The Haunting Of Hill House

Although the guests of Hill House differ in personality, they are bound by their displacement from home. Dr. Montague longs for professional acceptance. Theodora is estranged from her roommate. Luke’s aunt sends him to Hill House to rid herself of him. Eleanor lived with her abusive mother and now with her sister, “[t]he only person in the world she genuinely hated” (3). At Hill House, the four create a makeshift family. The three guests frolic on the grounds eating strawberries and “staining their hands and their mouths; like children” while Dr. Montague, their symbolic father, watches them “with amusement” (110). Luke jokes that they should play hide and seek. Theodora even jokes that Eleanor is part of her family, telling her in Chapter 2 that they must be cousins. In Chapter 4, upon joining the others for breakfast, Eleanor observes that “they were a family” taking “their own places at the table” (71).

However, the family proves disappointing when Eleanor finds herself the subject of teasing and reprimand. Already prone to self-doubt, she becomes resentful of Theodora, who alternates between tenderness and criticism. Theodora accuses Eleanor of writing her own name in the hallway and in blood above her bed. After Eleanor tries to explain why she was frightened to see her name on the wall, the others tell her to “[s]top trying to be the center of attention” (119). Her comment to Dr. Montague that Theodora is blaming her is met with a brusque, “Nobody’s blaming you for anything” (115). As Eleanor feels herself suffering the same isolation she’d escaped, her fear of being alone is realized.

It is debatable, however, whether Eleanor’s reactions are exaggerated. Seemingly without evidence, she believes the others are deflecting their fear onto her “so that, quieting her, they quieted themselves” (72). When blood is discovered in Theodora’s room, Eleanor scolds Theodora for making “a fuss” even though she “conscientiously” knows Theodora is “making very little of a fuss” (113). Later, after Theodora apologizes for accusing Eleanor of writing her own name in blood, Eleanor thinks she wants to “batter her with rocks” and “watch her dying” (117). Similarly, though she may be correct that Luke is “vain” (121) and “not very interesting” (123), the intensity of her loathing as he tells her he never had a mother seems disproportionate. Just as her fear of Hill House seems justified but exaggerated, her irritation with Theodora and Luke seem not without merit but extreme.

The doctor’s notion that “[t]he only damage done is by the victim to himself” (102) foreshadows Eleanor’s unique susceptibility to Hill House. Although Theodora believes “Hill House has fallen far short of its original promise” (111), Eleanor finds it to be “waiting” and “biding its time” (112). She acknowledges the gradual crumbling of her sanity, telling the group that she hates seeing herself “dissolve and slip and separate” (118). Her acknowledgement that she is “trying to guard against” (113) the loss of her sanity only reaffirms that she feels it slipping away.

In Chapter 3, Dr. Montague tells Eleanor he had chosen her to accompany him because she had “been intimately involved in poltergeist phenomena” (52). These chapters offer hints that Eleanor herself may have caused the mysterious events at Hill House, like the rocks that had fallen on her childhood home. Jackson is careful to note that the rocks had fallen soon after her father’s death. At Hill House, supernatural activity seems to occur when Eleanor is agitated. The blood in Theodora’s room appears shortly after she accuses Eleanor of writing her own name in the hallway. Most striking is the ghostly picnic Eleanor and Theodora encounter on the lawn: Having teased Eleanor over Luke, Theodora follows Eleanor outside, where the two engage in an emotional argument, leaving the fundamental question—“Do you love me?” (128)—unasked. Their vision of a ghostly family enjoying a picnic in the sunshine seems a physical manifestation of their seeking companionship and belonging. Theodora’s seeing something over Eleanor’s shoulder—something she orders Eleanor not to look at, something that is never explained—may suggest the connection to the supernatural is uniquely Eleanor’s. Alternatively, something about the familial scene might have been especially frightening to the free-spirited Theodora—a theory reinforced by Dr. Montague’s comment that “we are only afraid of ourselves” (117).

Throughout the novel, Eleanor has been compared to a child. It is therefore no wonder that she is infuriated when she hears, coming from Theodora’s empty room, a child begging not to be hurt. Although she is afraid, she will not stand for the hurting of a child. Eleanor also will not look at the pictures in Hugh Crain’s book, which, in its attempt to frighten and control his daughter, is reminiscent of the statue in the drawing room, a physical representation of the power Crain wielded over the women in his life. All these incidents suggest Eleanor herself was abused as a child, making her that much more vulnerable to the controlling forces in the house.