself is both the author and the illustrator. As discussed in the class, the proleptic nature of the image gives a circular experience to the reader as when I first took a look at the images before reading the story, I had a hard time fully grasping what was going on in the picture.