Category: The Haunting of Hill House

In The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson demonstrates a strong depiction of oppression towards women. Jackson introduces the idea that women have a weaker mind and a tendency to act childish. This idea can be seen through the deteriorating mental health of the character, Eleanor. She tends to always resort to juvenile behavior throughout the novel. She is most likely to act immature because she lacks individuality and wishes she had her own. Her mother took away her individuality and she has been longing for it since. Her presence at Hill House is her first time being able to really explore herself. Men were known to take away women’s individuality because women obeyed men in a relationship and did not have authority of themselves. This demonstrates that women are more susceptible to being weaker than men and coincides with the theme of American Gothic literature. In American Gothic literature men are known to be superior and the women are the damsels in distress.

In the novel, The Haunting of Hill House Jackson puts forth the idea that women are inferior to men because their minds are weaker causing them to be immature. This is demonstrated in Eleanor and Theodora’s characters. For example, when they are exploring the outside of Hill House Jackson states, “Like two children they ran across the grass, both welcoming the sudden openness of clear spaces after even a little time in Hill House…”. Eleanor and Theodora are seen as children because they are playing outside and making up stories about their families and how they are related. In society this makes women look immature and inferior to men. Eleanor is seen as the most immature. Her lack of childhood could possibly be responsible for her juvenile tendencies. Eleanor appears younger to Theodora as well when she comments on her appearance, ‘’I’m thirty-four years old,’ Eleanor said, and wondered what obscure defiance made her add two years. ‘And you look about fourteen,’ Theodora said. ‘Come along; we’ve earned our breakfast.’’ Her absence of a childhood has caused her to hold onto innocent features. Jackson foreshadows Eleanor having the weakest mind when Dr. Montague says,

“One cannot even say that the ghost attacks the mind, because the mind, the conscious, thinking mind, is invulnerable; in all our conscious minds, as we sit here talking there is now one iota of belief in ghosts… No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense.”

There is enough evidence that Eleanor is in fact the weakest because she didn’t have a strong foundation of a childhood or parents. Eleanor is seen as fragile, which is another view that society has on women and a way that men degrade women. An associate professor of English, Parks, speaks about Eleanor in his text Chambers of Yearning: Shirley Jackson’s Use of the Gothic, “She is so fragile and vulnerable that her survival is questionable from the beginning.” Eleanor’s vulnerability and weakness; a common factor in American Gothic literature is what leads to her falling weak to Hill House and her expulsion from the house. Parks makes a statement on Dr. Montague’s masculinity and how society thinks that men are superior, “This militant rationalist shows little compassion for Eleanor’s loss of sanity and banishes her from the house to protect his so-called experiment.” Dr. Montagues banishment of Eleanor demonstrates how men felt that women are inferior and that she would ruin his experiment. He didn’t care about her health or well being, he was selfish and cared about himself. This is an accurate view of society and how women’s feelings and mental health were disregarded because men always had the upper hand. However, Eleanor’s weakness should not be regarded to women as a whole because this is a personal issue. Not all women are deprived from the foundation of a childhood. This weakness is only a reflection on Eleanor and her mental health.

Eleanor’s lack of childhood plays a leading role in her mental health. Eleanor has a strong desire to seek her own individuality. Hill House is Eleanor’s first experience of being on her own and being able to be her own person. She mentions her new found independence when she arrives at Hill House, “I would never have suspected it of myself, she thought, laughing still; everything is different, I am a new person, very far from home.” (Jackson 19) Hill House is her first time away from home and the first time she is allowed to be herself. The importance of individualism is mentioned when she runs into the little girl at the restaurant wanting her cup of stars. Eleanor says, “Don’t do it, Eleanor told the girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don’t do it…” Eleanor is trapped into being like everyone else and never really finds her own identity because she was too busy taking care of her mother and listening to what other people told her to do and be. Eleanor knows the importance of originality and tells the little girl to fight for it. Eleanor talks about her own longing for her own individuality with Theodora, “Once I had a blue cup with stars painted on the inside; when you looked down into a cup of tea it was full of stars. I want a cup like that.” She lies about having a cup or stars and about where she lives. She makes up a story to make herself seem interesting because she really has no personal life at all, besides being told what to do by her sister. Eleanor longs for originality and can possibly be why she makes up stories. In Masse’s essay, Gothic Repetition: Husbands, Horrors, and Things That Go Bump in the Night, she explains the idea that suppression of identity is a stimulus in American Gothic novels, “When we extend our consideration of what we are willing to recognize as trauma, we begin to see a revised analysis of the gothic in which the stimulus, suppression of identity, exists not only in the past but also in the present and the implied future of the narrative…”. This passage explains the idea of the importance of identity and individuality in the narrative. Eleanor’s own longing for herself not only exists in her past but in her future throughout the novel as well.

However, one may say that it is Eleanor’s absence of confidence that diminishes her from having her own identity. She never had the courage to stand up to her sister or for herself by being independent, causing the audience to think that this is Eleanor’s accountability for not developing originality. Yet, this idea is can be proven wrong because it is society and history to blame for Eleanor’s lack of self-confidence and courage. Eleanor believes that she needs to conform to society to be who society thinks she should be. Eleanor struggles with her past and present self in a way that she is stuck in her childish self where she loses her identity. In Davison’s text, Gothic Repetition: Husbands, Horrors, and Things That Go Bump in the Night, she explains how the repression of self-identity is the lack of authority over oneself, “The fear of losing autonomy and identity is represented quite specifically as a lack of voice and, therefore, authority over the self.” Eleanor never had her own voice which can also be connected to society and gender norms. Men were seen as superior, women were expected to obey men and never developed their own voice. In society women did not have authority over themselves and were seen as property after marriage. This reflects on Eleanor’s character because she is constantly worried about what others think of her and how she should be acting instead of focusing on being who she really is. This is a representation of how women felt. Goddu argues in her text, Gothic America: Narrative, History, and Nation, that the Gothic is a way to work through cultural anxieties. Davison contributes to Goddu’s argument when she identifies what the female gothic is, “the female gothic mode, a form that is generally distinguished from the traditional Gothic mode as it centers its lens on a young woman’s rite of passage into womanhood and her ambivalent relationship to contemporary domestic ideology, especially the joint institutions of marriage and motherhood.” This shows a cultural tension between men and women and societal norms. Women were expected to follow gender norms and follow societal expectations. Women felt that they needed to be a mother, and a wife, and felt that they only belonged in domestic affairs since the male patriarchy did now allow them any other freedom. Many women didn’t actually have their own self-identity besides what they thought they should be. Jackson is conveying a message that women need to be themselves and find their identity before they are confined to social norms and lose themselves in the way that Eleanor loses herself when Hill House consumes her mind and takes her identity.

In conclusion, Eleanor’s lack of identity is the reason why Hill House is able to take over her mind and break her. Since she doesn’t have a strong foundation of who she is as an individual Hill House breaks her and mentally consumes her, causing her to go insane. This is a reflection of Jackson’s message of the importance of identity and individuality. Men often took both from women because they are seen as being stronger and superior. Women were seen as weak because men controlled their mind and self-identity, much as how Hill House controlled Eleanor. However, this is also a depiction of modern-day mental health treatment. Treatment does not allow for individuality. People are confined to hospital beds, medication, schedules, rules, and are hidden from family and society. This lack of individuality is what causes people to act out or become more mentally ill. A person longs for their own individuality because without it they become nothing.

In the novel, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson she presents gothic elements by explaining gruesome and off-putting elements which creates an uneasy and unpleasant feeling for the reader. This appears by the personification the house is given and how the house gives off a dark vibe. It’s mentioned how at the house no one can hear you which lets the reader know something is off about the place. With all this put together in the book it shows how much gothic elements can turn a story to an unpleasant but great work of literature.

The Hill House is introduced as a house with supposed paranormal activities and a dark history. Some examples of the dark history are the suicide scandals. There are stories of people who commit suicide for no apparent reason. One theory for the cause of these deaths is that the house is the cause of these unfortunate deaths. “In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?, in this quote when Eleanor, one of the main characters, kills herself its shown how something influenced it. Once she realized truly how horrific the house is and tries to leave, she crashes her car into a tree. In the quote it shows how before she crashed she was wondering why she was doing it before she reached her inevitable death. Her death is identical to the one of the past deaths of Hill House, which shows something paranormal is affecting them.

Throughout the novel, the Hill House is described in such a way that instantly sets an uneasy mood for the reader. Once Eleanor arrives at Hill House during the beginning of the book, it’s described in a way that makes it sound like the house itself is a living being. The house is described as having features similar to a castle from the medieval ages. It is described as “enormous and dark”. It is also said to have “blank windows” and it has a sense of watchfulness. These are only a fraction of the details given in the book that helps create an unsettling and puzzling atmosphere.

Gothic elements are mainly used to describe the setting of the story. The house is described how its built off center and the support is off center which is another way that contributes to how the house has a strange feeling. Eleanor’s room that she was introduced to when she arrived, is described as being all blue and being crooked. This can be reflected off of Eleanor’s mental state. The room being blue can be reflected off her first feeling on the inside. “Blue” meaning sad and lonely which could be because of the recent events that happened at her house. The room being crooked could be connected to how Eleanor’s mentality is mixed and twisted. With this and knowing the story is being told from Eleanor’s perspective makes you wonder whether this was paranormal or if it was all in Eleanor’s head.

In conclusion, Shirley Jackson employs gothic elements everywhere throughout the story giving it a dark, strange feeling. The gothic elements support writing literature as a scary, horror novel by making it more engrossing to read. These elements help build up the tension and the suspense in the story, instead of just random deaths happening throughout the story, it climaxes to the shocking ending of the story. With this being said as you read the novel it emits an uncomfortable feeling and fear as it arrives to the resolution of the story. Gothic elements in the novel truly show its full potential and contributes to creating the riveting story that is The Haunting of Hill House.

The Haunting of Hill House features many characters as they stay a summer in a supposedly haunted house. However, one character is affected by its presence more than anyone. The story is strongly centered around Elanor as a protagonist and details how she handles the supernatural phenomena in the house. The way Shirley Jackson sets up Eleanor’s character in the introduction gives importance and context to hauntings that occur later. In fact, the drive to Hill House is the considerable one of the most important sections of the story. Through closely analyzing Elanor’s characteristics in as she travels to the house, one can see the purposeful foreshadowing of events and themes to come from the development of her character and conclude to an overall greater understanding of the hauntings at hill house.

One of the first characteristics that the reader learns about Elanor is that she has a very active imagination. She practically is lost in thought about the things surrounding her as he travels to the house in a frivolous, juvenile sort of manner. The most ordinary objects are almost romantic and enthralling to her. She basically lives in a completely different mindset from the indifferent, sane, adult world she actually lives in. A telling instance of this is when she stops travelling in order to get a good look at some oleander flowers. She imagines herself in a fairy tale in which she becomes a princess; she has returned and to be greeting by a prince. This strong imagination and whimsy that she demonstrates make her seem very juvenile and innocent, especially for someone her age. It leaves readers to think about the kind of life she lived in her past. Although most people seem to grow out of these sorts of fantasies, it’s because she’s lived without much experience and a healthy childhood that she can’t let go of them. It’s revealed that she didn’t have a change to live a normal life when she was younger, as she was stuck having to take care of her mother; in a tragic fate of irony however, this foreshadows that she won’t have a life after she attempts to leave Hill House. These grandiose, juvenile delusions and fantasies make her vulnerable prey for a house looking to possess and break someone’s sanity. Her mind as we know it is much less stable when compared to the other guests. Eleanor has plenty of hidden baggage attached to her as well. She possesses guilt about her mother’s death and her harsh feelings towards her. This is a presence that haunts Eleanor before she even steps a foot inside the house.

One part of the book has Eleanor stopping for lunch and seeing the little girl does not want to drink her milk without her cup of stars. Elanor empathizes with the girl and really wants the girl to have her cup of stars. The girl in this scene is a representation of Elanor. Elanor never had life go her way when she was younger, and the trip itself is symbolic for Elanor taking a chance at her “cup of stars.” She achieves it in a way when she makes the decision to move away for a while, but similar to how the ending resulted in her being forced to leave the house, she tries to hold on to the house. She is the girl is holding out hope for her cup of stars. Her hope for adventure and staying at Hill House is proven to be her tragic downfall when she is killed, however. On her journey to the house, information is also given about Elanor’s tendency to get attached to things. As previously mentioned, she falls in love with seemingly ordinary objects such as the oleander flowers or the lion statues; she wasn’t especially attached or familiar with these things before, but she gets enamored by them. She displays this behavior later in the book, eventually learns to fall in love with Hill House. She also gets pretty attached to Theo as well, even though at times they seem very much at odds.

Along the way to Hill House, she finds signs that foreshadow the horror that awaits her. At the diner, at girl tells her that she hopes Elanor can find her house. Elanor practically becomes one with the house by the end, in a sense, the house becomes her own when she becomes a part of it. She finds a sign about daredevils but at first thinks it says Dare Evil. She feels uneasy even just approaching the perimeter of the house. She ignores these signs, just as she continues to stay in the house as it attempts to harass and possess her. One of the strangest and first incidents of this is her good night of sleep after the commotion of banging on the doors. She even states that after staying in the house, she finally felt something like joy for the first time in a while.

The story reveals more about her character when she arrives at the house. She meets Mr. Dudley, and at first is fairly friendly. She becomes aggressive however after pleading with Dudley to be let in and becomes demanding. This break in her pleasantry, is similar to the house holding dark secrets within. When Luke and Eleanor first see each other, Elanor thinks, “Journeys end in lovers meeting.” This thought becomes truer than one would originally think. The implication is originally describing Elanor and Luke’s possible fling, but it just as easily describes the relationship that develops between Elanor and Hill House. Her journey ends at Hill House after she feels a strong attachment to it.

The introduction of Elanor’s character and the journey she makes to Hill House is full of foreshowing and brings more light to her relationship with the house. Her easily breakable mind, the way she thinks about the little girl, the foreboding signs that plague the travel, it all functions to give deeper meaning into the events of this book.

Hoping to cause a sensation in the field of parapsychology, Dr. John Montague rents Hill House, a secluded manor with a reputation for being haunted. He carefully selects two participants for his study—Eleanor Vance, a thirty-two-year-old woman who was reported to have had experiences with a poltergeist as a child, and Theodora, a woman marked in one of his lab’s studies as having psychic abilities. A third participant, Luke Sanderson, also joins the group. Luke stands to inherit Hill House after his aunt dies, and Luke’s aunt sends him to watch over the house and deter amateur ghost hunters. She also wants to keep Luke out of trouble since he is a liar and a thief.

Eleanor arrives at Hill House first. An instinct tells her to leave, but she stays and meets the house’s caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley. They are unwelcoming and urge her to go away, saying that they refuse to stay at the house after dark. Theodora arrives next, and Eleanor, a recluse, feels immediately drawn to Theodora’s warm, witty, and open personality. Eleanor lies and tells Theodora she has an apartment back home, when she actually lives at her sister’s house, where she sleeps on a cot. Eleanor was her mother’s primary caretaker up until her mother’s death a few months prior. She is just beginning to explore her freedom and is elated to have found a new friend.

Dr. Montague and Luke arrive next. Dr. Montague reluctantly tells the group about the house’s history after dinner—he doesn’t want to scare anyone into leaving, since the last tenant to leave at night died when his horse crushed him against the oak tree in the driveway. Dr. Montague explains that the house was built eighty years ago by a man named Hugh Crain. Crain designed Hill House as a series of cloistered, maze-like concentric circles that are almost impossible to navigate. Tragically, Crain’s wife never set foot into the house; she died when her carriage overturned in the driveway. Bitter and depressed, Crain stayed to raise his two daughters in the house. Over the years, the daughters fought over ownership of the house, and the house eventually landed in the hands of the older sister’s caretaker, a young woman from town. Taunted and harassed by the younger sister and the townspeople, the young woman hanged herself, reportedly in the house’s turret.

Over the first week of their stay, the group experiences a series of unexplainable events. One night, the women hear a loud banging on the door and feel a chilling breeze. The men see a mysterious animal run down the hallway. Outside the nursery, they discover a mysterious cold spot. Inside the library, Eleanor detects an awful odor. Finally, Luke discovers the words HELP ELEANOR COME HOME written in chalk in the halls. With each event, the group grows more suspicious of Eleanor, and Eleanor is terrified by the thought that the house is singling her out.

The odd events continue. When Theodora finds the words HELP ELEANOR COME HOME ELEANOR written in blood on her walls, she lashes out at Eleanor, who she suspects is doing these things to get attention. Meanwhile, Eleanor feels herself losing grasp of her senses and at the same time becoming more connected to Theodora. At one point, Dr. Montague assures everyone that ghosts can’t cause them physical harm—only fear can do that. Still, Theodora and Eleanor continue to experience strange events that are hard to recall yet hard to deny.

Mrs. Montague, a parapsychologist, arrives at Hill House with her friend, Arthur. Belittling her husband and his lack of progress, she confidently declares that she will draw out Hill House’s spirits. Mrs. Montague believes that spirits feel lonely and want to connect, but they need to be coaxed into communicating. To accomplish this, she uses a device called a planchette. Mrs. Montague reports that a spirit named “Nell” spoke to her, saying it wanted to go home. The group, deeply disturbed, continues to watch Eleanor with suspicion while growing more fearful of the house. That night, Dr. Montague, Luke, Theodora, and Eleanor stay in a room together to keep watch. They hear terrible banging sounds on the door while Mrs. Montague and Arthur sleep in nearby rooms, undisturbed.

Eleanor realizes that she can hear any sound that occurs inside the house, no matter which room she is in. She believes that she is merging with the house and can sense things that the others can’t. Eleanor wakes up one night and goes to the library, aware that she’s not acting entirely of her own volition. She hears a voice that sounds like her mother’s and chases it throughout the house. Trying to avoid the others, who now realize that she’s roaming the house alone, Eleanor retreats back to the library and climbs a rickety iron stairway to the turret. The others gather underneath it and worry that the stairway will collapse, but Luke climbs up and ushers Eleanor back down to safety.

The next morning, the group agrees that Eleanor must leave Hill House. Eleanor cries and says she has nowhere to go, claiming that Hill House is now her home. Dr. Montague, worried for Eleanor’s sanity, says she must leave at once. Eleanor finally agrees, and the group watches as she begins to drive down the driveway. As she departs, however, Eleanor pities the group for believing that they can thwart Hill House’s desire to keep her—she believes that she belongs to the house. She accelerates toward the oak tree, and right before she crashes and dies, she wonders why she is doing this and why no one is stopping her. After Eleanor’s suicide, the group leaves Hill House. Dr. Montague later publishes his study, but his colleagues ridicule his findings.

Every day, people go home to relax. A home is considered to be a safe space for everyone. However, it may not be safe for some individuals. For example, some neighbourhoods and communities might be dangerous and there might be crime. However, there could be a lack of safety in places people expect to be safe, such as neighbourhoods with mansions. In The Haunting of Hill House and Secret Window, home is a significant symbol because it is not a safe space for the main characters, although the characters’ mental conditions, their physical family structures, and their involvement of deaths are different.

Nowadays, mental health issues are common in the world. Around 450 million people currently suffer from mental disorders, which are among the leading causes of ill health and disability. In The Haunting of Hill House, one of the main characters, Eleanor Vance, reveals herself to the reader by subtly hinting through her politeness that she has mental issues and she loses touch of reality. When she sees the house, she recognizes the danger and evil of the house. However, she wants to be independent of his sister; thus she goes in to the house. In the beginning of the story, Eleanor’s name was written on the wall of the house: “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME” (Jackson 69). The house knows her name. The house is calling her, and it has chosen her to haunt because she is the one that is always susceptible, worries too much, and sensitive. Over time, Eleanor lost even more control. One night, she tries to commit suicide by jumping from the tallest turret after being lulled onward by a voice she believes to be the voice of her dead mother. She falls entirely under the house’s spell. Eleanor went to the house for socializing, and she wanted to be free. However, Eleanor was under the house’s spell, and in the end, the house possessed her. In comparison to Eleanor’s situation, the main character Mort in Secret Window has multiple personality disorder and the theme focuses more on his own mind rather than the supernatural.

In the beginning of the film, Mort finds out that his wife is cheating on him. He thinks that he can not write anymore so he has isolated himself in his cabin. However, he continually feels worse and worse every day and suddenly Shooter appears. Shooter says that Mort has plagiarized his novel. As the plot progresses, it becomes clear that Shooter is another personality of Mort. Shooter is another identity that he has created to protect himself from the pain and he was part of Mort’s personality used for doing harm to other people. Shooter was violent, impatient, and stalking Mort. Finally, he kills Mort’s wife and his dog. If we look at Shooter’s personality, we know that Mort’s mental condition gets worse over time. Mort wanted to be separate with his wife to clear his mind. Unfortunately, the isolated cabin made Mort uncontrollable and it ruined his entire life, similar to how the Eleanor loses more control over her mind from being possessed by the home. It is important to understand that in society today, characters such as Mort and Eleanor would be viewed differently from the time the book and movie were produced, as there is more research and perhaps more sympathy.

Horror novel is a kind of literature that’s still very controversial today: some people think it’s gruesome and unrealistic due to the fact that horror literature usually shows readers harsh truth in unpleasant surroundings and atmospheres. But many authors and readers like horror stories because of its connection, implicit or explicit, to our daily life. Some author derives their story from a real-life scenario, while others got their idea from their personal life. So horror literature can, in another perspective, showing and comment on the human experience. This can be useful to the readers since it helps them prepare for future challenges in their life. Horror teaches us rules and norms by using old, traditional monster figures or new, revolutionary characters such as mad scientists or psychos, which refers to the real danger in our life. It also reminds us that we’re and we should be glad that we’re alive and living in a safe world. Overall, horror uses past human experiences to teach us the rules in this world and appreciate it.

Generally, horror writers wrote their novels based on their real-life experiences. They mixed them to create their own stories in their style. Stephen King is a famous horror writer and he also got his idea from what he saw in real life: “In short, let us have our Fortian rains of frogs and people who have mysteriously burned to death while sitting at home in their easy chairs; let us have our vampires and our werewolves. Let us have Little Nobody, who perhaps slipped sideways through a crack in reality, only to be trampled to death in the rush from a burning circus tent ”. (King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. Gallery, 2010, pg. 3) He used the “Fountain rains of frogs”, “vampires and werewolves”, and “the little mystery nobody” in his novel, modify it, make them have their roles in the story just like how we put stuff together in real life and bring them in his own story, the Danse Macabre. As we read into the horror story, we’re entering a new world, a world created by the author used elements and events from this world, and create something completely new and, of course, haunted. We were emotionally frightened because it is somewhat real, in our world. Therefore, the horror stories were not just things that meant to scare people off, but it also shows us real things in our life.

Horror stories are not just derived from real-life experiences, they are also commenting on it. In most horror fiction, childhood is always a common topic where people touched upon. Childhood, according to Greg Ruth, is scary, as “kids live in a world of insane giants already. Nothing to the right size. The doorknobs are too high, the chairs too big..”. (Ruth, Greg. “Why Horror Is Good For You (and Even Better for Your Kids).” Tor.com, 29 Aug. 2019, https://www.tor.com/2014/05/29/why-horror-is-good-for-you-and-even-better-for-your-kids/.)Just like in horror novels, childhood in real life is scary and spooky as well: surrounded by people that are older and physically bigger, using things that are way too big, and have no right of complaining. Children in our world were raised to follow what our parents said, which is, indeed, very confused for them and will make them scared. But horror stories changed it all; although they showed us the scary part of being kids, they also told us how to fight it. Instead of listening to what their parents said in the novel, the kids chose their paths, explore them, face the dangers, challenge themselves, and succeed. Even though many challenges in horror novels were unrealistic and some supernatural, they indeed showed the possibilities in kids and the “brightness” in the dark childhood.

Another common topic for horror is family and love. We have seen many horror stories about family affairs and the family members were separated just to find their truth about their past. The Haunting of Hill House is a great example of that. Through the characters were not family at the start, they did experience some kind of “family affair”. In the story, Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague moved into the Hill House for Dr. Montague’s supernature research since the Hill House is famous for its “Haunting”. Eleanor was a tragic character that wanted to find a place for herself and eventually realized that it’s the Hill House. Although she committed suicide to “live” in the house forever, she did found her real family in the Hill House as Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague as her family members. The story portrays individuals with their characteristics, though they are connected by love and friendship and made up a family. They have helped each other, worked together to go through many challenges and tried to solve the mystery of Hill House. Shirley Jackson showed us the love buried inside our mind, the heart can how it can help bring people together to find a solution.

Horror stories were originated from real human experience, it does not just comment on our life or the world, but it also can help us. The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, gives us a great example of how horror stories can save other’s life. The story talks about a woman with mental illness that is convinced by her husband, also his physician, that she should sit and do nothing to be able to cure her illness. Unfortunately, this treatment completely freaks the woman out and she started to see weird images and firmly believes that she is trapped in a room. It teaches the readers that the quickest way to cure patients to talk to them and interact with them. Later, he wrote an article about why he wrote The Yellow Wallpaper and the influence of it. In the article “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman said that The Yellow Wallpaper “saved one woman from a similar fate — so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered”. (Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper.” THE FORERUNNER, Oct. 1913, pp. 1–1.) In this case, the author uses his opinion on the real human experience to save other people.

The original horror stories were derived from cautionary tales and gothic stories in the Middle Age. They were meant to warn the kids to obey certain rules to increase their survival rate in childhood before they can protect themselves.

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, in which the house itself plays a significant role because the haunted house functions as a central focus of the novel. It is represented as an excellent vehicle that drives all the darkness and the power of supernatural manifestations. Hill House stands on the rural town of Hillsdale. The first paragraph of the novel depicts that it has stood there for about eighty years and might stand for eighty more. It means although the house appears well-built and brawny, it is surely ‘not sane.’ Additionally, when the writer mentions, “whatever walked there walked alone,” it assists the reader to interpret that something non-human, maybe supernatural walks over its floors. Dr. Montague was working on the causes and effects of psychic disturbances in a house commonly known as haunted. It is narrated that he had been looking for an honestly haunted house throughout his life and when he found it there was no chance of letting it go. Being careful and conscientious he short-listed the people with whom he can live in the house and see what happened there. He wrote a letter to a dozen people to spend all or a part of summer at the house mentioning the facilities it had. Only four people responded to his letter, out of which two agreed to come! The characters in The Haunting of Hill House are well-developed, with Eleanor Vance, the highly involved one. Eleanor, thirty-two, has spent most of her adult life caring for her manipulative mother, who always passed passive-aggressive comments to her. She got her name on Dr. Montague’s list because her family was involved in a publicized incident in which a shower of stones had fallen on their house when she was twelve. It is mentioned by the narrator that during her whole life, Eleanor was looking for something like Hill House which depicts that instead of having family and familiar surroundings she felt like a stranger between them. In context to Freud’s principle of repetition and mastery, Eleanor escapes from the reality of living with her sister and brother-in-law whom she never loved. Here, the invitation which she got from Dr. Montague acted like a dream to let her be free from the restrictions of her sister and brother-in-law who didn’t let her use the car that she helped purchase.

All events in the novel majorly revolve around Eleanor, she could not remember ever being truly happy. She lived a life full of isolation and solitary confinement. The obscurities of Hill House architecture run parallel to the obscurities of the human mind, especially Eleanor’s mind. Closed doors, confusing hallways represent the concealed emotions and inconsistencies inside Eleanor. Something important to note about Eleanor’s freedom is that she only lives in the illusion of her freedom but never gets it. On her way to the Hill House, she visualizes a plethora of lives she might live in all the distinct houses. Over and above that, Eleanor’s tour to the Hill House is instructed by Dr. Montague. He instructed all the ways and routes she should follow to reach the Hill House. So, it can be elucidated that she is restricted to the presumptions of a new parental figure, Dr. Montague. To exemplify, Freud discussed a child in his story “beyond the pleasure principle,” who would constantly throw a toy away from him. Then, he would pick his favourite toy and repeat the process. Freud hypothesized that the child was not trying to get pleasure by picking up the toy. Rather, Freud was trying to bring his mother back. Similarly, Eleanor was striving to get the pleasure which she could get in her childhood if she didn’t have such a shrewd mother. The only difference between the two cases is that child was contented in his mother’s presence while Eleanor is fortunate in her mother’s absence. Eleanor hated her mother because she was forced to spend eleven years of her life nursing her.

Indeed, Eleanor addresses a significant expense to break free of the bonds in which life has placed her. The very vehicle that was both an instrument and a symbol of her escape from her sister becomes the instrument of her death and the gadget that makes her irreversible part of Hill House. She has fulfilled her belief that journeys end with lovers meeting. While heavenly contemplations are auxiliary in the novel, they are critical in the investigation of Eleanor. There is no clear evidence that whether ghosts are at play or the events happening inside the Hill House are generated by Eleanor’s clairvoyance. Eleanor deems that the library smells of death, and she cannot enter it whereas no one else notices the smell. Even, she hears a voice calling her along and she asked whether it belonged to her mother or not. At nighttime, Eleanor is stirred by the loud banging into her room entryway. She even dreams of the night her mother banged on the wall for help, and she didn’t bring the prescription quickly enough. One thing that the novel never explains is whether this oversight was coincidental or whether Eleanor may have mostly wanted or caused it. Thus, it can be explicated that Eleanor’s guilt about her demise is a significant main thrust behind the types of some of the demonstrations.

In a nutshell, it is crystal clear that just as the things are not sane inside the Hill House, where the events are weird and frightening, things are not right inside Eleanor. She is weighed down by guilt and loneliness. The freedom which she wanted is not fulfilled. The hauntings do not come to a halt until Eleanor slips from her room while everyone is asleep. She climbs an unsteady staircase as she was duplicating the companion’s death but was rescued by Luke. After this incident, Dr. Montague concluded that Hill House is having a devastating impact on Eleanor and she must leave. Not certain, but maybe she has caused the rain of stones as a child, the poltergeist type events happening in the Hill House may be the result of her insanity and neurosis. As she proceeds to leave, Eleanor feels she cannot leave Hill House. In a possessive effort to stay in a place which she now recognizes as her home and continuation of herself, she steers the car into the tree, still wondering why these things are happening and why others do not stop her. At last, she is free but she remains at the Hill House as a spirit to walk alone. Her destiny represented that one may get free from single bondage while a new type of bondage and isolation results.

A House and home, both a location and an idea, is impenetrable and assorted. Domestic space is cardinal in establishing both personal and familial identity, and therefore, the relationship between humans and the spaces in which they dwell is of utmost importance. it is the house that serves as a shelter to insulate its inhabitants from outside pressures – a place we can call home and embrace the feeling of safety, warmth and comfort. An intimate and nurturing home that Yuri M. Lotman refers to as ‘one’s own space, a place that is familiar and at the same time enclosed and protected; the centre and focus of the world order’. This delegates that houses reflect their owners, inscribing themselves within their sub-conscious and formulating the nucleus of a human’s existence. Yet, when this significant involvement with the physical and psychological aspects of the domestic setting is violated by something threatening – or even worse, something abnormal – the primitive fear of the unknown becomes all-consuming. It is then that the house is transformed from a place of protection into a place of horror.

The central concept to provoke the horrors embedded into the sentient house is a sense of the uncanny, in which the domestic space is metamorphosed by the presence and return of something alien and anomalous. At first, the appeal of the uncanny is irrefutable. The character’s grasp onto the strange ‘otherness’ and yet also anticipate what is in jeopardy when faced with uncertainty and danger, for their own experiences with domesticity and their sense of home is twisted into something unsettling and unknown. Sigmund Freud developed the subject of the uncanny in his 1919 essay of the same title, where he provides a useful framework for understanding the psychological phenomenon. Freud demonstrates many definitions for the uncanny, but the most unanimous and prevalent concept of the uncanny ‘undoubtedly belongs to all that is terrible – to all that arouses dread and creeping horror’. However, it is apparent that the uncanny is much more complex, being both antithetical and interrelated in nature in terms of the familiar turning into the unfamiliar, the hidden becoming discernible, and the lingering sense of fear settling inside of one’s mind. Yet, one thing that each concept of the uncanny has in common is that ‘it tends to coincide with whatever excites dread’.

Despite its defiance to define its abstraction, certain forms of the uncanny are articulated in literature, which is especially evident in the sentient house sub-genre. In Freud’s essay, Jentsch ascribes that a particularly affirmative way of awakening the feeling of uncanniness is through ‘intellectual uncertainty’, so that ‘the uncanny would always be that in which one does not know where one is’. (2) In sentient house narratives, the nature of the uncanny is heightened when there is ontological uncertainty on whether an object is its own living entity or not. This leading concept of the uncanny, assigned to Freud’s theory, is most distinctively identified in the disruption of familiarity in the homely and unhomely. [EG(EF1] This vital concept of the uncanny in relation to the sentient house can be further associated with the idea of animism and anthropomorphism: animism perceiving all things as animated and alive, and anthropomorphism referring to the attribution of human characteristics, emotions, and behaviours to an inanimate object. These are both parallel to the human characteristics attributed to Hill House, the Overlook Hotel and Navidson’s house on Ash Tree Lane. Therefore, it is through the setting of the novels, and more dominantly, in the description of the protagonist’s dwellings as a sentient house and its psychological effect on its residents, that the uncanny is most palpable.

Jackson adeptly creates a character out of Hill House with a hauntingly intricate illustration of its physical appearance and by giving the house its own malefic personality through the use of personification. In the opening of chapter two, Jackson successfully highlights Hill House as more than just an inanimate object, but also a living, breathing entity – one that is suffused with ferocity and enmity. To articulate that the house itself is an uncanny figure, Jackson integrates the idea of anthropomorphism into her description of the house:

NO HUMAN eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.’

Hill House, ‘a place of contained ill will’, disperses its own evil and personifies architectural uncertainty because of the nature of its ambivalent creation. It is this frightening proclivity towards the uncanny which manifests the sentient house into a metaphor for the human mind. The personification of its exteriority captures the feeling of uncanny through its wrongfully convoluted structure and the way in which it forces the inhabitant’s minds to deconstruct their sense of reality. By attributing the house with physical human features – face, eyes, eyebrows – the sentient house’s ‘powerful pattern’ indicates that Hill House is a form of mutation, as it ‘seemed to have formed itself’. It also stipulates that like its inhabitant’s face, the house is subject to change[EG(EF2] . It is capable of manipulating its own space to dismantle the original function of a house and transform it into something unfamiliar and unknown. Driven by its arrogance and hatred, Hill House has developed its own will and acts on its own accord, ‘without the concession of humanity’, with the purpose of destroying those who enter it.

It is capable of manipulating its own space to dismantle the original function of a house and transform it into something unfamiliar and unknown. Driven by its arrogance and hatred, Hill House has developed its own will and acts on its own accord with the purpose of destroying all those who enter it. Jackson rejects several conventions associated with the architecture of the house, starting with its control over its own construction. While researching into the history of the house, Eleanor asserts that the builders ‘realising what the house was going to be, whether they chose it or not’, gave up on trying to impose their own will on to its structure and let the house take on its own form. This results in the house creating its own ‘absolute reality’, transforming itself into a force of nature rather than something that has been designed.

The concept of the sentient house is perplexing and uncertain in its attempt at definition, with no clear explanation or resolution to its function in horror narratives. In some essence, the sentient house exhibits the archetypal conventions of a typical ghost manifestation, however, these characteristics are predominantly malevolent in its structural presence rather than a posthumous [EG(EF3] haunting. In postmodern horror, the sentient house becomes animated in a manner that encourages its inhabitant’s dwelling to reconstruct its architecture, pervert its interior pattern and even attempt to torment and inflict suffering on its guests. One of the most disturbing characteristics of Jackson’s Hill House is that the haunting is derived not from ghosts or other spectral beings but emanated from the house itself. Adjacent to Hill House, both King and Danieleweski’s narratives are reliant on the house being its own sentient entity to magnify the terror of an inhabiting space that threatens to dismantle established boundaries between the homely and unhomely. The setting of the Overlook Hotel is uncanny in multiple ways, but most blatantly in the very nature of the hotel being a temporary home, as it simultaneously evokes the familiar and unfamiliar even before its inhabitants enter it. In House of Leaves, the Navidson’s erratic and constantly shifting house reflects the uncanny almost instantaneously as it prohibits the initial establishment of domesticity or familial identity. All three settings are key aspects of the uncanny, that which is known, but unknown, homely and unhomely. [EG(EF4]

The family’s inceptive move into the house on Ash Tree Lane is driven by Will Navidson’s desire to both document and experience how a family settles into a home, as he expresses: ‘I just thought it would be nice to see how people move into a place and start to inhabit it’ (9). However, the sentience of the house settles in prematurely and restricts the Navidson family from gaining a true sense of domesticity. After a short period of occupying the house, the Navidson family leave their inanimate abode only to return to something undeniably uncanny – a new door appearing between the parents and children’s bedrooms. Even Zampino, one of the few narrators, recognises the uncanny nature, stating ‘in their absence, the Navidsons’ home had become something else, and while not exactly sinister or even threatening, the change still destroyed any sense of security or well-being’ (28). The will of the sentient house disrupts the family’s domestic setting through this sudden incursion in its attempt to stop the Navidson’s from turning their new house into a familiar and secure home.

The uncanny plays a similar role in inhabiting familial security in The Haunting of Hill House. If the reader was unaware of character’s purpose for staying at Hill House, the interactions between the

Comparable with Hill House, both The Shining and House of Leaves ‘sentient houses’ haunt its inhabitants in ways that are both internal and external. The outside is where you expect to find danger: it is controlled, immersed in degradation and unexpected uncertainty. The sentient hauntings featured inside the dwellings are an extension of that original, justifiable fear. Yet, it is also inside the world of the sentient house that reality is disordered and threatening; a place that suffocates and oppresses, capable of invading and even dissolving the human mind. (Find quotes) The first sign of the uncanny feeling of unhomeliness is shown when Jack first witnesses the structure of the Overlook Hotel, as he ‘looked over his shoulder once into the penetrable, musty-smelling darkness and thought if there was ever a place that should have ghosts, this was it.’[1] There is a disturbance of the familiar as Jack perceives the hotel’s surroundings and contemplates the hotel’s history, especially the tragic fate of the previous caretaker. Watson co-operates to this feeling of the uncanny when he relates the hotel’s past ‘scandals’ and already illicit reputation by stating ‘every hotel has got a ghost’. [2] Jack’s initial observation of the hotel symbolises the unfamiliarity embedded in the uncanny, as it never manages to present itself as a normal and mundane hotel. Therefore, it is the very manifestation of the unhomely as Jack is immediately disturbed by the hotel’s presence as its past lingers and festers inside his mind.

Another way King articulates the uncanny in The Shining is through dreams and hallucinations, more specifically, those imposed on Danny by his friend Tony. Before Danny has even entered the Overlook, he envisions its exterior: ‘Another shape, looming, rearing. Huge and rectangular. A sloping roof. Whiteness that was blurred in the stormy darkness. Many windows. A long building with a shingled roof’. In his previous visions, Danny usually affiliated Tony with a ‘warm burst of pleasure’, but when confronted with this cryptic and unfamiliar dream, he felt differently as he ‘seemed to feel a prick of fear, too, as if Tony had come with some darkness behind his back’. This convert response encompasses the disturbance of familiarity, as it destabilises Danny’s perception of what is homely and comfortable. Although it does not depict any supernatural aspects of the Overlook, it creates a sense of dread and unhomeliness before Danny has even entered the hotel. When he witnesses the Overlook Hotel in person he is overwhelmed by its familiarity as ‘it was the same place he had seen in the midst of the blizzard, the dark and blooming place where some hideously familiar figure sought him down long corridors carpeted jungle’.

The hotel’s human mannerisms and lifelike idiosyncrasies are fully exposed when the family are the only people left on its property. Left entirely alone and isolated from the rest of civilisation, Jack already feels the effect of the hotel’s presence, as ‘the hotel and the grounds had suddenly doubled in size and become sinister, dwarfing them with sullen, inanimate power’.[3] Although the term ‘inanimate power’ proposes a distinct absence of life-like representation, the hotel’s sinister ambience implies that an element of the paranormal lives within the building. Moreover, the size and magnitude of the hotel is over-powering for Jack as he felt his ‘life force had dwindled to a mere spark’, which alludes to the idea that the house’s atmosphere has forced him into a submissive and subdued state.