The Haunting Of Hill House

All four guests at Hill House search, in some way, for family. Eleanor cared for her abusive mother for 11 years and now sleeps in the nursery of her sister’s house, where she is condescended to and repressed. Theodora, when she arrives at Hill House, has fled her apartment and her estranged roommate. Luke, who will one day inherit Hill House but “had never thought to find himself living in it” (6), is seen as “a liar” and a “thief” by his aunt (5); at the end of the novel, he flees to Paris. Dr. Montague searches for a family in a less literal sense: Although he has a degree in anthropology, his true passion is “supernatural manifestations,” and he “hoped to borrow an air of respectability, even scholarly authority, from his education” (1). His wife is almost comically critical, and the doctor’s passive acquiescence suggests his marriage is dysfunctional and even loveless.

At Hill House, the guests seem naturally to drift into a patchwork, awkward family in which Dr. Montague is a paternal figure and the others are children. Upon meeting, Eleanor and Theodora run across the lawn “[l]ike two children” (36). Dr. Montague tells the others they are “like a pack of children” who are “[a]lways asking me what to do today” (104); he tells them he has “work to do” and asks, “Can’t you amuse yourselves with your toys?” (104). As Doctor Montague pores over his notes, Theodora, Eleanor, and Luke stain their mouths with strawberries “like children” (110). Theodora demands that Eleanor “[r]ace […] around the veranda,” and Eleanor follows, “running and laughing” (81), until they are halted by a disapproving Mrs. Dudley. Eleanor delights in the fact that, joining each other at the breakfast table, they sit at the table like “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). In the parlor, as they sit around the fire, she thinks, “I am one of them, I belong” (43). Theodora and Eleanor even imagine that they are related: On their first day there, shortly after arriving, the two women sit on the riverbank planning a picnic, sharing facts about themselves and determining, playfully, that they must be cousins.

These scenes are, however, poor, almost mocking imitations of family, and the connections between the characters prove superficial and unsatisfying. Theodora and Eleanor begin bickering, and the insults they exchange grow more hurtful as the novel progresses. Eleanor finds Luke “selfish” and “simply not very interesting” (123); he, in turn, accuses her of attempting to monopolize the others’ attention. When the blood ruins Theodora’s clothes and she must share Eleanor’s, Theodora says they will be “twins”—Eleanor, in response, mutters, “Cousins” (116). Later, Eleanor ponders how she would “like to hit [Theodora] with a stick” and “watch her dying” (117).

The most striking metaphor for their “family” occurs at the end of Chapter 6, when Theodora and Eleanor come across a ghostly picnic on Hill House’s grounds. Recovering from a bitter argument, the two walk together in silence, each unable to ask the important question—“Do you love me?” (128). Their coming across a ghost family enjoying a picnic they had envisioned themselves having seems to represent a desire that is unattainable: The family they’ve created at Hill House is no more tangible than the specters.

At one point, Theodora asks Eleanor if she was “sorry” when her mother died; Eleanor responds, “No. She wasn’t very happy” (63). Later, Eleanor eerily suggests she might have let her mother die on purpose. Family, in The Haunting of Hill House, is something people both want and want to escape. That none of the characters find it by the end of the novel suggests we are, ultimately, on our own.

The first information we learn about Eleanor is that, at 32 years old, she has spent the last 11 years caring for her ill, abusive mother. The experience has left her incapable of associating comfortably with other people; she has become reserved, awkward, and desperate for a life of her own. She goes to Hill House in order to take action toward achieving this life. However, once at Hill House, she continues to live in the shadow of her mother’s influence. She is anxious about unpacking her new slacks, for “Mother would be furious” (29). When Theodora paints her toenails red, Eleanor is nervous to let her touch her, telling her, “I don’t like to feel helpless” (86) and alluding vaguely to her mother. She similarly begins an unfinished thought about her mother as she stands outside the library. Eleanor continues to feel her mother’s presence; The fear of disapproval, as well as trauma of having been isolated in her mother’s house, make her question both her decisions and herself.

The presence of Eleanor’s mother—either in Hill House, or in Eleanor’s mind—is made known in several of the supernatural events that occur in Hill House. Eleanor imagines that the banging in the hallway at night is her mother banging for help, and she “irritably” thinks: “Coming, coming […] just a minute, I’m coming” (93). The words “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME” (107) appear written in chalk in the downstairs hallway and then later, in blood, in Theodora’s room. Toward the end of the novel, Eleanor confesses to Luke and Theodora that her mother died because she was banging on the wall for medicine, but Eleanor did not wake up—and she wonders if perhaps she did wake up and deliberately went back to sleep. Eleanor’s indirect acknowledgment of her frustration with her mother, and her sense that “it was going to be my fault” (156) no matter what the circumstances of her mother’s death, suggests her mother’s constant presence in her mind may also be a manifestation of guilt.

Hill House itself is frequently compared to a mother. Luke says the house is “[a]ll so motherly” (154), calling it “a mother house” (156). Like Eleanor’s mother, Hill House does not let people leave: Dr. Montague tells them the house “has a reputation for insistent hospitality” and that “it seemingly dislikes letting its guests get away” (48). Its rooms, too, are stifling and cramped; Theodora notes that the air is still, with no drafts. This comparison to mothers—and the implicit comparison to Eleanor’s own mother—makes Eleanor’s death at the end of the novel that much more striking: Although she had gone to Hill House to escape the shadow of her mother, she ultimately returns, never to leave again. In this way, the house was, as Eleanor frequently suggests, waiting for her.

However, the novel suggests one’s relationship with one’s mother is more complex than it appears. Luke, though he compares the furniture in Hill House to a mother who appears inviting but ultimately is “hard and unwelcome” (154), mourns his own lack of a mother, telling Eleanor “that everyone else has had something that I missed” and that he wishes he had someone to make him “be a grown-up” (123). It is suggested that even Eleanor has need of a mother. A spirit named Nell tells Mrs. Montague, via the planchette, that she is a lost child waiting for Mother. In The Haunting of Hill House, mothers are often stifling, oppressive forces that characters yet cannot deny.

According to Doctor Montague, “[n]o physical danger exists” (102) because “[n]o ghost in all the long histories of ghosts has ever hurt anyone physically” (102). Rather, “[t]he only damage done is by the victim to himself” (102). Fear, he tells the group later, “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” (117). He believes “we are only afraid of ourselves” (117). Fear, therefore, is deeply personal.

To Eleanor, fear is obliterating; it erases and swallows her, taking not only her safety but also her entire self. When Eleanor first arrives at Hill House, she is deeply terrified of the house, even before any events occur. A voice in her head tells her to “[g]et away from here, get away” (24). The house seems to be “waiting for her, evil, but patient” (25); stepping onto the veranda, she feels “enshadowed,” as if “Hill House came around her in a rush” (25). In her room, she feels as if she is “a small creature swallowed by a whole monster […] and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside” (29). Later, after her name is written in blood on Theodora’s wall, she tells the others that when she is afraid, she “no longer exist[s]” (117) in relation to other things in the room. If, as Dr. Montague suggests, our fear is a reflection of ourselves, Eleanor’s sense of being swallowed indicates a fear of losing herself, or of repression. This fear seems perfectly appropriate for Eleanor, a woman ]who struggles to form an identity of her own after years of living with her repressive mother and then sister.

Eleanor feels fear with Theodora when they hear the banging outside their doorway; she is also afraid when she and Theodora walk through the forest before encountering the ghostly picnic. She is afraid to go into the library, which reminds her of her mother. However, once the house possesses her—once she “relinquish[es] my possession of this self of mine” (150)—Eleanor loses her fear, feeling only happiness. When she feels a ghostly presence in the parlor, she thinks “with joy” that “nobody heard it but me” (167). Lying by herself near the brook, she hears her name being whispered and sees footsteps that seem to pass through her; rather than fear, however, she feels it is “a call she had been listening for all her life” (158), and rather than the usual cold, she feels “held tight and safe” (159). Eleanor is unafraid only after her greatest fear is realized.

Fear of the supernatural is not the only fear in The Haunting of Hill House. Dr. Montague fears rejection by his colleagues and that he will not be taken seriously in his studies. Theodora, in her teasing Eleanor about her relationship with Luke, suggests fear of not being noticed or not being preferred. Luke, in his confession that he “never had a mother” (122) and that he is “always hoping that someone will […] make me be grown-up” (123), suggests fear of responsibility and of failure. Fear is, in fact, embedded in the house’s history: The original owner, Hugh Crain, created a book for his daughter, filled with frightening images to discourage her from sinning. Hill House thus embodies not just fear of the supernatural but also fear of reality and of oneself. At Hill House, each character faces his or her inevitable flaws and failings.

Early in the novel, Eleanor is established as having a vivid imagination. As she drives down the highway toward Hill House, she imagines her life if she lived in a cottage she passes, and she invents a complex fantasy of a fairyland behind a row of oleanders. Exploring the grounds with Theodora, Eleanor says of a brook and meadow, “I’m sure I’ve been here before […] [i]n a book of fairy tales, perhaps” (37). This quotation suggests her deep connection to fantasy: She hasn’t only imagined the scene before, but she has “been” there.

However, Eleanor’s imagination proves excessive, and readers may begin to grow suspicious of her perception. She lies to Theodora about her home and her age, telling her she lives in an apartment with stone lions and a cup of stars, two items she had seen on her journey to Hill House. This invention of details of her life shows how Eleanor blurs the line between fantasy and reality. One wonders if Eleanor is imagining some of the events at Hill House: Her first night in Hill House, she is unsure whether she sees the door moving, and as she explores the house with the others, she says that “[n]othing in this house moves […] until you look away and then you just catch something from the corner of your eye” (80). In these examples, even Eleanor seems unsure of her perception of reality.

Dr. Montague’s comment that fear “is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishment of reasonable patterns” (117) becomes even more important in this context. Does Eleanor’s imagination, her blurring of the line between fantasy and reality, make her less able to hold onto reasonable patterns and thus more susceptible to the evils of Hill House? Is Eleanor herself partly responsible for the events that take place at Hill House, and if she is, what does this mean about the power of the human mind? The very fact that these questions are left unanswered, thus forcing readers to devise their own conclusions, seems to reinforce the tenuous nature of reality.

Although Eleanor, with her complex visions and imaginings, offers the most obvious example of imagination, all characters suffer from their own internal dialogues. The Haunting of Hill House is, in part, about depth of thought and its effects on the human psyche.

In The Haunting of Hill House, characters search for things they do not find. At the end of the novel, life goes on as if nothing had happened, as if no one had been to Hill House at all. No character finds in Hill House what he or she is looking for. Dr. Montague’s paper on his experiences at Hill House is received with contempt. Luke continues drifting, and he goes to Paris for an indeterminate time. Theodora returns to her roommate. Even Mrs. Montague fails in her quest to comfort the supernatural forces within Hill House. Eleanor strives to invent herself and to escape her overbearing mother; instead, her “self” dissolves into the house, and she returns to her mother in a number of symbolic ways. Her death at the end of the novel represents the characters’ inability to achieve their dreams or outrun their greatest fears. It is no coincidence that the final paragraph of the novel repeats verbatim the first paragraph: “Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills holding darkness within” (182). Every character—including the house itself, where “whatever walked there, walked alone” (182)—comes full circle, ending exactly where they began. The ending suggests the futility of human efforts as well as the inescapable nature of insecurity and human suffering.