The Buccaneers

Throughout The Buccaneers, buildings and houses are symbols of social status. The novel opens in the United States, and when Colonel St. George buys a house on Madison Avenue, his wife is horrified to learn that this address makes them social outcasts, as the fashionable people all live on Fifth Avenue. This house therefore represents the St. George family’s ambiguous social status in New York, for despite their wealth, they also find themselves on the periphery of the true elite. The decadence of their house symbolizes their elevation over most of the American population, but its location marks their distance from those elite circles. As such, the decision to go to Britain is in part motivated by this frustration over the linked issue of houses and social status.

Upon their arrival in Britain, however, the American characters soon realize that they have entered a world in which the buildings have just as much symbolic meaning as their residence in America. However, these meanings are less clear to them. The grand houses of the British aristocracy, for example, seem dingy and cold at first glance, and when Virginia first views Allfriars, she compares it to a jail because it lacks the ornamentation and luxury that she associates with wealth.