Jonatha Brooke’s background in English literature informs many of the songs on Angel in the House; the album takes its title from a poem by Victorian poet Coventry Patmore. In the poem, Patmore extols the “virtues” of womanhood: to stay at home by the hearth, take care of the husband and children, and always have a cheerful countenance.
Brooke found inspiration in English writer Virginia Woolf’s response to the poem: “Woolf got a hold of the poem and used it as a metaphor for that particular phantom that tells us, as women, not to offend, not to do our work, but to flatter and coo. The song comes down to the struggle we still have with that notion of womanhood,” Brooke explained in the Elektra release. In the Billboard interview, she added: “I think that I and my generation are still messing with this stupid angel that says, ‘Why don’t you take care of your house before you write a song!’”
Set up as a series of drawing room ballads, the first song on the album, “Mermaid,” addresses the image of women portrayed in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Little Mermaid.” Referring to the difference between Andersen’s version and the commercially popular, sugary-sweet, Walt Disney film version of the tale, Brooke wrote in the album’s liner notes: “In the original story, she doesn’t get the guy, she doesn’t live happily ever after, she loses her voice, her tail, her family and turns into sea foam.”
Cramton described “Mermaid” in the Metro Times as representative of the “multilayered meanings” present in many of the Story’s songs. “They voice the frustrations of many women who want bustling lives but fear public reprisals for ‘neglecting their feminine duties.’” People magazine called Angel in the House “the year’s most radiant folk record,” while White, writing in Billboard, suggested that “fans of the fragile gleam of Grace in Gravity will find Angel in the House a darker prism.”
The title track of Angel in the House was also inspired by a literary work—this time, a short story by Grace Paley about a middle-aged woman who is forced to reexamine her life: “My mother moved the furniture / When she no longer moved the man.… / She wanted to be a different person.… / And he walked away.” “My mother is a big part of the song,” Brooke told White in the Billboard interview. “It’s about me and my mother, and … any woman who’s been torn between desires and what they’re supposed to do as a female in this world.”
Kimball added her own feelings about the song, which conjured up memories of her parents’ divorce: “That was an awful time; they were very friendly, almost too friendly, and I wanted them to be more angry with each other and more separated.” From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/story
