The Haunting Of Hill House

As a woman who has for years subverted herself to those around her, Eleanor sees her time at Hill House as an opportunity for her to create herself and build her own life. As someone who has “never been wanted anywhere” (154), she has sought belonging in the makeshift family created by the other guests. However, Eleanor does not find the loving family she hopes for. She is ignored and excluded by the other guests, who are incapable of providing the comfort she yearns for. Theodora rejects Eleanor’s suggestion that they live together after leaving Hill House, asking impatiently, “Do you always go where you’re not wanted?” (154). That evening, Luke compliments Theodora on how attractive she looks in Eleanor’s blue dress, effectively erasing Eleanor. When Eleanor eavesdrops on Theodora and Luke, she wonders, “When are they going to talk about me?” (162)—only to find that they do not mention her at all. Theodora and Luke mention everyone but Eleanor: When Luke asks Theodora if she thinks Dr. Montague will put them in his book, they speculate how they, Mrs. Montague, Arthur, and Mrs. Dudley will be represented—significantly leaving out Eleanor. Throughout the novel, Eleanor has striven to fit in and belong, to find a family. Her exclusion from the others’ thoughts shows this is a dream that will never be realized.

Instead of a family, Eleanor finds Hill House, and in Chapter 7, she finally submits to the forces that have been swallowing her since she first stepped onto the veranda. Sitting in the doctor’s room the night of Mrs. Montague’s arrival, the original four guests hear the mysterious banging, which makes the house shake and appear to destroy itself from the inside out. Eleanor sits “rocking to the pounding” (147), almost as if her movements drive those of the house. As the noise goes up and down the hall, she wonders, “Am I doing it?” (149), and asks herself why “the others [are] frightened” if the noise is “coming from inside my head” (149). Feeling she is “disappearing inch by inch into this house” and that she is “going apart a little bit at a time” (149), she decides to “relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all” (150). When she tells the house, “I’ll come” (150), the house becomes “perfectly quiet” (150), reaffirming it was Eleanor the house wanted all along. With this submission, Eleanor’s becoming the house is complete. The next day, she “can hear everything, all over the house” (152); she also feels she is looking at the other guests “from a great distance” (165). Her possession by the house is reflected even in her eavesdropping of the other guests: She listens to Theodora and Luke behind the summerhouse, Dr. Montague and Arthur in the parlor, and Mrs. Montague and Mrs. Dudley in the kitchen. Eleanor’s listening in on private conversations, undetected, shows her to be physically in all places at once, just like the house.

Eleanor’s newfound happiness at Hill House reiterates that she and Hill House have finally become one. Walking toward the brook, she thinks, “I have waited such a long time […] I have finally earned my happiness” (157). Once there, she feels the presence of a spirit and hears her name, “a call she had been listening for all her life” (158). Rather than the biting cold that usually accompanies supernatural forces, Eleanor feels warmth, as if she is “held tight and safe” (159). In the parlor that evening, she hears a child’s voice singing and the brush of a spirit moving by her; she feels not fear at this presence, but “joy” (167).

Mrs. Montague provides comic relief in these chapters. Despite her aggressive self-confidence, she is hopelessly incompetent, relying on “[b]alderdash” (138) techniques such as the planchette to summon the spirits. Dr. Montague, frustrated, says her methods are those of “[s]choolgirls” and “[s]uperstition” (138). Although critical of the others, she herself is completely unaware of the events witnessed in Dr. Montague’s room. Incredibly, however, Mrs. Montague manages to summon at least one important spirit: “Nell,” a lost child who speaks to her during a planchette session, tells her she is looking for “Mother” and “home” (142). This striking scene suggests Eleanor’s spirit is splintering, and readers are left wondering if it has been splintered all along: Who is this other “Nell,” and is it responsible for the events in the house? Suddenly, Theodora’s accusing Eleanor of drawing her name on the walls herself seems less outrageous.