Essay: Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House”
The “Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson, is a creepy psychological ghost story that goes deeper than the title or the text would have you first believe. The sexual undertones of the story and how it addresses sexuality and death are evident if one looks closely at the meanings behind the simple, yet complex text. Shirley Jackson captures our most primitive impulses, which are fear and desire, and releases them onto the house. Shirley Jackson’s biographical influence is written on the walls of Hill House, and because of these disturbances in her personal life, she creates a house that becomes an entity all its own. The book resonates with the reader because of the tension it creates by playing with the notion of death and the idea of dying alone. The book also conjures up disturbing images of incest, and nonchalant references and signals of homosexual behavior. Much like our protagonist Eleanor Vance, the house is a complicated and distinctive figure in the novel, and it toys with our fears and anxieties over death, loneliness, and sex the further we delve into the story.
In Morris Dickstein’s essay” The Aesthetics of Fright,” he talks about how fear and desire are our most primitive impulses, “both ridiculously easy to arouse” (Dickstein). “The Haunting of Hill House,” is a place where fear resides around every dark corner, and death seems to come to those who dare reside there. This idea of fear is aroused from the very beginning of the novel. The fear and anxiety that comes from leaving home for the first time, or stealing your parents car for a joyride, in this case, the car Eleanor shares with her sister. The longing to be independent was a dream that Eleanor had wanted bad enough to venture out in the unknown, despite the consequences of what may or may not happen. “The Haunting of Hill House” is a relatable story in that aspect, because, it basically talks about the American dream and how we all strive for something more. Eleanor was a 32-year-old unmarried woman living with her sister in 1950’s America. It was unusual for a woman of Eleanor’s age to be unattached without a husband and kids during what was considered the baby boom era (CNN). “In the 1950s, a woman still single four to five years after the average age at which her peers married was unlikely ever to marry” (Coontz). Eleanor surely must have felt burdened by societies views on marriage and how she missed out on finding a mate because she was too busy caring for her ailing mother.
As Steven King states in Danse Macabre, “A good horror story is one that functions on a symbolic level, using fictional (and sometimes supernatural) events to help us understand our own deepest real fears” (King). What starts off as a simple journey about a 32-year-old woman searching for her place in the world, becomes much more, when Shirley Jackson decides to add a bit of psychological and paranormal to the mix. I believe this is what Steven King meant when he talks about, “fiction and supernatural coming together to understand our own fears.” I believe Shirley Jackson’s fascination with the supernatural and dying definitely played a huge influence in the story of Hill House, as Ruth Franklin writes in her biography A Rather Haunted Life, “witchcraft was important to Jackson, for what it symbolized: female strength and potency” and to call oneself a witch, then, is to claim some of that power.” It didn’t matter what anyone else thought of witchcraft, or of Jackson’s claim of being a witch, it gave her some degree of power otherwise not afforded to her. Jackson, who had a lifelong interest in the occult, who dabbled in spells and liked to tell reporters that she was a witch, professed to believe in ghosts” (Perry).
The very first page of chapter One in “The Haunting of Hill House,” describes the house as an almost living structure, “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone” (Jackson).
This notion of the house being alive brings forth the idea that there is something more after death. It takes our fear of death, and it extinguishes it with this idea that we can live past our mortal bodies, and if the house accepts us, then it is eternal, and death will never come, as long as we remain one with the house. I believe this is why people flock to religion, as a way of coping with death. When Socrates is sentenced to death in Plato’s “The Apology,” Socrates stoically accepts the verdict with the observation that no one but the gods know what happens after death and so it would be foolish to fear what one does not know (Plato). It seems people who believe in God or a higher power view life as a journey, and not an end. I believe we as a species fear death, because it is unknown to us. We strive to know more about what comes after life, and if there is anything past our mortal bodies. I believe this is the fascination with hauntings, especially in this novel with the doctor’s obsession with the paranormal. Shirley Jackson was obviously also obsessed with the unknown since she was known to dabble in the occult. This fixation with death is what makes the book so fascinating.
“I think we turn to literature, to stories, poems, plays, or movies, in order to have our emotions stimulated, even in unpleasable ways. We do so because we experience, even during the literary work, a continuing release of psychic energy (brain effort) from knowing at a cortical, cognitive level that we do not have to act in response to those sub-cortical, emotional signals. We know before we start reading “The Haunting of Hill House” that we will feel unpleasurable fear during the story, but we also know that we will feel pleasure (even during that fear!) because we know we won’t have to do anything about it” (Holland). We fear death, but the Shirley Jackson novel allows us to play with death in the safety of our own homes. It allows us to take what we fear the most and play with it for an hour or two, and then set it aside. I think of it as a rollercoaster in a sense, because it has a lot of unexpected twist and turns, and during it all, we are screaming our heads off, but when it’s over, we smile and laugh, because we know we are safe and back to reality.
“The Haunting of Hill House” brings up the idea of repressed memories. “Freud himself wrote about ‘das Unheimlich’ in literature, which translates as ‘the uncanny’. In a long, meandering essay he said, “an uncanny experience occurs ‘either when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem once more to be confirmed” (Jarrett). This house brings back all these memories for Eleanor and the time she took care of her mother. The house, in a way, becomes the mother in a sense, because it is constantly calling for her to come home. Eleanor is the lost, scared child longing to return to the womb. Shirley Jackson’s own strained relationship with her mother, Geraldine, can be looked at as well. This fear and anxiety of not living up to her mother’s standards is mirrored through the stressed relationship of Eleanor and her mother.
The other idea the novel brings up is this paranoia of losing our minds. We are only as good as our minds is something to ponder in itself. Just think, we could be in perfect health physically, but if we are mentally deficient, then it won’t make much difference if we have a perfect body, but a spoiled mind. “The Haunting of Hill House” takes this idea of losing one’s mind and brings it to life in the character of Eleanor. We never truly know if the house is causing the madness or if it is all in her head. Perhaps years of taking care of her mother and being verbally abused by her sister has taken its toll on Eleanor, or is she simply being haunted by an unseen spirit? Alzheimer’s is a disease that takes our identity from us, and changes who we are (What Is Alzheimer’s?). It is a terrifying predicament to consider losing oneself, but I think that is what is so genius about Shirley Jackson’s novel. We as readers are never sure what to make of the house or Eleanor, and we experience everything as if we are losing our minds as well.
The novel also takes a detour from the paranormal for a bit, and deals with some sexual issues, such as the homosexual innuendos of Theodora and Eleanor. “The Haunting of Hill House” was written in the late 1950’s, at a time when America was still dealing with issues of race and sexuality (Joseph). “In the post war years, the American dream of the nuclear family defined sexuality in a marital context, leaving no place for single sexual culture, homosexuality, or any other type of sexuality not considered mainstream. In the Cold War era, human sexual desire of any deviation from the marital norm would have been considered incorrect and dangerous to the strengthening of the American people for the protection of the free world. In an article in a 1950 edition of the New York Times, journalist William S. White reported on sexual deviants working in government agencies. Homosexuals were placed in the category of “deviant,” until 1974 when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders’ (Beekman).
We are never truly certain of Theodora or Eleanor’s sexuality in the novel. We are given two characters who are both single and without children, and that in itself was frowned upon during the 1950’s. “Are you married?” Eleanor asked. There was a little silence, and then Theodora laughed quickly and said, “No” (Jackson 64). But when Theodora mentions that she has a roommate with whom she had a quarrel with, we are left with this assumption that maybe it was a lover’s quarrel, and perhaps she is a lesbian. Then this sort of flirtatious banter between Eleanor, Theodora, and Luke, only furthers our suspicions of Theodora’s sexuality.
Is she a lesbian or is she bisexual; maybe neither. These frightful moments that Theodora and Eleanor experience together, especially in the bedroom, bring the two closer, huddling for warmth on the bed. It is later in the story that the two begin to quarrel about mundane things. A lover’s quarrel? Perhaps. Could this be because Eleanor is finding herself falling for Theodora.? Eleanor seems very naïve and perhaps she is afraid of these desires she feels because she is not used to having a relationship. The feelings for Theodora could be causing Eleanor to go mad. We are never really certain, but it seems logical given the time period and how homosexuality was viewed as a deviant act, that it would cause almost this hysteria.
One must wonder if the idea of being a lesbian appealed to Shirley Jackson subconsciously, considering her rocky marriage to Stanley Hyman, whom she suspected of being unfaithful. I believe this fear of being alone played a major part in Shirley Jackson’s real life, and it played a huge part in the character she created in Eleanor. In a letter Shirley penned to Stanley, she states, “You once wrote me a letter telling me that I would never be lonely again. I think that was the first, the most dreadful, lie you ever told me” (Franklin). The fear of loneliness and dying alone is a fear many people have, and it obvious that Shirley Jackson was not immune to loneliness.
When Eleanor experiences this phantom hand holding hers, believing it belongs to Theodora, she freaks out, saying, “Good God, whose hand was I holding?” (Jackson 120). Is this incident paranormal, or is it a desire to be intimate with Theo, and when that fantasy is discovered to be a mirage, does it cause Eleanor to have a mental breakdown? This concern of not knowing who’s hand you are holding could mean several things. It could be personal, taken straight from the pages of Shirley Jackson’s marriage to Stanley, or a fear of this homosexual desire for Theodora. Despite everything, Eleanor continues to have fantasies of living with Theodora, and assumes the feelings are mutual. Theodora is a much more openly sexual being and Eleanor feels uncomfortable with this; she is also jealous of Theodora and attracted to her at the same time.
We also have suggestion of sexual deviance in the book related to Hugh Crain and his daughters. Exploration of the house by the group yields a strange, massive marble statue that is possibly of Hugh Crain and his daughters. This in itself is not so absurd, but it is what is discovered later that suggest possibly incest. The group finds an old book made by Hugh Crain for his daughter. It is comprised of warnings about the seven deadly sins and has grotesque, inappropriate images. “When the researchers find the book, Crain made for his daughter, they discover just how perverse, how lecherous, and how domineering the Hill House founding patriarch really was (Jackson 125). Jackson creates repulsion and uneasiness in readers by not telling us exactly what this exceedingly inappropriate and disturbing image is. Our minds supply a multitude of possibilities, all of which are unpleasant to say the least. Critic Richard Pascal reminds us that Theodora is telepathic, so when she calls Hugh Crain a “dirty old man,” she is most likely correct. Pascal writes that “the purpose of Crain’s sanctimonious pornography was to ‘woo’ Sophia, or to inflame her with forbidden impulses.” Incest is clearly implied, and Crain has “infested the very atmosphere with his barely suppressed lust” (Osborne).
The maternal force in the novel is a devouring, all-consuming one. Eleanor’s life before Hill House was one of never-ending torment and labor for an unpredictable and cruel mother who could never give Eleanor the love and appreciation she desired. It is implied that Eleanor may have even let her mother die on purpose. “Hill House is a suffocating maternal force with its dark, enveloping, womb-like interior and lethal reluctance to let people leave its grasp. It becomes very clear that the house and/or Eleanor want a reunion of mother and child; the messages in chalk, blood, and the planchette indicate this desire. Eleanor’s sense of self is not strong enough to resist this pressure and she ultimately agrees to return to her “mother” (Osborne-Bartucca).
Critic Christina Sylka writes, “Eleanor irredeemably isolates herself and irrevocably fuses with the dark energies of the house” which may give her an ultimately limitless future as a specter/supernatural force within the house. Is that not better than being a servant to a cruel old crone or sleeping on a cot in a child’s bedroom while life goes on around you?” (Sylka). The house is often described as suffocating and maternal; even Luke feels it too, commenting, “It’s all so motherly… Everything so soft. Everything so padded. Great embracing chairs and sofa which turn out to be hard and unwelcome when you sit down and reject you at once” (Jackson 154).
The house functions symbolically as the Mother, enticing and menacing, and is indeed the domineering Mother. Eleanor speaks of being consumed by the house, and eventually comes to embrace that with delight. There is some irony in that Eleanor spends her entire adult life caring for her challenging mother only to think she is free and then end up in a demanding house that embraces her like an oppressive mother would. She thinks she has independence, yet she falls back into a pattern of letting herself dissolve. Eleanor seems to go back to the only thing that she has ever know, which is an abusive home where she was never really wanted, but only needed as a servant.
Eleanor eventually accepts Hill House when she decides to end her own life and become one with the spirit world, a world in which she feels she might finally belong, or at least find some peace. As she gets in her car and drives, she says, “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?” (Jackson 182). “The death scene which Eleanor crashes her car into the tree has very little to do with suicide and much more to do with a desire to find peace.
“The way Freud described it — in his usual dialect — is as the desire to ‘return to the womb’. This is the urge to return to a state of ‘non-being’ and to escape all the stresses and pressures of the daily life” (Sinicki). Once again, we go back to the biographical influence of Shirley Jackson, and how she stressed over being a wife and a Mother. Jackson was quoted as saying, “I am a writer who, due to a series of innocent and ignorant faults of judgment, finds herself with a family of four children and a husband, an eighteen-room house and no help, and two Great Danes and four cats…. It’s a wonder I get even four hours’ sleep, it really is” (Oates Carol). Shirley Jackson is a lot like Eleanor Vance in a sense. She is surrounded by people in a large house, but still feels alone and singled out. I think Shirley Jackson created Eleanor as an escape from her own mundane life. Shirley, like Eleanor, was looking for a place to belong, and they both never really found that place. Shirley married Stanley Hyman because she thought it would prevent loneliness. But the fantasy and reality of such an agreement are two different things.
This fantasy of belonging to something greater for Eleanor was never going to be, and Shirley Jackson’s desire to “never be lonely again,” was never what she had originally imagined it to be. Shirley Jackson feared losing her identity after being married, “To be married, Shirley always feared, was to lose her sense of self, to disintegrate — precisely what happened to Elenore in the book” (Franklin 409). Eleanor lost her identity by taking care of her mother all those years and was never certain where she fit in society. Even after all these years later, the book still packs a powerful impact on the readers emotions because of how it deals with the universal issues of life and death, and the bigger picture: what is it all for?
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