The Haunting Of Hill House Analysis

Palak Banu Hirani

Greg McClure

Writing 39B

May 14, 2014

A Place to Call Home

In Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, the dark energies of Hill House seem to somehow focus on Eleanor Vance – an odd, lonely, somewhat mysterious old woman. Jackson uses ambiguity in her language to create Dramatic Irony and a feeling of the uncanny as defined by Ernst Jentsch in his landmark 1906 essay The Psychology of the Uncanny – for Eleanor and the reader, in order to establish a sense of disorientation for the reader. This concept of creating a feeling of the uncanny as a means of making the familiar unfamiliar is used along with the concept of the traditional Female Gothic subgenre, as discussed in Roberta Rubenstein’s essay House Mothers and Haunted Daughters, in which female protagonist seeks to resolve the mystery, and struggles with her own personal problems and loss of a mother. Jackson incorporates these ideas into her novel in relation to her own mother – daughter relationship and the fear of being unwanted, and the world outside the home and ultimately supports Rubenstein’s idea of being lost or at home.

Eleanor’s sense of wanting to be at home during her car ride came in the form of imagining new homes, homes with stone lions and oleanders and a cup of stars. Her fears prevent her from seeking out her own stone lions and oleanders and cup of stars. These same fears attract her to Hill House. It creates a Dramatic irony because the fears of Eleanor's inner child—fear of loneliness, hardship, love, guilt, and the world outside the home—outweigh her fear of ghosts and death.

The supernatural occurrences that take place at the Hill House may or may not be directly connected to Eleanor. In fact, neither the characters nor the reade...

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...e asks Theodora if she can move in with her. When Theodora promptly refuses, Eleanor sighs that she's "never been wanted anywhere.”

Shirley Jackson knows how to weave a very good story, and though there are no conclusions, this was still an immensely satisfying read that sent many a shiver down my spine. While we all need homes and family to get by, Eleanor seems unable to function in any situation outside of a home. She is unable to go out and make her own home, and, like a child, she requires the home of another person to shelter and protect her from the terrors that truly get under her skin, like the real world. So Hill House becomes an attractive alternative, a place to make a home. When the others make Eleanor leave the security of Hill House, fear is what ultimately drives her car into that tree. In the end, Eleanor becomes her own haunted house of fears.