I have read many books, poems, and short stories, and I have listened to many songs, too. In my humble opinion, much of the literature will say something about a house or two. Some of writing describes a house as warm and fuzzy. Some of it describes a house as cold and sterile. Some of it describes a house as an embodiment of terror. I would never suggest to anyone how they should write about a house. I’m just saying that Houses claim a lot of real estate [pun intended] in literature.

Laura Ingalls Wilder carved herself a place in fame with her descriptions of her little houses:

“All alone in the wild Big Woods, and the snow, and the cold, the little log house was warm and snug and cosy. Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie were comfortable and happy there, at night.

“Then the fire was shining on the hearth, the cold and the dark and the wild beasts were all shut out, and Jack the brindle bulldog and Black Susan the cat lay blinking at the flames in the fireplace.

“Ma sat in her rocking chair, sewing by the light of the lamp on the table. The lamp was bright and shiny. There was salt in the bottom of its bowl with the kerosene, to keep the kerosene from exploding, and there were bits of red flannel among the salt to make it pretty. It was pretty.

“Laura loved to look at the lamp, with its glass chimney so clean and sparkling, its yellow flame burning so steadily. and its bowl of clear kerosene colored red by the bits of flannel. She loved to look at the fire in the fireplace, flickering and changing all the time, burning yellow and red and sometimes green above the logs, and hovering blue over the golden and ruby coals.” Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

Contrast that description of Wilder’s little house to the following:

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone….Hill House, she thought, You’re as hard to get into as heaven.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

For some people, a house is a trap within their minds.

“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”
― Tennessee Williams, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore

And I hope that everyone has read about Daphne DuMaurier’s house Manderley.

“The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.”
― Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca

For some writers, a house is a type of autobiography, or a house is a person.

“My old man’s a white old man
And my old mother’s black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I’m sorry for that evil wish
And now i wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house
My Ma died in a shack.
I wonder where i’m going to die,
Being neither white nor black?”
― Langston Hughes

For some people, houses conjure up a bit of fairy magic.

“The fairies, as their custom, clapped their hands with delight over their cleverness, and they were so madly in love with the little house that they could not bear to think they had finished it.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

For some people, houses are places that guard and protect them.

“Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

For any number of reasons, houses have a way of creeping into literature. Writers need to know how to describe them.

“The house was clean, scrubbed and immaculate, curtains washed, windows polished, but all as a man does it – the ironed curtains did not hang quite straight and there were streaks on the windows and a square showed on the table when a book was moved.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Casy said, “Ol’ Tom’s house can’t be more’n a mile from here. Ain’t she over that third rise?”

Sure,” said Joad. “Less somebody stole it, like Pa stole it.”

Your pa stole it?”

Sure, got it a mile an’ a half east of here an’ drug it. Was a family livin’ there, an’ they moved away. Grampa an’ Pa an’ my brother Noah like to took the whole house, but she wouldn’t come. They only got part of her. That’s why she looks so funny on one end. They cut her in two an’ drug her over with twelve head of horses and two mules. They was goin’ back for the other half an’ stick her together again, but before they got there Wink Manley come with his boys and stole the other half. Pa an’ Grampa was pretty sore, but a little later them an’ Wink got drunk together an’ laughed their heads off about it. Wink, he says his house is a stud, an’ if we’ll bring our’n over an’ breed ’em we’ll maybe get a litter of crap houses. Wink was a great ol’ fella when he was drunk. After that him an’ Pa an’ Grampa was friends. Got drunk together ever’ chance they got.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“The first of these houses appeared to be occupied. The next two were vacant. Dingy curtains, soot-grey against their snowy window-sills, hung over the next. A litter of paper and refuse-abandoned by the last long gust of wind that must have come whistling round the nearer angle of the house – lay under the broken flight of steps up to a mid-Victorian porch. The small snow clinging to the bricks and to the worn and weathered cement of the wall only added to its gaunt lifelessness. (“Bad Company”
― Walter de la Mare, Ghost Stories

Houses may be nothing more than a bit of setting, but for many writers, Houses and/or Homes are Themes of their writing.

“If a house burns down, it’s gone, but the place—the picture of it—stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

“Everything has been done — every material thing — to give this place the aspect of benignity, of friendship, of tolerance and conviviality, but the character of a dwelling, like that of a man, grows slowly. The walls of my house are without memories, or secrets, or laughter. Not enough of life has been breathed into them — their warmth is artificial; too few hands have turned the window latches, too few feet have trod the thresholds. The boards of the floor, self-conscious as youth or falsely proud as the newly rich, have not yet unlimbered enough to utter a single cordial creak. In time they will, but not for me.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night