Possible interpretations of Svabo's The Door

Magda Szabo's The Door (1987) comes full circle and ends where it began, w/ the narrator suffering from nightmare visions of an impenetrable doorway, as she's in mourning for her late friend/emplyee/servant, Emerence, and in agony over her failure to help Emerence in her last days, in fact betraying her by taking part in a scheme to get her out of her decrepit apartment and into the health-care system - and then leaving the scene to do a TV appearance while E is being hauled away and decontaminated by a medical team. In the final chapters, the narrator is lured into lying to E, now hospitalized and recovering from a stroke, and telling her that her apartment is ready for her return - when in fact the entire apartment has been ripped apart and all of her possessions have been incinerated. When it becomes clear that E is ready to return "home" the narrator has to tell her the truth, and she carries guilty about this well beyond E's funeral and beyond all reason. At the end, she inherits the contents of a room that E has kept locked away for decades: turns out to be a priceless set of antique furniture (once property of a Jewish family that fled Hungary), but when the narrator touches the furniture in literally (is this possible?) crumbles into a pile of dust - the wood had been devoured by wood lice. OK so there are a # of ways in which to read this novel, aside from the realist/naturalist tone as a stoyr about the complex relations between two women and their cultural clashes (artist-intellectual v hard-working and long-suffering servant), and I'll touch on a few. First and most obvious, religious allegory: there are many allusions to the life (and death) of Jesus, and in some ways we can see E as a Christ-figure, giving up her life for others, suffering, dying, living on in memory - but also perhaps a false prophet (the legacy crumbling into a pile of dust)? Second, a political analogy, in which maybe E represents the hypocrisy and oppression of the Hungarian government during its various phases of crisis: Nazi occupation/influence and anti-Semitism during the war, repression of free expression during Soviet occupation - and the narrator's struggle w/ her over the course of a lifetime represents the struggle of contemporary Hungarians (or anyone) with an oppressive government. Third, conflict between writer (the narrator) and muse - with E. providing the comfort and security than enables to writer to compose, but disappearing at times and demanding of obeisance and tribute at all times. Finally, there are many references to Greek myth and tragedy, many of which alluded me, but some we can see are part of the scheme - with E. wrathful and petulant like Achilles as battles rage outside. There may be other suggestions as well. 

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