Keeper of Enchanted Rooms

In Keeper of Enchanted Rooms, various characters have complicated relationships with their families. Both Silas and Merritt are shaped by unhappy family histories, but they respond to these experiences in different ways, revealing that every family is unique and that family experiences can shape an individual’s life and outlook.

Young Silas is the victim of his father’s drunken rage and misplaced resentment, which begins his trajectory as the novel’s antagonist. The novel’s discussion of how magical ability is transmitted biologically suggests possible reasons for Lord Hogwood’s hatred of his son: Silas’s inheritance from his powerful mother and father makes him potentially more powerful than either of them. Silas turns this inheritance on his own family, however. After he learns, through the burst of power that he acquires from the unpremeditated killing of his father, that he can transfer the magic of others to himself, Silas takes advantage of his proximity to his mother and brother to feed his own growing power. Silas therefore responds to his father’s hatred and rejection by lashing out at others and seeking to dominate them, becoming an ironic mirror image of the father he despised.

Merritt is also the victim of paternal dislike and abuse. His father inflicted emotional damage on his son, angered that Merritt was the son of an affair that his mother had with a neighbor and friend, Nelson Sutcliffe. His anger drove him to deceive and disinherit Merritt through the false pregnancy scheme that he plotted with Ebba. Merritt was deeply wounded by being deprived of his family circle and the relationships he had with his mother and sisters. Though he found solace in living with his friend Fletcher, Merritt’s fierce anger when the house steals the scarf that his sister Scarlet gave him suggests his continued emotional attachment to his family. It is significant that, unlike Silas, Merritt does not respond to the injustices he has experienced by lashing out—instead, he remains a lonely but gentle figure who demonstrates warmth and care for others when given the chance. In doing so, Merritt breaks with his presumed father’s legacy by forging a different path for himself.

Merritt’s feelings toward Owein give him the chance to forge a healthier experience of family. While he first thinks of the boy as a representation of his younger self—the Merritt who was also separated from his family and the attachments they supplied—Merritt feels an even closer bond once he learns that there is a distant blood relation between them since Owein is an ancestor of Nelson. The recognition supplies a new member of Merritt’s family, replacing, in a way, the natal family he lost and giving him the chance to start over with a new conception of love and belonging.