The House of Doors

Lesley Hamlyn is the one of the narrators and protagonists of The House of Doors. Penang-born and European-descended, Lesley views herself as more liberal in her views of Asian people than her European peers, though she frequently displays racist views, even toward individual Asian persons she admires. She also exhibits deep anti-gay bias but experiences little cognitive dissonance on this matter once she befriends Willie, a gay man. As in her relationship with her lover, Arthur, who is Chinese, Lesley, in her friendship with Willie, shows herself to easily divorce her prejudices from the individuals who fit into the categories against which she experiences bias. Lesley is self-absorbed, centering herself in larger political and interpersonal narratives.

Lesley is prone to secrecy, and rarely discusses her interpersonal issues with those who have angered her; while she tells Willie all about Robert’s affair, intending him to write about it to introduce the topic between her and her husband, she does not bring up the affair herself when Willie omits it from his book of stories. She also rewrites her opinions on things without any indication that she recognizes the tension in these shifts. For example, while she longs for the simplicity of pre-electricity in the 1921 timeline, she is jealous that her neighbors are getting electric lights before her in her 1910 timeline; while Robert is alive, she detests the silence between them, while after his death, she misses those silences.