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pauraqueA doctor looking to turn a scientific eye on paranormal phenomena gathers three others to help investigate an allegedly haunted house: Luke, the young heir of the family who owns the house; Theodora, an artist who's just had a fight with her girlfriend and wants to get away for a while; and Eleanor, a lonely and troubled woman who's never had an independent life apart from her terminally ill mother and domineering sister. Is the house really haunted? Strange events certainly do start to take place... and whatever the presence in Hill House is, it seems to be singling Eleanor out for special attention.
So much of the strength of this book is in its incisively drawn characters, especially Eleanor. Her desperate yearning to be accepted as a peer, as a fellow adult, practically vibrates off the page, and her instant chemistry with the bold and self-assured Theo vividly paints the classic baby-queer dilemma of "do I want to date you, or be you?" (The queerness sits, I guess, just barely on the border of plausible deniability, but let's not kid ourselves.)
Loving and leisurely attention is paid to observing how the characters feel about the growing reality that something very strange and hard to explain is happening. I often find that fictional characters don't have realistic reactions to supernatural events; they readily accept the impossible so the plot can continue. But this book is in no rush to get to the next horror set piece (of which there actually aren't that many), instead spending most of its time exploring naturalistic personal details like how people in a creepy house wouldn't just joke, but also keep looking to each other to make sure we're still all joking—it's not getting too real, is it?—or the surreal inconvenience of trying to measure how far a cold spot extends when your fingers are too cold to hold the ruler.
The ambiguity of what's happening in the house underlines this. The other characters come to believe that Eleanor is responsible for the writing on the walls—it's like the way people can internalize abusive messages and keep repeating them back to themselves long after the abuser is gone. Whether or not there are ghosts in Hill House, it's no mystery that there are ghosts haunting Eleanor's mind. The doctor points out early on that ghosts can't directly hurt people, it's people's reactions to them that are dangerous, and that sets up Chekhov's gun to fire on the last page.
So much of the strength of this book is in its incisively drawn characters, especially Eleanor. Her desperate yearning to be accepted as a peer, as a fellow adult, practically vibrates off the page, and her instant chemistry with the bold and self-assured Theo vividly paints the classic baby-queer dilemma of "do I want to date you, or be you?" (The queerness sits, I guess, just barely on the border of plausible deniability, but let's not kid ourselves.)
Loving and leisurely attention is paid to observing how the characters feel about the growing reality that something very strange and hard to explain is happening. I often find that fictional characters don't have realistic reactions to supernatural events; they readily accept the impossible so the plot can continue. But this book is in no rush to get to the next horror set piece (of which there actually aren't that many), instead spending most of its time exploring naturalistic personal details like how people in a creepy house wouldn't just joke, but also keep looking to each other to make sure we're still all joking—it's not getting too real, is it?—or the surreal inconvenience of trying to measure how far a cold spot extends when your fingers are too cold to hold the ruler.
spoilery thoughts
My reading is that the book is about an abuse survivor finding herself at a crossroads. Eleanor can either start on the path to independence and autonomy (rejecting her sister's control, beginning to envision the life she wants as she describes her as-yet fictitious "little apartment" to Theo) or she can take the self-destructive path, letting herself be consumed by the toxic family dynamic that is the only thing she knows. Hill House targets her because of that vulnerability, and it defeats her. She never gets to have that better life. I see it as a cautionary tale.The ambiguity of what's happening in the house underlines this. The other characters come to believe that Eleanor is responsible for the writing on the walls—it's like the way people can internalize abusive messages and keep repeating them back to themselves long after the abuser is gone. Whether or not there are ghosts in Hill House, it's no mystery that there are ghosts haunting Eleanor's mind. The doctor points out early on that ghosts can't directly hurt people, it's people's reactions to them that are dangerous, and that sets up Chekhov's gun to fire on the last page.
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Date: 17 Apr 2024 03:33 pm (UTC)Oh, I agree so much with this. I read this book back in December and I also came away with a really strong sense that this book's strength was the focus on the characters' interplay with each other rather than any attempt to make Hill House the clear and apparent cause of a supernatural event.
The toxic family element was so vivid and, to me, it felt so tied to the constraints of gender roles. Eleanor reminded me of 'leftover women' characters from historical novels - her whole relationship to her mother seemed to be one of of duty and labor, and her sister seemed to think of her as hired help to be managed rather than a person to be loved. Her mere existence is so purely based in exploitation and her utility to others that she's giddy and unbalanced by the small freedoms she has, driving thru the countryside to a place that *she* decided to go to, herself! Theo is so carefully threaded as a character who is so free that it's almost wish fulfillment for Eleanor - and Theo seems to be attracted and then repelled by Eleanor's reaction to her, and it is so pitiful for Eleanor.
I had seen adaptations of this story before, and I had NOT known the ending for Eleanor in the book - which seemed like a case of a trapped bird, released from its cage, immediately hitting a window and breaking its neck. Her first real foray into being an adult, a real person who could make choices and own the consequences of those choices, gets rejected so soundly by people who had no idea how vulnerable she really was... the chills that ran down my spine at that last page!
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Date: 18 Apr 2024 02:31 pm (UTC)Oof, yes. Well said.
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Date: 17 Apr 2024 06:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 18 Apr 2024 02:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 17 Apr 2024 10:17 pm (UTC)(Also, incidentally, I found out recently that the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World is largely based on The Haunting—the faithful film adaptation of Haunting of Hill House. I was there last year and—yeah, it definitely is. Which means a lot of the general gestalt of haunted house is this book.)
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Date: 18 Apr 2024 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 18 Apr 2024 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 18 Apr 2024 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 21 Apr 2024 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 22 Apr 2024 05:24 pm (UTC)super late to commenting so don't know if a spoiler cut to discuss the ending is necessary at this point but just in case
Though I gasped at the ending--it was like a gut punch the first time I read it, and I definitely read it as a tragedy, I didn't get the whole abuse metaphor and I didn't see it as the house defeating her, but now that you say that, it makes a whole lot of sense. As I think I mentioned in our conversation about this, I saw the house as being the first place where Eleanor could try to become who she wanted to be, the first place where she found any semblance of acceptance, and the fact that she would rather die than to be forced to leave the house was heartbreaking to me. (I even have sort of fond feelings for the house because of this?? which I get is weird. :P) But I didn't take the few more steps into that to understand that not leaving the house wasn't her only choice -- she could choose to go back home, break free from her family and find herself out in the world, and the tragedy is that Eleanor couldn't see how that was possible. It's interesting to me, because in looking into Shirley Jackson's life, it sounded like her husband was quite controlling and I wonder if she herself felt trapped and this was a way of processing those feelings. But that's a huge supposition! More research required! (But I do find that trapped theme in a lot of Jackson's novels.) Anyway, I'm babbling and this isn't super coherent, but your thoughts on the ending definitely brought in a new perspective for me.no subject
Date: 24 Apr 2024 01:31 pm (UTC)spoilers
I'm sure there's more than one way to read it. To me the whole premise of looking at the house scientifically and separating what it is inherently from what people are bringing to it sets up the understanding that the story is about human agency and what you do in response to a horrible situation.Eleanor has been trapped in her abusive family dynamic through no fault of her own, but there's nobody coming to rescue her, she has to save herself. And the unfairness of it is that it's hard--the first time she seeks belonging, it feels like she deserves to succeed, but she doesn't. And from that point it's all too easy for her to get sucked back into despair, and to refuse to accept that she needs to move on and try again. I think many of us have experienced this (though... probably not with ghosts and stuff). When you first start to break free, you feel like Eleanor does when she takes the car and has this rush of independence, driving where she wants to go all by herself. But that's just the first step, and the road has many pitfalls where you can fall back into the same spirals of stuckness you were in before.