The Haunting of Hill House

The past two class sessions, we have been focusing on The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. One thing I especially like about this book is that a lot of the horror elements are suspenseful rather than shocking, which I believe keeps the reader engaged in the novel and curious as to what happens next.

Although it is clear Eleanor is being possessed by the house by the end of the novel to the point of insanity, I feel like Eleanor was on the verge of being insane sometime before she set foot inside Hill House. I feel like a lot of that can be traced back to all the years she spent tending to her ill mother without any real communication to anyone else. I feel like interaction with other people (Luke, Theodora, and the Doctor) set this insanity into full motion because she has not interacted with others around her age in a normal setting for so long.

I also find it interesting that Eleanor fantasizes about her own sense of belonging in quite a number of scenarios, which leads her to be quite unreliable for a narrator. An interesting fantasy she repeats throughout the book is the saying, "Journey's end in lover's meeting." The repetition of the phrase could possibly symbolize her fantasies of finding a place of belonging. Under the supernatural influences of the house, she discovers that her "love," or sense of belonging is in Hill House. Perhaps for Eleanor, belonging is what "love" means to her.