Question

Why does the person in the poem call herself callous and selfish?

Answer 1

Her blood becornes an agency to recollect her glorious past and yet irony

of fate that the same agency cannot bring desired changes, Perhaps it hints at

feminine helplessness in the struggle against a male dominated world. The house is described twice in the poem, first from the grandmother's point of view and secondly from the poet's point of view. In the first the house becomes a symbol of decay and at the same time it arouses powerful feelings of attachment and love for it. Where as in the second it causes a sense of death and becomes a symbol of irretrievable past, she would not mind being called callous or selfish but would never like to blame her blood. There is an element of self-pity in the acceptance of her inability to repair and reclaim the past while upholding its glorious heritage.