The Haunting Of Hill House

“Her name had turned up on Dr. Montague’s list because one day, when she was twelve years old and her sister was eighteen and their father had been dead for not quite a month, showers of stones had fallen on their house, without any warning or any indication of purpose or reason, dropping from the ceilings, rolling loudly down the walls, breaking windows and pattering maddeningly on the roof.”

Dr. Montague invites Eleanor to Hill House because of this incident from her childhood. He explains that he believes this is a “poltergeist phenomena” (52), surprising Eleanor, who insists it was “the neighbors” (53). This incident, which takes place shortly after the death of her beloved father—the narrator notes that Eleanor “could not remember a winter before her father’s death” (9)—is eerily similar to supernatural incidents at Hill House, which occur following times when Eleanor is anxious or upset. Readers may sense that Eleanor and her sister, who argue as adults about whether Eleanor can use their shared car, have a contentious relationship even as children, for each “supposed at the time that the other was responsible” (4). Similarly, Eleanor and Theodora’s friendship is fraught with jealousy and resentment, and several supernatural incidents take place after Eleanor feels slighted by Theodora. This early example of strange happenings surrounding Eleanor suggests that Eleanor unwittingly is making these events happen. 

“The journey itself was her positive action her destination vague, unimagined, perhaps nonexistent.”

Eleanor has never had a life of her own. She spent 11 years caring for her ill mother, from whom she endured “small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair” (3). She then moved into the nursery of her sister’s house, where she was condescended to and treated as a child. When she goes to Hill House, she feels she has “finally taken a step” (10). She enjoys driving the car she shares with her sister—which she has taken against her sister’s wishes—because it now “belonged entirely to her” and is “a little contained world all her own” (10). As she drives along, she seeks “to savor each turn of her traveling […] teasing herself with the notion that she might take it into her head to stop just anywhere and never leave again” (11). To Eleanor, the journey, not the destination, is the point; it is her way of taking action and of taking control of her life. On this journey, for once, she may choose to do anything she pleases. Hill House itself is less important than the drive—in fact, Eleanor “would have gone anywhere” (4).

“She laughed and turned to smile good-by at the magic oleanders. Another day, she told them, another day I’ll come back and break your spell.” 

As she drives toward Hill House, Eleanor makes up stories about the places she passes. Driving by a cottage, she imagines what she would do if she lived there, inventing an entire life in vivid, extraordinary detail. Passing a row of oleanders, she imagines walking through the gateway and entering a fairyland, where the poison trees will protect her, then finding a garden with fountains and roses leading up to a palace. It soon becomes clear that Eleanor’s imagination is her defense against the abuse and misery she has suffered in her life. As the novel progresses, readers may wonder whether her imagination overpowers her, whether she imagines events at Hill House or even plays a part in creating them.

“Don’t do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again.” 

On her way to Hill House, Eleanor stops at a restaurant for lunch. In the restaurant, a mother pleads with her little girl to drink milk from a glass; the little girl refuses, for she only wants to drink from the “cup of stars” she has at home. Eleanor silently hopes the little girl continues to refuse and is pleased when she does not relent. Throughout the novel, the cup of stars represents freedom and possibility for Eleanor. When Theodora asks where she lives, Eleanor lies and tells her she lives by herself in an apartment and that she used to own a cup of stars. Eleanor suggests she used to have freedom and that her life used to hold possibility; she hopes one day she will have possibility again. In this passage, Eleanor warns the little girl that once one gives up one’s cup of stars—once one grows up and enters the world of adult responsibility—one’s hope and freedom vanish.

“Journeys end in lovers meeting.”

On her journey to Hill House, Eleanor has trouble thinking of the words to a song; she begins, “Journeys end…” but cannot remember the rest. She remembers the entire line—“Journeys end in lovers meeting” (25)—as she climbs the steps of the veranda of Hill House. “Journeys end in lovers meeting,” a line from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, is repeated many times throughout the novel. She thinks of this line repeatedly: as she stands fearfully for the first time in “the blue room” of Hill House; when she wakes up her second morning and realizes how happy she is to be there; when she and Theodora notice the blood smeared on Theodora’s wall; when Luke tells her he never had a mother; and after the house fully possesses her, when she is walking happily with Luke and Theodora outside toward the brook. That Eleanor first recalls the line as she walks up the steps toward Hill House—the line comes to her just as she is thinking that the house “was waiting for her, evil, but patient” (25)—is significant. Eleanor finds no “lover” at Hill House, nor a “cup of stars”; instead, she comes full circle, symbolically returning to the mother she’d escaped. As the spirit summoned by Mrs. Montague’s planchette suggests, Eleanor is a lost child trying to go home to her mother; the house, and her mother, seem to have been waiting for her to return. Eleanor’s death at the end of the novel further reiterates that Eleanor’s journey ends where it began.

“I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.” 

Inside the blue room, her bedroom at Hill House, Eleanor is almost paralyzed with fear. She imagines that Hill House is “awake” (24) and that it is watching her. Similarly, as she steps up to the veranda for the first time, she feels that “Hill House came around her in a rush” (25) and that she is “enshadowed” (25) by the house. Eleanor is not simply afraid of paranormal activity at Hill House—she is afraid of the house overpowering and devouring her. This fear proves prescient as the house gradually begins to possess her. Eleanor’s fear of being consumed or lost inside a larger, unfeeling being is in congruence with her having sacrificed years of her life to live secluded with her abusive mother, whom she served selflessly in her illness. 

“They were all silent, looking into the fire, lazy after their several journeys, and Eleanor thought, I am the fourth person in this room; I am one of them; I belong.” 

On the first evening, as the group sits in the parlor to talk, Eleanor takes delight in acknowledging the fact that they are a group of interconnected people and that she fills a necessary role in it. The next morning, at breakfast, she experiences a similar sense of joy, thinking the “they were a family, greeting one another with easy informality and going to the chairs they had used last night at dinner, their own places at the table” (71). Eleanor and the other guests, each in their own way, seek acceptance or family; at Hill House, they fall into what loosely resembles family roles. However, Eleanor’s intense attention, her tendency to cling too firmly, may feel ominous to readers, signaling what will prove to be a tenuous grip on reality. 

“‘Certainly there are spots which inevitably attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness; it might not then be too fanciful to say that some houses are born bad.’”

Dr. Montague speaks these words on the first evening as he begins to describe to the guests the history of Hill House and of its original owner Hugh Crain. His statement mimics Eleanor’s earlier observation that “[i]t was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope” (24). There appears to be something about Hill House that is inherently evil, or as Eleanor says, “diseased” (23). Dr. Montague is unsure “whether its personality was molded by the people who lived here, or the things they did, or whether it was evil from its start” (51). His uncertainty is like the reader’s uncertainty as to whether Eleanor is the victim of the events at Hill House or the cause.

“People answering questions about themselves, she thought; what an odd pleasure it is.”

Eleanor and Theodora chat together in the parlor their first evening in Hill House. After Eleanor tells Theodora about her late mother, Theodora begins to ask her friendly questions, and Eleanor ponders what a delight it is to answer questions about oneself. Earlier, the narrator tells us that years of taking care of her ill mother has resulted in her spending so much time alone “that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and an awkward inability to find words” (3). Readers are offered early hints that Eleanor’s “awkward” demeanor is less benign than it first appears. Her lack of understanding of even the most basic protocols of conversation makes her an outsider, foreshadowing her evident connection to strange events at Hill House.

“[W]hat a complete and separate thing I am, she thought, going from my red toes to the top of my head, individually an I, possessed of attributed belonging only to me.”

Just as Eleanor takes deliberate stock of all the people sitting around the table, she looks down at the details of her own self and takes special note of her existence and individuality. Eleanor’s obsession with her own tangibility may signal to readers that she is struggling to keep hold of her individuality. Her fixation on, and amazement of, her individuality seems an indication that it is uncertain or unstable, and it foreshadows her possession by the house later in the novel. Eleanor, who arrived at Hill House to create herself, is unable to solidify who she is, and she ultimately loses what little of herself she holds.

“‘We have grown to trust blindly in our senses of balance and reason, and I can see where the mind might fight wildly to preserve its own familiar stable patterns against all evidence that it was leaning sideways.’”

In response to Theodora’s confusion regarding why she is unable to see the tower from her bedroom window, which looks out at the front of the house, Dr. Montague explains that Hugh Crain designed the house so that “every angle is slightly wrong,” which means “the doorways are all a very little bit off center” (77). He goes on to say that “all these tiny aberrations of measurement” result in “a fairly large distortion in the house as a whole” (77). He concludes that this is what makes the house so difficult to navigate. Hugh Crain designed the house this way to “to suit his mind” (77). Signs already exist that Hugh Crain was a domineering, overpowering, and perhaps even abusive husband and father. The house, therefore, seems a perfectly representation of his mind. Eleanor’s ultimate possession by the house similarly reflects that her mind is off-center and difficult to navigate. This quotation is a response to Luke’s suggestion that the “supernatural manifestations” people experience in the house are “only the result of a slight loss of balance” (78). 

“‘Anyone would know it at once; that figure in the center that tall, undraped—good heavens!—masculine one, that’s old Hugh, patting himself on the back because he built Hill House, and his two attendant nymphs are his daughters.’” 

As the group explores the house, they enter a drawing room, where they find “a marble statuary piece” that appears “huge and grotesque and somehow whitely naked” (79). Theodora determines that “it’s a family portrait” (79), with original owner Hugh Crain, naked, attended by his two young daughters. The novel is peppered with subtle references to Hugh Crain’s dominance. Dr. Montague describes Hugh Crain as “a sad and bitter man” (54) who lost three wives while living in Hill House. He also explains that Hugh Crain designed Hill House so that “every angle is slightly wrong,” in order to “suit his mind” (77). The house’s oppressive nature, the fact that people have “extreme difficulty” in navigating its many confusing hallways and inner rooms, suggests a certain exercise of power.

Later, the group reads a book Hugh had created for his daughter, full of violent, unsettling images and descriptions of what will happen to her if she succumbs to sin. Signed in blood, the book implores his daughter to remain “pure” and “pious” (124) so that they may be joined in Heaven “in unending bliss,” a statement that inspires Theodora to proclaim him “a dirty old man” who “made a dirty old house” (126). Although Hill House is often compared to mothers, it also possesses the remnants of an overbearing father who has stifled the women who lived there. Eleanor’s dancing in front of the statue at end of the novel, after she has lost herself to Hill House, shows she has succumbed to the evil forces within.

“‘I think that an atmosphere like this one can find out the flaws and faults and weaknesses in all of us, and break us apart in a matter of days.’” 

When Eleanor asks Dr. Montague if they are “right to stay,” Dr. Montague responds that they are “incredibly silly to stay” (91) because Hill House has the power to identify and exploit their weaknesses, shattering them. He tells Eleanor that she must leave if she “feel[s] the house catching at” her (91). In this quotation, Dr. Montague alludes to a kind of awareness in the house, an awareness that is reminiscent of Eleanor’s early observation that the house seems to be watching her. Dr. Montague’s words foreshadow Eleanor’s ultimate possession by the house, during which she thinks, “I am going apart a little bit at a time because all this noise is breaking me” (149). If the house can sense their weaknesses, the absorption by the house of Eleanor’s identity, always tenuous, seems only a matter of time. 

“‘No physical danger exists [….] No ghost in all the long histories of ghosts has ever hurt anyone physically. The only damage done is by the victim to himself.’” 

Dr. Montague speaks these words as the group discusses the previous night, when Theodora and Eleanor had listened to banging outside Theodora’s door and Luke and Dr. Montague were lured outside chasing a dog. Luke tells the doctor that while it was “unpleasant,” he never “felt in any physical danger” (102). Dr. Montague explains that the real danger of the supernatural is psychological because “it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense” (102). He contends that although they cannot believe that the forces last night were ghosts, they know it must not be their imagination because all of them saw it; thus, “the mind’s instinctive refuge—self-doubt—is eliminated” (103).

Throughout the novel, Eleanor is not sure if she is imagining what she sees. For example, during her first night in the house, she is unsure whether her door is actually opening; similarly, as the group walks around the house, Eleanor states that “[n]othing in this house moves […] until you look away and then you just catch something from the corner of your eye” (80). The uncertainty of what is actually occurring—no one, including the reader, ever discovers what exactly the forces within Hill House are—is the source of the torment. Eleanor, struggling to define herself, seems particularly susceptible to uncertainty. It is suggested that Eleanor herself, rather than the house, is the root of her unraveling. 

“‘Fear […] is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishment of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.’” 

Dr. Montague seems to suggest that fear can be controlled. Suffering from fear is a choice; it is evidence of lack of will. When he adds that that “we are only afraid of ourselves” (117), each of the other three guests offers what they are afraid of. Eleanor, notably, is “always afraid of being alone” (118)—an assessment that is validated by her yearning to fit in with the others. She has also demonstrated a fear of being literally alone in the house. Eleanor’s decision to “yield” to fear occurs in Chapter 7, when she tells herself “it is over for me,” that “[i]t is too much” (150). At that moment, she “relinquish[es]” (150) herself. Readers are left to wonder why Eleanor in particular, of all four guests, is the only one who is unable to withstand the forces within the house.

“‘It’s my own dear name, and it belongs to me, and something is using it and writing it and calling me with it and my own name […] .’” 

Eleanor explains to the others what bothered her about seeing her name on the wall of the hallway, written in chalk, and in Theodora’s room, written in blood. Eleanor has not felt as if she has owned anything her entire life. Her name, she says, represents her identity: “There’s only one of me, and it’s all I’ve got” (118). When the house appropriates her name, when it uses it without permission, it threatens to uproot the little security over her identity that she has. Eleanor’s acknowledgment of her uncertain grip on her identity is reiterated later in the paragraph when she states, “I hate seeing myself dissolve and slip and separate so that I’m living in one half, my mind” (118). She continues, acknowledging this rift: “I see the other half of me helpless and frantic and drive and I can’t stop it, but I know I’m not really going to be hurt” (118). Eleanor sees the fracturing that is taking place inside her and fears the dissolution of her self. Of course, her possession by the house in Chapter 7 confirms that her fear is warranted.

“Each knew, almost within a breath, what the other was thinking and wanting to say; each of them almost wept for the other.”

After Theodora teases Eleanor about her relationship with Luke, Eleanor stalks outside, and Theodora follows her. The two continue their argument as they walk farther into the grounds, their insults growing more searing. Eventually, each becomes silent, wanting to ask, “Do you love me?” but merely “moving delicately along the outskirts” (128) of the question. Although Theodora and Eleanor have frequently argued, there is genuine affection between them, and as they continue walking, they feel sorry for and sympathize with each other. As they walk, the forest turns white, while the path turns black; soon they come to a scene both beautiful and terrifying, that of a ghost family having a picnic. It is notable that they come across this scene immediately following their disagreement. Many of the incidents in the house have corresponded with Eleanor’s frustrations. That they come across a ghostly picnic—representing a happy family that, at its core, is ethereal and unreal—is symbolic of the fact that they never will achieve this.

“‘What are you doing here?’

‘Waiting.’

‘Waiting for what?’

‘Home.’

Mrs. Montague and Arthur have had a session with the planchette. They inform the others that a spirit named Nell told them she was waiting for home and for Mother. The significance of this quotation is twofold. First, it reiterates that establishing a place for herself is Eleanor’s driving motivation and that she will ultimately be unable to escape her mother’s long shadow. Second, it suggests that Eleanor is already split into two separate beings—the person who visits Hill House and a spirit who represents her desires, traumas, and fears. Eleanor has frequently worried that she will “dissolve and slip and separate” (118), and she has struggled to comprehend the line between fantasy and fact. The planchette session—ironically, given Mrs. Montague’s almost comical inefficiency summoning supernatural forces—foreshadows the final fracture within Eleanor.

“Am I doing it? She wondered quickly, is that me?” 

As the four guests huddle in Dr. Montague’s room, they hear a banging sound creeping along the hallway until it reaches their room. It then attempts to enter the room through the door. Eleanor believes the noise is “coming from inside my head” (149) and wonders how the others can hear it. She feels as if she is “disappearing inch by inch into this house,” that she is “going apart a little bit at a time because all this noise is breaking me” (149). At this point, Eleanor and the house have nearly intertwined. Her “rocking to the pounding” (147) appears, on the surface, to be a sign of fear—but readers may wonder if her movements are actually creating the pounding. Eleanor’s inability to distinguish between what is going on in her head from what is going on in the house is reminiscent of the many instances when she has blurred the line between fantasy and reality. As the novel has progressed, she has shown gradual, creeping awareness that she is dissolving into the house, an awareness that culminates here.

“It is too much, she thought, I will relinquish possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have.”

As the house seems to destroy itself, Eleanor feels herself falling away from the others, and she thinks “it is over for me,” that “[i]t is too much” (150). Having held desperately to her sense of self throughout the novel, she finally succumbs, deciding to relinquish herself to the forces within the house. She announces, “I’ll come,” and the room becomes “perfectly quiet” (150) once more. Eleanor’s abdication of her self to the house satisfies the house, which is now “[c]omposed and quiet” as if “nothing had been moved” (151). 

“‘I’ve never been wanted anywhere.’”

When Eleanor insists that she will live with Theodora after they all leave Hill House, Theodora, exasperated, asks, “Do you always go where you’re not wanted?” (154). Eleanor, smiling, informs her she has never been wanted anywhere. This quotation reiterates that Eleanor has been drifting, without a home or a solid identity. Readers may be reminded that Nell, the spirit conjured by Mrs. Montague’s planchette, states that she “[w]ant[s] to be home” (142). Eleanor’s search for a home permeates the novel and is the driving force behind the events at Hill House.

“‘A mother house,’ Luke said, as they came down the steps from the veranda to the lawn, ‘a housemother, a headmistress, a housemistress.’”

Luke’s assertion that Hill House is “a mother house” is not the first time Hill House has been compared to a mother. Earlier that day, Luke says “[i]t’s all so motherly,” that “[e]verything [is] so soft” and “so padded” but turns “hard and unwelcome when you sit down” (154). The first night, Dr. Montague tells them that “Hill House has a reputation for insistent hospitality” and that “[t]he last person who tried to leave Hill House in darkness […] was killed at the turn in the driveway” (48). Like Eleanor’s own mother, Hill House is insistent and smothering; Eleanor feels “swallowed” by her bedroom in Hill House just as, after years secluded with her mother, she became unable “to face strong sunlight without blinking” (3). Eleanor will not go into the library, which reminds her of her mother; she believes she hears her mother knocking for her on the walls. Hill House’s connection to motherhood suggests that Eleanor’s death at the end of the novel is representative of her inability to escape her own mother.

“Somewhere upstairs a door swung quietly shut; a bird touched the tower briefly and flew off.”

After the night the house fully takes hold of Eleanor, Eleanor “can hear everything, all over the house” (152). Now one with the house, she knows every movement within. This omniscience is represented further by her silently eavesdropping on the other guests, witnessing private scenes between them as if she were part of the structure of the house itself. Eleanor also no longer feels fear; rather, she is overwhelmingly happy. At the end of the chapter, she is the only one to sense a ghostly presence in the parlor, but rather than feel afraid, she feels “joy” (167). Similarly, sensing a presence near the brook, she does not feel cold, but “held tight and safe” (159). Eleanor’s comfort with and knowledge of the house show that the house’s possession is complete.