The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 novel by author Shirley Jackson. Arguably the most famous literary ghost story published in the twentieth century, it has been made into two feature films and has often been compared to Henry James?s masterpiece The Turn of the Screw. The novel relies not only upon several terrifying passages, but upon the complex relationships between these events and the characters? psyches, as well as a dark, sinister mood that pervades the entire work. This article focuses upon the original novel; for information on the film adaptations, see The Haunting. Plot changes in the motion pictures vary from slight to extreme.

Related Topics:
1959 - Shirley Jackson - Ghost story - Henry James?s - The Turn of the Screw - Psyches - The Haunting

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The story centers around five main characters, including Dr. John Montague, an anthropologist who specializes in the study of the supernatural; Eleanor Vance, a shy, withdrawn woman of thirty-two, from whose perspective the story is told; Theodora ("just Theodora"), a rather outgoing and adventurous young woman; and Luke Sanderson, the young heir to Hill House who plays host to the others. The fifth main character is Hill House itself. Hidden away in the countryside among the foreboding hills that give it its name, Hill House is an ugly and malevolent eighty year-old mansion built by an eccentric patriarch. As the narrative describes it, ?This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.?

Related Topics:
Anthropologist - Mansion - House - Exorcism

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Doctor Montague, hoping to prove scientifically the existence of the supernatural, rents Hill House for a summer and invites a number of individuals to stay there as his guests. Of these invitees?whom he has chosen because at one point or another they have all experienced paranormal events?only two, Eleanor and Theodora, accept. The story follows Eleanor as she travels to the house, where she and Theodora will live in isolation with Montague and Luke Sanderson with the exception of two caretakers, the odious Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, who refuse to stay near Hill House at night.

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Set against the isolated background of Hill House and its crazily disorienting construction, the four begin to form friendships as Doctor Montague explains the building?s unsavory history, which encompasses madness, suicide, and other violent deaths. Eleanor, having lived as a recluse who cared for her hated, invalid mother, gradually begins to venture forth from her shell, especially with Theodora, who befriends her. Theodora is a mysterious character; in her regular life she shares an apartment with someone merely described as her ?friend,? and several clues suggest that Theodora and this friend have a romantic or sexual relationship. The friend?s sex is (rather pointedly) never disclosed, leaving open the possibilities that Theodora is living with a boyfriend (which would have been disreputable at the time the novel was written) or else that she is in a lesbian relationship (which would have been even more remarkable). This vagueness leads to ambiguous relationships between Theodora and Eleanor on the one hand and Theodora and Luke on the other, resulting in eventual tension among these characters and helping to heighten the sense of psychological disorientation that grows throughout the book.

Related Topics:
Lesbian - Psychological

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The center of attention, however?both that of the narrative and of Hill House?is Eleanor. All four of the inhabitants begin to experience terrifying, supernatural events while in the house, including intense cold, seen and unseen spirits roaming the halls at night, and blood spattered on walls and among clothes. Eleanor, however, tends to experience more than the others, and often she experiences things to which the others are oblivious. In her regular life she is an outcast even among her own family, whom she hates, and the house seems be reaching out to her as a soulmate. At first this terrifies her, but as time passes she finds that this new sense of being wanted, which she has never before felt, is strangely attractive. At the same time, Eleanor may be losing touch with reality, and Jackson?s ambiguous narrative raises the possibility that at least some of the things that Eleanor witnesses are merely products of her imagination. In short, Eleanor may or may not be going insane, and if so, it may or may not be due to Hill House?s influence.

Related Topics:
Supernatural - Narrative - Insane

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In addition to these ambiguities, many of the hauntings that occur throughout the book are only vaguely described, or else are partly hidden from the characters themselves. They might be in a bedroom with an unseen force trying the door, or Eleanor may realize after the fact that the hand she was holding in the darkness was not Theodora?s. In one episode, as Theodora and Eleanor walk outside Hill House at night, Theodora looks behind them and screams in fear for Eleanor to run; we (and, perhaps, the other characters) never learn what Theodora saw. This veiled use of the supernatural works on the reader?s imagination and heightens the sense of terror.

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In the latter part of the book Jackson introduces some comic relief in the persons of Mrs. Montague and her companion Arthur Parker, the headmaster of a boys? school, who arrive to spend a weekend at Hill House. While they, too, are interested in the supernatural, they are more drawn to conventional trappings such as séances and spirit writing, which come across as quackery. The irony here is that, unlike the other four characters, they experience nothing supernatural at all, although the house makes use of some of Mrs. Montague?s spirit writings to communicate with Eleanor.

Related Topics:
Séances - Spirit writing

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By this point in the book it is becoming clear to everyone that the house is beginning to possess Eleanor in some fashion. In fear for her safety, Doctor Montague declares that she must leave. But now under Hill House?s spell and happy for the first time in her life, Eleanor resists. The others practically have to force her into her car, but she then kills herself by deliberately crashing head-on into the great tree that stands at the curve of the driveway, an end that was subtly foreshadowed.

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The techniques that Jackson uses in this novel, while reminiscent of her other writings, more strongly blend the supernatural with the psychological. While some of the themes are common ones for her, such as an isolated house, a dysfunctional family or community, and a central character with a fragile hold on reality, Jackson here combines them into a full-fledged horror story that is all the more frightening because of its ambiguity and subtlety. These are the elements that have made The Haunting of Hill House into a modern classic.

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