"The Little Room" and "The Rats in the Walls"

 Both houses in "The Little Room" and "The Rats in the Walls" end up going down in flames upon the discovery or nearing the discovery of a family secret of that house. In "The Little Room", The daughter of the mother who was once an inhabitant of their family house requested that her two friends stop by that house on their way of their European vacation. The two friends initially took individual trips in which one saw the "little room" and the other only saw the china closet. When they resolved to make one last trip to the house to either confirm or dis-confirm what they saw, they find that the house got burned down. How did the house burn down, and for what purpose? I feel that the destruction of the house was meant for the two women to cease their curiosity and accept what they saw. I see this as a reflection on how society bars women on pursuing certain kinds of knowledge. In "The Rats in the Walls" the Exham Priory gets demolished following the discovery of the grotto and the incarceration of the last de la Poer in an asylum. this means that all the evidence of what went on in that house are also destroyed. The inability to further investigate the truth about what happened in those houses is significant to maintaining the mystery that gives those houses it's identity. If people never really know and only speculate, the memory of those houses will be constant as opposed to accepting facts and moving on.