for the credit of

Question

Hello

Could you please help me with the meaning of the phrase "for the credit of the house"? This is a part of the novel "Night and Day" by Woolf. Katherine is at a boring tea-party full of elderly people.

"... instinctively she laughed, and said something to increase the noise, for the credit of the house presumably, since herself had not been exhilarated."
Does it imply the meaning in order to be a good hostess, or something like this?

Thank you for your help and time.
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Enoon · Accepted Answer

I found her use of "credit" puzzling, too, until I discovered that that paragraph begins, "Considering that the little party had been seated round the tea-table for less than twenty minutes, the animation observable on their faces, and the amount of sound they were producing collectively, were very creditable to the hostess." Woolf plays with the word "credit", bouncing it off "creditable" in the first sentence. The AHD defines "creditable" in this sense as "deserving of often limited praise or commendation". Woolf's language here is creative and slightly unusual.

Nikoo · Answer

Thank you so much enoon

But I still cannot relate the sense of "praise" to that phrase.

Enoon · Answer

The noise in the room meant that everyone was having a good time. This was a credit to the hostess—she was deserving of a little praise for making everyone happy. The narrator added to the noise by speaking herself, adding to that credit. She spoke merely "for the credit of the house", as she says, because she wasn't being noisy for the same reason everybody else was. She herself was not excited or swept up in the jovial mood of the room. The house is the hostess.

Nikoo · Answer

Amazing explanation.
Thank you so much

for the credit of

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