Commentary: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
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Disclaimer: This post has spoilers.
The Haunting of Hill House to me is a story about being unwanted and how dangerous that feeling can be when paired with a malicious force that wants you.
Shirley Jackson's novel does what few other haunted-house stories do: It explores loneliness not just as an aesthetic-- manifested by a house hidden among the hills, quarantined off from the rest of town, shrouded in local myth; rather, loneliness in the pages of Hill House is a strategy, a cause and an effect of being haunted, a requisite for a darker belonging.
Eleanor Vance, our protagonist, journeys to Hill House after being invited by a Doctor Montague-- a man studying the supernatural, who is eager for companions to assist him in taking notes while inhabiting Hill House for a summer. She is met there by Theodora, whose effervescent confidence and wit contrast Eleanor's self-consciousness and life-long sense of waiting-- waiting to find her true "home." At first, Eleanor and Theodora cling to one another equally, as new friends hopeful for an exciting summer in a new place. But as dynamics with the others, including Dr. Montague and Luke Sanderson, Hill House's to-be heir, play into each one's fears, trust breaks down and our characters soon become lost in the thicket of Hill House's halls. As the days pass, more and more is left unsaid between our characters and what is said is a lie. They each see and feel things, and then cover them up with a shrug. "Surely just my imagination."
But beginning on the night the party stumbles upon writing on the wall, "HELP ELEANOR COME HOME ELEANOR," Eleanor begins to feel singled out by the house. "It knows my name," she repeats in terror. But unspoken beneath her fears lies this certainty, this growing belief that Hill House is her home. It wants her. It knows her. And as her supposed friends slowly turn on Eleanor, acting as if she isn't there, growing more and more irritated by her every word, her every choice, the allure of Hill House pulls Eleanor deeper in. She becomes like a limb of the house itself, able to hear every footstep and every word spoken in whispers; she can even hear the dust settling in the attic. The once maze-like halls suddenly become familiar to her and she can dance about the house without a thought of getting lost, though, in some ways, she already is. Eleanor slips into dreamlike states and wakes in dangerous places, like at the top of the house's old tower. And this is when Dr. Montague realizes how much danger Eleanor is in. He sends her away to return to her sister and brother-in-law's house where she lives as a perpetual guest-- unwanted. STOP HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS!!!
But Eleanor doesn't want to leave Hill House. "I can't leave," she declares calmly, knowing her fate and almost gleeful to reach it. In the driveway, she drives her car head-first into a tree and at the last second wonders, "Why did no one try to stop me?"
Loneliness is central to Shirley Jackson's story and it is central to my own writing as well. I find loneliness to be such a dynamic storytelling asset because of its ability to connect characters to larger forces beyond their direct control.
In some Jewish writings, I've seen loneliness explored as a way to connect with the Divine. In Michael Strassfeld's A Book of Life he writes,
"Being in God's image, we can find God reflected in ourselves; a piece of holiness, of the Divine lies within each of us reminding us who we are, for what we were created, and to whom we remain connected no matter what we do, no matter what happens to us: God as the parent who gave birth to us; God whose agents for holiness are in this world; God whose unity we are to bring about through tikkun olam-- through the repairing of the world, through transforming the world; God whose unique aloneness reminds us that we are never fully alone-- for God is always with us."
In this sense, loneliness is a pathway to justice, to wholeness, to repair and healing. But there is a difference between loneliness and being unwanted. They are related; often we feel unwanted because we are alone or we feel alone because we are unwanted. Being unwanted, as a feature of loneliness, deserves its own attention because it can be used for especially nefarious purposes.
If we look around ourselves today, we can see people who feel unwanted being lured into groups that can militarize loneliness. Drawing upon the sense of unwanted-ness, White Nationalist groups recruit new members, offering a home among friends-- a place to belong. This is what Hill House does, in its own way, to Eleanor. Like many of the white men and women who find a home in White Nationalist groups, Eleanor comes from a life of personal hardship (not systemic hardship) and craves home. We see this as she drives to Hill House at the story's beginning. She passes other Victorian-era homes along the road and imagines herself living there. When she arrives at Hill House, Eleanor feels happy. Despite her terrors when darkness comes, despite the sense of being watched, despite the eerie feeling that she can't leave, Eleanor is happy. She tells herself to enjoy this happiness; she feels she deserves it after such a hard life. Hill House makes her happy and it feeds upon this.
She even says, "I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster... and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside."
It's normal to feel lonely. It's normal to feel unwanted sometimes. And it's normal for others to genuinely not want us. We each have boundaries, informed by past traumas, set up with the purpose of protecting us from further harm. And Whiteness has caused incredible harm. We should feel guilty. We should feel unwanted. But we can't let those feelings drive us into the arms of Hill House. It's a house; not a home.
“Hill House, whatever the cause, has been unfit for human habitation for upwards of twenty years.”
These spaces that lure us in with promises of belonging aren't always good and, if we fall into the trap, it is even harder to escape again. And sometimes if we try to escape, the house kills us. Rather, we should follow loneliness towards healing, towards repair, towards justice.
I sat down on Halloween to read a scary story about a haunted house. But when I closed the cover, I saw reflected in the windows of Hill House the mechanics of White Supremacy. How it watches us. And then gaslights us.
“It watches,” he added suddenly. “The house. It watches every move you make.” And then, “My own imagination, of course.”
How it makes us see things that aren't.
"Now, Eleanor thought, perceiving that she was lying sideways on the bed in the black darkness, holding with both hands to Theodora’s hand, holding so tight she could feel the fine bones of Theodora’s fingers, now, I will not endure this. They think to scare me. Well, they have. I am scared, but more than that, I am a person, I am human, I am a walking reasoning humorous human being and I will take a lot from this lunatic filthy house but I will not go along with hurting a child, no, I will not; I will by God get my mouth to open right now and I will yell I will I will yell “STOP IT,” she shouted, and the lights were on the way they had left them and Theodora was sitting up in bed, snarled and disheveled. “What?” Theodora was saying. “What, Nell? What?” “God God,” Eleanor said, flinging herself out of bed and across the room to stand shuddering in a corner, “God God—whose hand was I holding?” How it takes our loneliness and makes us violent. “Nell?” Theodora looked up at her and smiled. “I really am sorry, you know,” she said. I would like to watch her dying, Eleanor thought, and smiled back and said, “Don’t be silly.”
How it strips us of our ability to connect with others and makes loneliness a path to martyrdom.
"She might have cried if she could have thought of any way of telling them why; instead, she smiled brokenly up at the house, looking at her own window, at the amused, certain face of the house, watching her quietly. The house was waiting now, she thought, and it was waiting for her; no one else could satisfy it."
How it makes us self-destruct.
“Hill House has a reputation for insistent hospitality; it seemingly dislikes lettings its guests get away. The last person who tried to leave Hill House in darkness—it was eighteen years ago, I grant you—was killed at the turn in the driveway, where his horse bolted and crushed him against the big tree.”
And how hard it is to destroy.
“It’s harder to burn down a house than you think,” Luke said.
Loneliness can lead us down one of two paths: Either towards the Divine (in ourselves and others) or towards the malicious (destroying ourselves and others.) I've heard before that "White Supremacy makes everything feel more complicated than it is." I try to remind myself every day that it really is that simple. At the end of the malicious path awaits Hill House-- its hungry mouth waiting wide for those who arrive there. White Supremacy is hungry for all of us and we have to call it what it is or else it will convince us that it is just an old house in the woods, empty, dead, without power. But it isn't just an old house. It isn't empty. It isn't dead. And it has power.
But at the end of the path towards the Divine awaits justice through community. Loneliness pushes us out of spaces and into aloneness. But, if we keep going, if we push to the end, if we don't accept the bad just because it knows our name, then we will find others who are fighting for good and, hopefully after all that wandering, we will be ready to share pieces of ourselves that encourage, build strength, and brings people together.
Luke was right; it is harder to burn down a house than we think. That's why we have to build our own.