The Haunting of Hill House (week 2)

In her novel, The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson effectively employs her Gothic ghost story writing skills using the central symbol and setting of Hill House. She uses its supernatural presence to work on all the characters and even the reader through the text. Symbolically, Hill House represents a supernatural entity that, according to Eleanor, was vile, diseased, and had many signs of horror (Jackson, 32). Jackson goes on to personify the house giving it characteristics of a face that seemed awake with blank, watchful windows that appeared as eyes and a glee in the eyebrow of a cornice (Jackson, 35). This personal characterization plays with the supernatural aspect of the house, giving the reader a reason for the house acting as an entity drawing in the other characters of the story.

Using Hill House as the central symbol, Jackson uses its supernatural presence to work most sensitively on the character that suffers the most, this person being, Eleanor. The text itself is told through a narrator. Jackson’s use of an omniscient, third person narrator allows the reader to know everything that is going, but the point of view throughout the novel is almost entirely Eleanor’s. We get narration from the other characters as well, but Eleanor is the only one that gives the reader personal encounters and insight into her personal thoughts. Knowing Eleanor on a personal level, as the story progresses, the reader gets a sense of Eleanor’s psychological conflicts, making her mindset unstable and point of view unreliable. The reader sees Eleanor go from a lucid and fragile girl with daydreams to an dark and unstable woman getting sucked into the delusion of Hill House. She even says, “I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster,” (Jackson, ). Because of her increasing obsession and connection with the house, Eleanor goes through a transformation and soon her thoughts become mixed up with those of Hill House, conflicting the reader’s thoughts as well.

So what is true and what is really happening? These are some questions the reader must

battle and in the end choose. As the house begins to mess with Eleanor’s mind, it’s point of view is expressed through her, but it is never clearly defined as the house’s thoughts, so the reader never really knows and is left questioning.