The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Day 18
Chapter 9, Part 1
This whole chapter! The slow reading helps me see even more what a tour de force it is. We’ll unpack it today and tomorrow.
In a lecture called “Garlic in Fiction,” given at a writers’ conference shortly after completing Hill House, Jackson argued that keeping the reader’s attention is the writer’s greatest challenge. No story is interesting, she wrote, “unless the writer, using all his skill and craft, sets out deliberately to make it so.” But images and symbols, if used too frequently, will overpower a story, just as garlic will overpower a dish; they must be used only as accents. She explains that for each character in a story or novel, she uses one central image or set of images that the reader will come to associate with that character. For Eleanor, there are five: the little old lady she meets on the way to the car, the stone lions, the oleander bushes, the cottage with the white cat, and the cup of stars. The five symbols recur throughout the novel, and each time they do, Jackson explains, they remind the reader of Eleanor’s loneliness and homelessness. They become “artificially loaded words” that, deployed correctly, have a powerful impact.
What do you think of this technique? Does it work, or does it feel repetitious to you?
“Hill House went dancing,” Theodora said in Chapter 7. Now Eleanor dances with the house, becoming a child of the house, hearing her mother—a different, loving mother—call her. It’s she, now, who creates the “psychic” manifestations, knocking on the doors and rattling them. But this can’t be the explanation for what happened earlier. What do you think, at this point? Are we dealing with a house with supernatural powers that gets its grips into Eleanor and takes over her mind, or an unstable, lonely woman who somehow makes her own fears manifest in the house? (Mrs. Dudley, as we see, may also have some kind of psychic connection to the house.)
Notice how dramatically Eleanor’s perspective on the house has altered. It’s no longer vile and diseased; it’s “lucky,” “gathered comfortably into the hills… protected and warm.” The cold spot vanishes, the stone floor caresses her; she is home.
I notice also what seems to be Theodora’s real fear for Eleanor’s safety. Perhaps she does have feelings for Eleanor, and her manipulativeness was all in Eleanor’s mind?
Join us on October 30 for a virtual discussion of The Haunting of Hill House with Ruth Franklin.
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For me the repetition of Eleanor's original fantasy of a home with the stone lions, cup of stars, etc. is worthwhile because it reminds us just how far she has fallen. She initially seemed to have agency and hope with the fantasy of a normal independent life. Now her fantasy is that she belongs to a haunted house which of course is crazy. Our need to dream or fantasize is important for motivation and hope and it may even allow us temporarily to escape an unpleasant situation. Then there is the fantasy that is corrupted and allows us to slip into insanity. A fantasy that takes over our brain and doesn't let go. Maybe her insanity occurred because she realizes that she is never going to be accepted out in the world and she'll never have that life she envisioned on her drive to HH.
I love Shirley’s garlic metaphor, and no, I don’t think those 5 symbols are overused at all, and yes, it is a very powerful technique. I think the one thing people have mentioned that has been overused is is the quote “Journeys end in lovers meeting,” and I tend to agree.
As to your next questions, I see it as both/and. The line between the house taking over Eleanor’s mind, and Eleanor losing touch with reality and her mental state infusing the house has completely blurred by this point. They are, in effect, feeding off of one another. Although my interpretation is that HH did initially target her for this eventuality because of her insecurities and vulnerabilities.
A few other things struck me:
As we saw the symbols of doubles, and words repeated twice throughout the book up to this point, in this section, I kept seeing words and phrases repeated 3 times:
“Mother,” “Somewhere,” “Here I am,”(also echoing what she thought when she first arrived) and “I am home.”
I’m also wondering if she was waltzing when she danced? 1,2,3, 1,2,3….
Another image that I kept seeing was that of a circle:
“Dancing in circles” (Back to that “Red Shoes” reference!)
The “circle dance” song again;
The spiral staircase;
The shape of the tower;
And the “circling back” to the past and back in several ways. -
As for the plot, I was thoroughly creeped out by how, from the beginning, E. is in a trance-like state, and by the time she gets to the spiral staircase, I’m not even sure if her feet are completely touching the ground or if she is floating, especially when dancing with Hugh Crain’s ghost; she feels sorry for the others because they are so “heavy.” (Funny use of adverb “gravely” when she dances for Crain.)
As I said in an earlier post, I’m wondering if the spirit of HH is the deceased first wife of Hugh Crain’s, and she has now inhabited E’s body?
Or maybe it’s Hugh himself, and he is looking for a vulnerable female he can drive insane, seduce, and carry on with him in his Hell House?
At one point, E. thinks to herself that “Time has ended” and then tries to remember how she knows the people at the bottom of the spiral staircase, going back in time to an inn, and someone riding a hill with banners flying. So maybe we’re looking back 80 years at the beginning of HH at this point, which would have been 1870’s?
Having E. knock on all the doors as the ghostly spirit herself this time was brilliant, and completes the circle of the hold HH now has on her.
Interesting that it’s when she finally recognizes T’s Face that she decides to come down the staircase with L. I was surprised at how callous they all were with her. I expected it of Mrs. M., but not the others. Dr. M. and Luke actually called her an “imbecile.” I just find this so hard to believe. Hmmm.
Finally, I just happened to notice that the first thing E. thinks she hears her mother say is “Come along” to her. —“Come Along with Me” is the title of SJ’s final, unfinished book she was working on before she died. Could just be a coincidence…. (But does make me sad)