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Eleanor Vance the conventional gothic heroine of the tale Haunting of Hill House falls victim to Hill House when forced to leave and detach herself from it. Hill House both gives Eleanor a medium to fall victim to it and uses its own traumatic history to manifest as irrational behavior and personality to play on Eleanor’s vulnerabilities and insecurities. Hill House targets these traits of Eleanor and heightens the sensitivity around them both with the thoughts of the people she has living around her and the house itself. In Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House one witlessness the conventional gothic heroine Eleanor Vance become a victim to Hill House. However, she is not victimized by a conventional gothic villain but is instead triggered
Socrates said “All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.” In the story of Haunting Olivia by Karen Russell this is exactly what happened. Two years after the death of their litter sister Timothy and Waldo Swallow still search for some evidence of her. Olivia’s death hit her family hard and broke them apart. Her parents began traveling constantly to escape their pain and the failing of their marriage. While her brothers were left with their pitiless granana to fend for themselves and search for her body. The turning point of their search starts when they coincidentally find a pair of “Diabolical” pink googles. (Russell 26) Ordinarily finding a pair of pink googles in an abandoned boat wouldn’t seem out of place, but these googles were special; they were able to see the dead of the sea. Creatures throughout time that had passed in the ocean were now visible with these googles. With the loss of their sister weighing heavily on their minds the discovery of these googles could only be divine intervention by their extraordinary sister
American classic authors have always had a significant impact on literature throughout the world. Many of these authors in all different genres have left a lasting impression on literature today. A novel like The Haunting of Hill House and a story like “The Lottery” has raised the standard in literature, particularly in the gothic horror fiction genre. Shirley Jackson has influenced American Literature through her creation of American gothic fiction and her ability to not only portray the truth of society through her work but to also shape the idea of how readers view abnormality in humankind.
Shirley Jackson was Extraordinary at writing marvelous novels, also known to be at competition with Stephen King. Especially for her book The Haunting of Hill House. Jackson created an amazing novel and even better characters, one of which is known as Eleanor. Jackson outstandingly creates this character isolated from society, which believes that hill house is her way out of isolation but finds herself to wanting a way out of Hill House.
It is really striking that a novel in which bodies of people and bodies of land (and, intertextually, bodies of text) are so central, creates a character that is so distinctly "unbodied": Caroline Cook. Nevertheless, it is in keeping with traditional and patriarchal interpretations of Cordelia's character in King Lear: a paragon of purity and transcendence.
In conclusion I have shown that “the red room” has the most gothic terror features and “the Yellow Wallpaper” has the least. However all three Victorian stories scare the reader even though they only have a few features of gothic horror.
Sylvia Plath wrote the semi autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, in which the main character, Esther, struggles with depression as she attempts to make herself known as a writer in the 1950’s. She is getting the opportunity to apprentice under a well-known fashion magazine editor, but still cannot find true happiness. She crumbles under her depression due to feeling that she doesn’t fit in, and eventually ends up being put into a mental hospital undergoing electroshock therapy. Still, she describes the depth of her depression as “Wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street a cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air” (Plath 178). The pressure to assimilate to society’s standards from her mother, friends, and romantic interests, almost pushes her over the edge and causes her to attempt suicide multiple times throughout her life. Buddy Willard, Esther’s boyfriend at a time, asks her to marry him repeatedly in which she declines. Her mother tries to get her to marry and makes her go to therapy eventually, which leads to the mental hospital. Esther resents the way of settling down and making a family, as well as going out and partying all night. She just wants to work to become a journalist or publisher. Though, part of her longs for these other lives that she imagines livings, if she were a different person or if different things happened in her life. That’s how Elly Higgenbottom came about. Elly is Esther when Esther doesn’t want to be herself to new people. Esther’s story portrays the role of women in society in the 1950’s through Esther’s family and friends pushing her to conform to the gender roles of the time.
In today’s literature there are many types of genres that people find fascinating, all the way from fantasy to non-fiction. A very interesting genre is Gothic Fiction, where many elements are used to such as violence, ghosts, monsters and many other dark and mystical elements that make up Gothic Fiction. There are many great authors who are well known for their dark gothic style such as Edgar Poe, who has written the short story “Fall of the House of Usher” and the “Black Cat,” or Horacio Quiroga who has written “Feather Pillow” and a more recent author, Ransom Riggs who has written Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Children. These three author’s stories all have gothic elements, such as psychological issues, death and fear that parallel one other which shows a common trend between gothic literatures.
Fear brings forth a certain atmosphere which compels us to act upon it. The era in which the book was published allows us to see how common these fears were. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is an excellent portrayal of how fear controls the human mind by using the characters as examples. In the book Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague have all been influenced by fear in the story, whether it be the fear of love, the unknown, family, rejection, expression, or loneliness. These different types of fear plagued their minds causing their actions to reflect upon them. Jackson explores the theme of fear in The Haunting of Hill House by creating a cast of characters that in turn are manipulated by the inner workings of their minds and the
In the midst of exploring the house with Theodora, who is another assistant in the experiment Dr. Montague is leading, multiple doors were discovered. Eleanor wandered up to veranda through one of the doors, admiring how the house was completely surrounded. Eleanor felt drawn to the window in the veranda for no apparent reason and then proceeded to lean out the window onto the wooden slanted roof reaching up to the spire. Luke, who is also another assistant in the experiment, warns Eleanor not to go out the window and that she is going to fall and not to trust balance in Hill House. Eleanor almost falls out of the window before Luke catches her;
Usually, the little old lady who lives down the street is always a sweet old woman who bakes cookies and knits all day, but in the case of Miss Adela Strangeworth she had developed a very evil hobby. In Shirley Jackson’s short story “The Possibility Of Evil” Miss Strangeworth may seem like a nice old lady but she is really a proud, cruel, and secretive woman, who enjoys making everyone in the town she lived in feel terrible without even knowing she was doing it.
The Novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte took a surprising twist when Bertha "Mason" Rochester was introduced. Bertha leaves a traumatizing impression on Jane’s conscious. However, this particular misfortunate event was insidiously accumulating prior to Jane’s arrival at Thornfield. Through Bertha, the potential alternative dark turn of events of Jane’s past are realized, thus bringing Jane closer to finding herself.
Key Elements of Gothic Literature Jasmine Giles People enjoy reading gothic literature due to its heart rate exciting nature. Without having to engage with any real danger, it is common for the reader to feel anxiety and impaitence when reading gothic fiction. In order for the reader to feel these emotions, the author uses certain elements, such as a gloomy setting and old-fashioned dialoge. In the stories “The Black Cat” and “The Tell Tale Heart”, by elgar allen poe, and “The Landlady”, by Roland Dahl, there are many similarites that remanticize the idea of horror and mystery. Some elements, however, bring out the disbolical horror of gothic literature: the setting, characterization, and the motif of suspense.
Moers, Ellen. "Female Gothic: The Monster's Mother." Reprinted in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Norton Critical Edition. 1976; New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. 214-224.
“The Landlady” is written by Roald Dahl. The tone of the story is mysterious, and creepy. The mood of the story is creepy, surprising, and scary. The author uses word choice in order to create this.
William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” has many gothic themes such as, when Emily buys the arsenic and the tomb that lay buried in her house. These themes show that gothic literature consists of cryptic and dark settings and tones. This mysterious story is filled with violent events and creates suspense and terror.