The Haunting Of Hill House

In the opening chapters, Jackson offers a telling peek into the psyche of protagonist Eleanor Vance. Eleanor, who had spent 11 years caring for her ill and, it is suggested, abusive mother, is described as not being able to “remember ever being truly happy in her adult life” (3). Years of reclusiveness have made her unable “to face strong sunlight without blinking” (3). She has “no friends” (3) and currently lives with her domineering sister and brother-in-law. Eleanor has never been in control of her own life and has taken comfort in the hope “that someday something would happen” (4). She sees going to Hill House as having “finally taken a step,” and as she drives off in the car she had taken against her sister’s will, she delights in the fact that “the car belonged entirely to her, a little contained world all her own” (10). Jackson establishes Eleanor as a woman who has never been her own person, and who goes to Hill House seeking not only the supernatural but also herself.

Eleanor’s active, vivid imagination is quickly revealed to be the defense mechanism by which she has protected herself against the dreariness of her adult life. Driving along the highway, she divides “her lovely journey into miles and hours”—a “passage of moments, each one new, carrying her along with them, taking her down a path of incredible novelty to a new place” (11). As she passes an abandoned house, she imagines what her life would be like if she lived there. She sees herself dusting the stone lions on the steps, having tea on a silver service, and sleeping “under a canopy of white organdy” (14). Later, she imagines that a row of oleander trees leads to a magical garden and to a “palace which lies under a spell” (13). Her imagination is perhaps most evident when, having stopped for lunch, she silently cheers a little girl who refuses to drink out of a cup that isn’t her “cup of stars” (15). As the novel progresses, Eleanor will frequently imagine owning a cup of stars, which will come to represent her belief in possibilities and her desire for freedom.

Hill House, which seems “awake,” almost as if it “seemed somehow to have formed itself” (24), is arguably a character in its own right. In fact, Jackson frequently describes the house using human characteristics. Eleanor stops the car when she meets the house “face to face” (23). Its ominousness is partly derived from its “watchfulness,” and “a touch of glee” is suggested in “the eyebrow of a cornice” (24). Standing in her room, she feels like “a small creature swallowed whole by a monster” (29). This feeling of being swallowed is, to Eleanor, one of the most frightening aspects of the house. Eleanor feels “enshadowed” (25) by the house; as she steps onto the veranda, “Hill House came around her in a rush” (25). Inside, the doors to all the rooms are shut; words like “dark,” “weighty,” “dim,” “heaviness,” and “stillness” (26) suggest a suffocating, stifling atmosphere. The house is made only more ominous by Eleanor’s observation that her room “had an unbelievably faulty design which left it chillingly wrong in all its dimensions” (28). Eleanor holds back tears, thinking, “I don’t like it here” (26), and she is afraid even cross the floor of her bedroom.

Despite the house’s evident evil, however, readers may already sense that Eleanor is uniquely susceptible to its horrors. Theodora, though acknowledging the house’s unpleasantness, does not share Eleanor’s dread. While Eleanor imagines that the builders, “eager to finish their work without embellishment and get out of there,” gave up “any attempt at style” (26), Theodora easily identifies the house as a typical Victorian, in which people “wallowed in [a] great billowing overdone sort of thing” (36). Theodora also does not appear to share Eleanor’s fear of being out after dark, telling her, “Don’t be so afraid all the time” (36). Although Eleanor is not the only guest to find the house oppressive, readers should take note that Eleanor’s feeling that the house “was waiting for her, evil, but patient” (25), is not shared by other guests.

Readers may also begin to notice Eleanor’s extreme self-consciousness. When she accidentally knocks into an elderly woman on the way to the garage, she breaks into “convulsive apology” (8). Jackson tells us Eleanor rarely loses her temper “because she was so afraid of being ineffectual” (20). Unpacking her suitcase, she thinks how “Mother would be furious” (29) that she bought slacks. Years of subservience and isolation have affected Eleanor’s ability to relate to others—but we are also offered early signs that she struggles even to relate to herself.