The Speaker
The speaker is a woman tracing the physical places where sexual assault and physical relationships have manifested themselves on her body. She views herself as a house, and is haunted by many memories, especially of men who have harmed her since she was young.
The Mother
The mother is the first person to tell the speaker that a woman's body is like a house, and these words form the foundation for the rest of the poem and indeed for the speaker's mode of self-conceptualization. She has a fraught relationship with her husband, though we only see this relationship in surreal metaphor. The mother has clearly had bad experiences herself, and wants to prepare her daughter for them, knowing she cannot be protected.
The Father
The father is a spectral figure in the poem, seen only as a stuffed pig on the dining room table. Judging by the anger in this image, the father was a negative, abusive force in the lives of his wife and daughter.
The Man in the Tub
The man in the tub is not identified and exists only as fantasy or symbol. He was invited back to the narrator's house and placed in a tub filled with ice and—one assumes—castrated. He serves as a stand-in for what the narrator would like to do in order to gain revenge against the men who have wronged her: she wants to make them feel as vulnerable as they made her.
Anwar, Basil, Yusuf, and Blue-Eyed Johnny
These are all men who succeeded—one way or another—in making their way into the speaker’s “home.” They somehow won her heart, or held the key to deeper parts of her, or forced or tricked their ways in—but none of them succeeded in making a home out of the house; none of them succeeded in winning and keeping the speaker's love. Anwar never made it all the way inside; Basil waited too long outside; Yusuf was locked out; and Blue-Eyed Johnny told the speaker about the tricks he had used on other women.
The Social Workers
When the girl was young, she was asked to point out on a doll by social workers where she had been inappropriately touched. She tells them she doesn’t look like a doll, but rather a house, and proceeds to use that analogy to point out abuse.
Her First Love
The speaker's first love is the first in a list of men who have been able to make their ways into the house of the speaker's body and, sometimes, mind. When he touched her breast he fell through a trapdoor and, the speaker tells us, he still lives inside her body—metaphorically—along with many others.
This first love seems to stand apart from the rest of the boys she keeps inside her; he is purer somehow, perhaps a memory of how she herself once was; she hopes he doesn't run into the other bad men she keeps locked away, including the aforementioned blue-eyed Johnny, who she keeps chained in the basement.
