Literary notes about hearth (AI summary)
In literature the hearth frequently emerges as a symbol of domestic warmth and stability while also serving as a stage for personal and communal drama. It anchors figures in moments of rest or reflection, as when a character retires to the easy-chair by the hearth to escape the world ([1]) or when a family gathers around it to share both solace and routine ([2], [3]). At times it becomes a site of ritual significance and even conflict, underscoring themes of tradition and change, as seen in the directive to prepare an altar’s hearth ([4]) or the contemplation of shared lineage and fault on its warmth ([5]). Whether glowing with the brightness of a sustaining fire or echoing with the silence of loss ([6], [7]), the hearth remains a multi-layered emblem that bridges the tangible and the metaphorical in storytelling.
- Pickering retires to the easy-chair at the hearth and sits down.
— from Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw - They played and gamboled together in the fields, and were also together by the hearth.
— from The Oera Linda Book, from a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century - Hannah had left a pan of bread to rise, Meg had worked it up early, set it on the hearth for a second rising, and forgotten it.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - Which thou shalt put under the hearth of the altar: and the grate shall be even to the midst of the altar.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson - On the hearth the red embers of his fire were fading away in the bright beams of the morning sun, that looked aslant through the open window.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte - He arrived there and found distress, and, what is still sadder, no smile; a cold hearth and cold hearts.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
