The Ten Thousand Doors of January Summary and Analysis

Section One Summary: Life in Locke House: Behind Closed Doors

The novel opens with a 7-year-old January Scaller accompanying her guardian, Mr. William Cornelius Locke, the wealthy owner of W.C. Locke & Company and member of the New England Archaeological Society, on a business trip to Ninley, Kentucky. She describes herself as a willful young girl, whose hair is just as unruly as she is and her skin as an odd copper-red tone that causes people consternation when they try to fit her into the racial categories that connote social standing. However, she does not easily fit into any categories or standards in this world. January’s father Julian Scaller is a field agent for Mr. Locke and sends any rare artifacts he finds back to Locke House. For this reason, he is often absent.

Deciding to explore the town of Ninley, January discovers a blue Door in a field. It opens for her, and she experiences a shift in reality. On the other side of the Door she finds an island city in a vast sea. January picks up a strange coin inscribed with a strange language and a strange profile on it. She pockets it and returns through the Door, hearing Mr. Locke’s concerned calls for her. Commanded by Mr. Locke, January describes her experience, but he does not believe her. Later that night, she sneaks out of the hotel to return to the Door, but she finds that it has been destroyed. She keeps the coin, which still smells of the strange seas she discovered through the Door.

January’s experience with the Door fades as she tries to become a model ward, sacrificing her willful and inquisitive nature to learn her place in the world. As 10 years pass, January makes few friends. Samuel Zappia, the son of the local grocers, often spends time with January. When she is 13, he brings her a puppy, which is eventually allowed to stay at Locke House. January names him Sinbad (Bad), and the two become inseparable. When she is almost 15, Miss Jane Irimu from East Africa comes to Locke House; January’s father has employed her to act as January’s friend, ally, and secondary caretaker.

Over the years, January represses herself, dutifully following Mr. Locke’s plans for her to become a civil and proper young woman while wishing she could join her father on his expeditions. This changes, however, when January finds an odd book within a blue chest in Mr. Locke’s Pharaoh Room. Before she can start reading it, January is called to Mr. Locke’s office where he explains that her father has disappeared on his expedition in East Asia and is likely dead. Her world shattered, January begins to read her newfound book.

The book is The Ten Thousand Doors and was written by Yule Ian Scholar. Its introduction indicates that it started as a research project for the University of the city of Nin and seeks to analyze the importance of portals that link worlds and act as a source of change. However, the text quickly moves from being a monograph to being a narrative.

The first story follows Adelaide Lee Larson, called Ade, who was born in 1866 and raised by a family of women. She is a daring girl who explores the land, particularly the land behind her family’s farm. One day, she happens across a strange boy by the run-down cabin on their property. He is odd-colored and oddly dressed, and he claims to be from another world. They spend the day talking about their respective worlds and part with a kiss, planning to meet the following week. That Sunday, a stranger comes to their church service and inquires about purchasing the Larson family’s haunted land. Ade cannot keep herself from telling him of the ghost boy she met. When she returns to the cabin to keep her appointment with the boy, she finds the cabin, and the Door he came through, destroyed.

January wakes from reading and finds that it is the day of Mr. Locke’s annual New England Archaeological Society party. During it, Mr. Locke makes a speech in which he shows that people can be civilized and can be taught their place, using January as an example. January, embarrassed, escapes outside. There she finds Samuel, who has been hired as a server for the evening, and he saves her from the advances of another young man. Drinking some champagne to settle her frayed nerves, January returns to the smoking room, where Mr. Locke invites her to join the Society as a 17th birthday present. January refuses in front of all the members and, light-headed with champagne, exposes the racial double standards of the group before storming out. She reads another chapter about Ade.

The death of Ade’s grandmother untethers her from the farm. She goes off in search of Doors, particularly the one that leads back to the ghost boy she kissed. She has a series of life-changing experiences: she works on a steamer disguised as a man in exchange for passage and has her first romantic liaison with a trick rider in Dr. Carver’s Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition. Ade leaves these experiences to chase stories and rumors, which lead to more Doors. When she hears of an ocean located on the top of Mount Silverheels in Colorado, she heads there, builds a boat she names The Key (drawing a lot of attention in the process), and disappears through the Door.

Section One Analysis: Life in Locke House: Behind Closed Doors

The power of words is introduced in the very beginning. In the fields of Ninley, Kentucky, January discovers an ordinary door and changes it into a Door—a portal to a strange world—by writing her own story. This is the very first moment where January’s powers are displayed. This scene also introduces Doors as symbolic elements that reference opportunity and escape. As January imagines where the blue Door in the field might lead, she uses her writing to tell a story about it. Unknowingly, she achieves the miraculous. The reality of January’s story becomes the tangible reality around her. In that moment, January believes the Door will open for the sake of her story, but she does not want it to open to a particular world. It is precisely her na�vet� and her act of genuine expression that achieves the fantastical. She is uninhibited by any external limitations that are imposed upon her; January commands the portal effortlessly because no one has told her otherwise. Similarly, the transportive power of stories is emphasized. In times of stress, depression, and despondence, January escapes into The Ten Thousand Doors. This book within a book, which is a repeated structural element throughout the novel, additionally relates how tales and folklore often lead to Doors. The impact these portals have on the world stages an ongoing tension between the survival of traditional influences in the face of a relentlessly modernizing world.

January’s skin tone and gender are consistent factors in many scenes, highlighting the long-standing prejudices that imbued the early 20th century. She describes herself as having a skin tone that does not neatly correspond to a particular ethnic group or geographic location, and Mr. Locke takes advantage of this trait by crafting lineages for her depending on the situation. Even for a guardian, we see how Mr. Locke connects the color of January’s skin and her gender with inherent ability and limitations. These come to the fore at the annual Society party. In his speech, Mr. Locke objectifies January, establishing her as an Other in comparison to the people attending the event. Mr. Locke suggests that his and Miss Wilda’s guidance have transformed January; they have made her a meek and dutiful young woman despite her willful nature and her skin tone. It is this same underlying belief in foundational prejudices that bars Julian Scaller from being a member of the Society. In the members’ opinion, he is destined to be the laborer just as January will always be just a part of Mr. Locke’s collection.