The Haunting of Hill House

Upon reading Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, I was struck by many of the strange details and characteristics that made the novel such an intriguing read. For one, I found interesting how Jackson kept the narrative in a third-person perspective. Usually, if an author were to write the story in this omnipresent manner, it is for the purpose of being able to incorporate the thoughts and feelings of the characters in the story. However, in this particular story, only Eleanor's thoughts were exposed to the audience. Interestingly enough, it happens to be Eleanor who has the overactive imagination and can be seen starting the narrative to alternate reality. Hence, it shrouds the whole story in mystery; is this actually happening or is Eleanor just off somewhere continuing this "reality" in her mind? For another, the fact that Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague make themselves a sort little family is fascinating once one discovers the correlation between everyone's family situation. It seems that the absence of the mother figure (whether in spirit or in actuality) is what drives them together, even if Hill House often threatens to tear them apart. Knowing a bit about Jackson's personal life, that aspect of the story doesn't seem so surprising. Jackson did not have the ideal relationship with her mother and it often drove her up the wall. Thus, it seems that Hill House was a sort representation (well one of the many in the Gothic world, really) of how bad family relations can go wrong. Intriguing enough, the way Theo described Hill House in the beginning as "a great billowing overdone sort of thing and buried . . .in folds of velvet and tassels and purple plush" is sort of the way one might describe how a mother might overdecorate a house of such a period. No one ever did say that the sense in which  Eleanor repeated the line "journey ends in lover's meeting" was completely romantic. In this line of thought, what does Hill House actually represent?

Another thing that popped into my mind while reading this Gothic masterpiece was how much it reminded me of a novel I read for French 4 in high school, entitled Huis Clos (or rather No Exit). This novel, written in 1944, is about three people who go to hell for the despicable sins they committed in their life, only to discover their hell isn't quite what they thought it was. Without going into too much detail about the plot, the three people are led to a room with a bed and a couch and not much more. There are no windows and once they are led in, there's no way out. One might jump to the conclusion that the room would be their punishment, as they might be claustrophobic or whatnot. Actually, no. Not one of them is afraid of the room and the room is complete inanimate (as it should be). There punishment, or rather their hell, is being with each other. Within hours of first meeting each other, they are in complete distaste with each other and want to get out of the room. But they never will be able to. In the end, the author, Jean-Paul Sartre, imply that they are all driving each other insane because their hell is a parallel of the living hell they tried to escape in death. In contrast, Hill House was sort of the opposite of Huis Clos's room. Whereas the character found refuge from their family situations in each other, it was Hill House's entity that drove that insane. The fact that Hill House had it's own personality and preferences is the notion that turned an ordinary sense home of home into an absolute nightmare.  But I thought it fascinating that I've read two different novels, both written in 15 years of one another, can send inverted messages about what a person's nightmare can be.