Within her first book, Acts and Monuments, Ní Chuilleanáin has several poems that rely on the imagery of a house. "The House of Time" presents a masculine view of life and of domesticity. Everything is based on time; the clock is central to the progress of life. A second poem, "The House Remembered," represents the female approach to time and understanding.

The House Remembered

The house persists, the permanent

Scaffolding while the stones move round.

Convolvulus winds the bannisters, sucks them down;

We found an icicle under the stairs

Tall as a church candle;

It refused to answer questions

But proved its point by freezing hard.

The house changes, the stones

Choking in dry lichen stupidly spreading

Abusing the doorposts, frost on the glass.

Nothing stays still, the house is still the same

But breast over the sink turned into a tap

And coming through the door all fathers look the same.

The stairs and window waver but the house stands up;

Peeling away the walls another set shows through.

I can't remember, it all happened too recently,

But somebody was born in every room.

The poem is about the endurance of the house, which could be symbolic of the woman who endures struggle after struggle but remains standing. Words such as "perists," "permanent," and "Scaffolding" enhance this image of strength and sustainability.

There is a permanence even though "the stones move round," but with space for change and movement. Even as twines and plants wind the bannisters, "suck[ing] them down," and icicles form under the stairs, still the house remains steadfast. The term "Convolvulus," describing the twining plants on the bannisters, connotes sexual female imagery in the spelling of the word. The spelling of "convolvulus" recalls "vulva," a part of the female genitalia, and this seems purposeful to me. The convolvulus winds in and out of the bannisters, analagous to the feminine way in which Ní Chuilleanáin weaves us in and out of her poems (web motif again).

In response to this female sexual imagery we arrive at the "freezing hard" icicle, which is "Tall as a church candle." This is the phallic counterpart to the winding twine-plant. Both images act upon the house--there is a partnership within the domestic scene--and in turn the house embodies both genders. (Recall Woolf's theory of androgyny and McGuckian's "red-brown girl").

As I mentioned before, there is room for flux, and thus the stones of the house begin to spread. As changes occur there seems to be less and less harmony between the female and male counterparts. The "Choking" stones (fighting for space, freedom) are "stupidly spreading" (emphasis added). "Spreading" entails female sexual imagery: a woman spreading her legs. The spreading abuses the doorposts, a phallic image, and "nothing stays still." But the house "is still the same." The women ("breast") and men ("fathers") may change as people grow old or new people move in, but the structure of the house is always the same. Thus as the male and female parts of the house change/argue, McGuckian alludes to the way people mature and progress as time goes on; we feel different emotions and think different thoughts over time, but we are still housed in the same body. And/or, in a more McGuckian approach to the poem, the house represents the Self. The Self/psyche is androgynous, thus both sexes are contained within one "body."

There is constant motion and struggle between the male and female counterparts but somehow the house survives. "Peeling away the walls another set shows through." Just like peeling away layers of old wallpaper, there are always layers of lives, different families, that have lived under that roof. The different layers are the different stories of these men and women, and "somebody was born in every room." The layers also connote the layers we must dig through to discover meaning within poetry, or even the conscious layers we peel/shed in an attempt to reach the unconscious realm.