Another thought: Perhaps they weren't thoughtless. Perhaps they knew her mental health would worsen if she stayed in the house. Perhaps Dr. M insisted she leave - and on her own - b/c he knew the only way for her to recover her mental health was if she held agency over it. Perhaps they all meant well, and it just went terribly terribly wrong. It's just another angle. Like everything else in this book, I think SJ means for it to be ambiguous. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel almost as destabilized reading this book as the characters inside of it!
Good point. Dr. M. does seem to firmly believe that she has to leave alone or it will somehow stay with her if Arthur is with her. And yes, this is why I LOVE SJ so much. She destabilizes the reader as much as the characters in her books! This is also how I felt reading her novel
Thank you Ruth for one of the best group reads I have ever participated in. Both you and the group have been enlightening and entertaining. I agree that the ending is so very sad watching Eleanor slowly slip into insanity. Could she have been helped? We will never know.
You ask about Mike Flanagan's HH ending and I personally did not like it (my husband did). I really don't like when a work of art like this gets whitewashed to make us feel good. It makes me feel like the writer thinks we are children that cannot handle some truths. My husband said it was a hopeful ending and maybe it was but "feel good" was not Jackson's intent. The depths of mental illness, depression and loneliness are dark, frightening places and sometimes they reach the point of no return.
Thank you once again for all our hard work and insights! P.S. If you are looking for a really good Mike Flanagan series try Midnight Mass! Great series.
I generally like Mike Flanagan's, and also think Midnight Mass is one of the best shows I've watched. But I was also not a huge fan of his HHH. I like it, but the entire project never took off for me. I have re-watch the last episode after reading the book.
If Flanagan had only changed the title and the names of the characters, maybe the series could have worked better for me. (He maddeningly, instead, kept (some of, or parts of) the names and *drastically* changed the characters themselves.) And the ending was nothing but the *antithesis* of SJ's novel. If the book were in public domain, the idea of this having been done might not bother me as much. But I find the fact that the Hyman family (i.e. the Jackson estate) gave license to have this done to the property saddens me.
I'm frightened thinking of what lies within the new Elizabeth Hand novel "A Haunting on the Hill". I can't imagine how It be true to the character of Hill House itself without being, in essence, just a retelling of the same story--it would require some incredibly engaging new characters to make the journey interesting. Hill House most definitely *is* a character (the main character?) in Jackson's novel, and to have the House do anything out of character would be a huge betrayal.
What struck me on this reading is how Mrs M is right there, insisting on sense--Arthur drives her, yes, please! And the core group dismisses her to their immediate and lasting regret.
I suppose Hill House is the definition of a hungry ghost, one that lures w whatever the weakest desires, in Eleanor's case, community, presses on the others to alienate and eject her, and voila, the house has another woman to add to its mix, which is a lonely, single, malevolent, entity.
(Rather like Marion Crane in Psycho, who grabs the money and runs, hoping for freedom but meeting w another hungry ghost.)
Now that everyone’s finished and there’s no chance of spoilers, I’ve been thinking about Jackson’s red herrings. They’re brilliant: she escalates the tension, over and over, with references to a grim ending. She arms Arthur with a Chekhov’s gun, has him talk about the importance of keeping it in good working order, about staying up with it—even has Dr. Montague suggest that he’s going to end up shooting someone. But nobody gets shot. She performs the Grattan song for us, with the wire around the throat reference, as well as Theo’s scarf and the rusty staircase and she throws in a yardarm reference for good measure. But the door to the tower is nailed shut. There’s the blood all over the walls and Theo’s clothes, which I took to be a reference to suicide by bloodletting. All of these allusions give us good cause to believe that Eleanor is going to take her life. But she doesn’t choose any of those methods, and I think that suggests in the end what Jackson has decided haunts Hill House: that first, untimely death, and with it the death of the family, left to infighting and disturbing parental advice. All of them are haunted by and undone by the premature death of the mother. As Eleanor is in the end, too—though her great loss occurred well before her mother’s actual death.
We tell, over and over, our own particular ghost stories of the events that haunt our lives. I wonder if this is what haunted Jackson, the absence of a loving, devoted mother. I was reading a New Yorker article, trying to find corroboration for my theory. Our intrepid leader’s biography is cited, and that’s when I realize: I’m an idiot. Why not just ask?
So Ruth, one last question before we let you go—with another great, big thank you—do you think what’s haunting Hill House is the absence of a mother? If not, what?
'“Eleanor has to go back the way she came,” Dr. Montague insists' - that was one of the sentences that leapt out at me reading the final sections. The other was: '"Walled up alive." Eleanor began to laugh again at their stone faces. "Walled up alive," she said. "I want to stay here."' Their stone faces conjures both the walls of Hill House and the stones from Eleanor's past. Eleanor has lived her life 'walled up alive'.
When Dr Montague says Eleanor has to go back the way she came, at first that felt hopeful to me - retracing the steps of her literal journey to Hill House and of a personal journey to arrive where she started anew - courtesy of T S Eliot, 'the end of all [her] exploring will be to arrive where [she] started and know the place for the first time.' Maybe. (I was reminded of the children's voices in the rose garden in the garden picnic scene earlier in the novel.) But it is not to be. It is therefore so disappointing when Eleanor isn't able to make that journey back though her last thoughts are revealing: 'she thought clearly,Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me?' For once she thinks 'clearly'. Again there's a repetition of the same words as we've noted before. The final question hands responsibility to others, a pattern we associate with Eleanor, looking for care and support from elsewhere, with an underdeveloped locus of self-determination and self-valuation. Eleanor says of her time at Hill House, "It's the only time anything's ever happened to me. I liked it." and even then something's happened to her, it's not that she's made something happen. When she makes something happen, driving into the tree, it's due to loss of her faculties and possession by something other than her rational self.
My further feelings are a kind of frustration and anger that Dr Montague has decreed that she has to go back the way she came. If he had accepted Mrs Montague's quite sensible suggestion that she travel with Arthur, might that have been a better outcome for Eleanor? Uncertain but possible. She might have survived the journey and lived to tell the tale.
What do people make of the ending? What is this novel about? I'm left wondering.
I so loved that "walled up alive" bit--one more way in which the seemingly idiotic/purely comic Mrs. M. was right. This house does in fact need a nun to be walled up alive, and in the end it is Eleanor: "and whatever walks there, walks alone." The repetition of that line, the one that brings Ruth Franklin to tears, breaks my heart too. But for me the cruelest moment in the narrative is Eleanor's final sudden moment of clarity before her death. The house/SJ might have spared and Eleanor (and me!!) that devastation. (Of course not really; I think it's brilliant. It just destroys me.)
I'm unsure what Eleanor means when she says "walled up alive": is it that staying there she will be walled up alive and that's what she wants, or is it that she feels going back to where she came from would be being "walled up alive"?
Eleanor’s sudden moment of clarity, that wondering what she is doing, also terrified me. It feels like the last moment of regret someone attempting suicide might have...realizing there is no turning back. I can’t help wonder if Jackson too hadn’t found herself at that brink....
If you are still there - it's November 5 - Karin and I are planning to read Margaret Drabble's The Seven Sisters. We would love to have you on board. If you get this and are interested, I can send you a few inspiring passages - not lengthy ones - that I have excerpted. I think Drabble's is a lovely and very worthy follow on to To The Lighthouse. The theme of spiritual aspiration is as brilliantly accomplished - or, well OK, almost as brilliantly. Would be great to have you be part of this. And anyone else you cared to recommend.
Hi Alfred, thanks for the invite and Drabble’s book sounds wonderful. I haven’t read it (yet). Right now, I’m a bit over scheduled with traveling and writing projects, but do let me know when and where you have the reading group started! Best wishes to you (and all) from the edge of the Acropolis in Athens!
The edge of the Acropolis. The Acropolis. I think I learned at some early stage in my long life that that's in Greece. And the word "edge" - edge of the Acropolis - carries very effective symbolic weight too. One doesn't ordinarily think of an edge as being something of weight. But, then, all the same, edges are vital, and often numinous. Slip off the edge, step over the edge, and then what? The edge of the Acropolis! Whew! What I mean to say is that the whole point of the story of The Seven Sisters is: the protagonist, the woman-hero, one of seven "sisters", makes a Virgilian voyage to Greece, in Greece, to Lake Avernus, to Cumae, to consult the Sybil? Life, life itself, is demanding she submit. She will not submit. The essence of the book is in the reason for that voyage, the necessity of that voyage and the catastrophically wonderful, wonderfully unpredictable outcome. Do let me send excerpts when you are no longer so much on the edge.
I love the TS Eliot reference, and it also reminds me of all the images of “circles” in the previous section. E. Dancing in circles, the circle song, the spiral staircase, etc. Everything is coming back around to the beginning. All the way to the wife dying inside her “carriage” in front of HH.
yes, I noted those circles too. The mention of the spiral staircase makes me think that a spiral is different than a circle though, i'm not sure of the significance of that observation!
Imagining Arthur getting into that car with her is about as possible for me as imagining them all actually doing something to help Eleanor at the end rather than washing their hands of her.
I agree, Arthur is not the most likely candidate for travelling back with her. Every time I think of Dr Montague insisting she go back on her own now, I just keep thinking of today's risk assessments and safeguarding requirements. He set up the event, he's a 'doctor', surely he had to fill in all those risk assessment forms. I wonder what her sister made of him letting Eleanor get behind the wheel and set off on her own? (Well, that's a dead end, I'm sure!) The world is so very different now (or is it?) I would never have thought of any of these things when I first read the book and that would have affected how I read and responded to it. Fascinating! (to me)
Yes, I agree! Different world, in some ways! Thinking of Jackson's descriptions of how Dr. M. went about choosing the people he invited to Hill House. "When he had then crossed off the names of those who seemed to him publicity seekers, of subnormal intelligence, or unsuitable because of a clear tendency to take the center of the stage, he had a list of perhaps a dozen names."
Though might one not very gently like to ask, according to what and whose system of values and perspectives? Montague deliberately pointed out the skewed architectural geometry of Hills House and made it clear that these might evoke serious and even dangerous distortions of material and spiritual perception, might, for example, inspire supernatural interventions and heighten the susceptibility of the occupants. You could be injured, you could be made ill, you might even die. Or so I think he implied. And he set himself up as their guardian, he of all people, with his onanistic bedtime stories, Pamela and Clarissa. Head witch of the coven to be sure. Ha, ha!
Ambiguity, ambivalence, obscurity, delusion reign here. Not so much, as in Macbeth, for example, that nothing is but what is not. Although that, too, can be very well the case. The bedroom, the blood, the clothes. The rabbit, the dog, the garden, the picnic and much else. What is ghostly? What physically exists and what does not? Etc. This place is ontologically so odd ball, so mysteriously skewed, what standard of physical perception can the inhabitants reliably apply, by what and whose ethical principles are they to proceed? And is that any clearer for us, the reader? The one person in the book who is absolutely clear as to what the ethical and perceptual norms are meant to be is Mrs Montague and it is for that very reason, perhaps, that she is so starkly presented as the grossest caricature of spiritual insight, practical good sense and moral virtue. The very personification of arrogant unwisdom itself. (And maybe, because so exaggerated, one of the books incorrigible literary flaws, possibly?).
Is it possible that in such an unprecedented universe as this Doctor Montague’s semi-educated anthropological quackery is the indispensable ambiguity that keeps the strangely fertile lunacy from settling too far into the sterility of conventional sanity? To apply such a standard and such a perspective to the world as we ordinarily live in it, outside the book - outside the dreamworld if you wish - would simply be madness and self-destruction. Within the symbolic poetics of the book, the story, the narrative, the suspension of realty dream, it’s altogether a different kind of universe, a different kind of experience. But in the end all I can say is that, however confident a pose I may strike, I simply do not understand it.
Absolutely! He was supposed to be the responsible one, and seemed to care about Eleanor. But he just dismisses her at the end, and it's his wife who's most worried about her.
Thank you Ruth and everyone for a great read-along!
I’m inclined to agree with both of you. Or that there’s an actual haunting. But I can’t help rooting for Mrs. Dudley. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if it was the Dudleys, all along? And they’d have gotten away with it too, if not for those meddling kids--
I don't think there's a definitive answer to be had. Rather, I think the point is to keep the reader wondering what is real and what's not real; the point is the unanswerable mystery of Hill House.
Yes i agree. I dont think there is a definitive answer. They all smelled the awful smell and saw the ripped and bloodied clothes. Just as the stoning “by the neighbors”. Was that really what happened or was it really supernatural or both?
I thought it was because Mrs. Dudley and Arthur are not in tune with the house (they think they are, of course). Theo at the end is also not in tune, she can't see the blood any more because then she'd still be seeing things like E. does. It is a sign that she will abandon E. at the end.
Marvellously Jackson has Theo continue to wear E.'s clothes and this seems an act of usurpation.
Regardless of Theo's intent, deliberate or no.
I think it is Jackson's intent that is more interesting.
Amanda, do you think the house has completely turned them against E. at this point, (they no longer see the blood, T. is wearing E’s red sweater - color of blood, etc) or do you think they are just basically heartless? Or both?
I resisted the idea of haunted house in the beginning. I was like, no it is going to be all psychological. But Jackson is very clear about the house being evil. Somewhere along the line I realized I had to give up my prejudices and believe what she said.
One day while in the thick of our reading I took a walk around my neighborhood looking carefully at the houses I passed. It is a dense neighborhood, mixed, but a lot of older homes. And it was just extraordinary to me how many looked not right. Even if handsome in some ways, some houses just look creepy from the outside, and all the stuff Jackson wrote about angles and lines and things being not quite in alignment made total sense to me in a new way.
As for ghosts and things, I think .. I think we often forget how closely we interact with our physical environments and how sensitive the effects on our mental health they can be ..
I hope that you will accept an answer of both. I’ve said, and I think others here have also, that the house and the people “feed” off of one another; the house seemingly finding the worst or most vulnerable qualities in the people who inhabit it; perhaps stemming from the sisters of fear and guilt, and amplifying them? This just, in turn, creates a stronger monster/more evil house. And the same could be said of toxic relationships, no? A toxic marriage creating a sense of darkness and negativity in a household, which then just compounds in on itself. I probably just reiterated a lot of what you just expressed.
It also makes me think again of the perception of reality vs fantasy question. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, because whatever it is, “it” is causing real damage, and in this case, the death of Eleanor, and those before her.
I’m fascinated by your observations of the houses while on your walk in your neighborhood. I will have to pay more attention to that on my next walk. I will say that regarding my own house,(built in ‘98), we noticed after we bought it in ‘06 and moved in, that the walls in the powder room downstairs were not 90° angles when we were putting in a shelf. It kind of freaked me out, especially because it was one of my favorite things about the house, with a marble pedestal sink, and I had painted it powder blue (there’s that blue again!)
Now, in just the past couple of years, the house is showing cracks on some of the walls and windows inside, from the extreme temperature changes. (I’ve lived in Texas almost 60 years and have never experienced anything like the temperatures we have had in the past few years. Our infrastructure was not designed for it) In going from single digits to 118° heat index temps, all within 6 months, it’s as if the house itself is trying desperately to adjust to conditions for which it was not designed. All that contraction and expansion to adjust to the extremes. (I think I just thought of the metaphor for my next poem- thanks!)
Anyway, it’s been a real pleasure reading your thoughts here. Thanks for indulging mine. 😊
I agree completely - so much about relationships in this book. E. is seeking positive ones (it seems to me) and instead she gets .. not so much positive.
So interesting about your house. Temperature extremes are not just hard on people, plants, etc., but just about everything apparently.
Same here - a total pleasure conversing with you, and others here. A privilege.
This has been my first time rereading Hill House, and the whole time the last chapter has been ringing in my ears--especially Eleanor's last moment of lucidity, where she can only ask "why am i doing this? why dont they stop me?" It's a brilliantly crafted tragedy, and it sticks in my heart. I expect to reread it many more times, and I dont expect it to ever stop hurting.
All of my friends have had to listen to my rants about the netflix adaptation, and most of them havent read the book or seen the show, so i'm happy to talk about it here where there's a little more context lol
First, to answer your question about the end: I hate the new ending. I dont mind horror that focuses on hope or love or has a happy ending, but this is not that story, so to twist it up into that feels like a betrayal. (And that's without getting into the Audacity to edit Shirley Jackson's final paragraph, which is one of my favorite final paragraphs of all time even as it breaks my heart.)
The thing is, I would love the netflix show if it didnt have the hill house name & approximately three quotes from the book attached to it. It's a well done horror show, with genuine scares and a reveal that I thought was perfect. But as an adaptation, I feel like it took every theme that the book deals with and flips it entirely. Eleanor in the book is traumatized by her biological family treating her poorly, and the effects of that (along with the haunting) are the horror of the novel; in the show, the horror is that a biological family is broken up by ghosts and a malevolent house. Eleanor as a character is shattered across the other characters, to the point where Mrs. Dudley gives the cup of stars speech to Eleanor as a child, rather than Eleanor thinking it herself as an adult. And, honestly, as a lesbian, changing Theo and Eleanor to sisters and having Theo be out to her family and in a relationship with a woman who isnt central to the plot, is so much less meaningful than the subtext in the book. Like, Eleanor's simultaneous admiration of and fear of Theodora, and the moments where they dont quite talk about it, and even the moments when Eleanor is talking to Luke and trying to figure out what she's /supposed/ to be feeling, are all so resonant. Theodora in the netflix show might've been good representation, I dont know, but she wasn't resonant.
Anyway, that's probably enough rambling haha. The funny thing is i actually enjoyed the show! It's just once I was finished watching and had time to think about it, I got so frustrated with it as an adaptation.
Mary Emma, thanks for that critique of the Flanagan series (I will refuse to call it an adaptation). Pretty much exactly my own take on it. (Except for the "enjoying" aspect--I think I was too frustrated and angered to really enjoy it, and also thought there were too many inconsistencies or very poorly connected elements.) I did think that the funeral home episode was very good, though--suspenseful, creepy, heartbreaking, and masterfully filmed and edited. But it all had nothing to do with what the book is about.
I noped out of the Flanagan series in the first episode bc I was so mad that it seemed to bear no relation to the book. But I enjoyed another of his series' enough that I will try this one again and just pretend it is completely unrelated to this beautiful heartbreaking book.
Thank you, Ruth, and everyone here, for welcoming me to the group as a latecomer. It has been such a privilege reading details about the background of this remarkable novel, and I can’t tell you how much I have looked forward to reading everyone’s observations, comments, questions, - What an incredible group of thinkers you all are! It’s been a blast. Thank you so much. 😊
Such a tragic ending, but sadly, not surprising, considering the way in which HH and E. have become so enmeshed by this point.
I agree, Ruth, that knowing the dynamic of SJ’s marriage makes this all the more heartbreaking. I can’t help but think of Shirley’s early letters to Stan when they first meet in college: Shirley is a gushing, innocent young woman full of hope and trust; and years later, after many betrayals, she writes him a letter of bitterness and heartbreak, telling him that the worst lie he ever told her was that she would never be lonely. 😢
I also think of how, even with all her success, she was still constantly criticized by her mother.
The feeling of rejection from 2 of the most crucial people in her life, along with the “villagers” of Bennington must have been excruciating.
I did watch the Flanagan series, but have no recollection of how it ended. I didn’t like it much.
My observations- Apologies if they are too obvious or repetitive of others’
-The sunlight in the morning- a foreboding sign of things to come. Thanks for clueing us into that, Ruth.
- The fact that E. sleeps in the baby’s room at her sister’s - Both echo the NURSERY and, again, the SISTERS.
- E. dies by crashing her car into the tree- Just as Hugh Crain’s first wife’s carriage overturned in front of the house, killing her, and, in chapter 3, Dr. M. tells them that a man tried to leave at night 18 years earlier, and died by his horse running into that tree.
- E thinks “Hill House belongs to me!” Has the spirit of the first wife overtaken her? Especially considering their deaths, and how she danced with Hugh?
- When E. says “Walled up alive,” it echoes what Mrs. M’s planchette wrote about the nuns. Would E. rather be walled up alive
in HH rather than leave? And E. knew she would, once again, feel walled up alive if she returned to her sisters house. Did SJ feel walled up alive? (She did become agoraphobic at one point in her later life)
- The route Dr. M. tells her to take goes back to the use of the numbers 5 and 3’s- Rt. 5, and 39 (3x3) and then the table is set for 5 instead of 6. What was this about, I wonder?. (I’m going to look up what those numbers mean in Tarot later)
- I was struck by Mrs. M wanting Arthur to drive her home. Yes! For some reason, Dr. M. felt like HH would follow her if she didn’t make some kind of clean break....Had HH put a spell on everyone except Mrs. M to make them not realize what a bad idea this was?
- When Theo is so kind in her goodbye to E. and talks about E. coming back to HH so they can have their picnic, it broke my heart, because it’s clear she is saying this in hopes it will get E. to go home.
- “Why am am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?” SJ tells us E. thinks “clearly.” It seems that HH’s final and cruelest curse on E. was to remove the spell from her in the final moment of her life so that she would be full of confusion and as to what had happened to her while at HH, and to feel the horror of what was now about to happen, and the anguish of no one helping her when she needed it most. At least, that’s my interpretation. I know there can be many different views of this.
-This is what makes me cry for Shirley. I’m sure she asked herself these questions many times. And it makes me sad....
Today and tomorrow, I will reread “The Tooth” and “The Visitor” and I think there were some other stories Ruth mentioned. It’s been a while, and I need me some more Shirley!
Theo's goodbye breaks my heart too--while the doctor and luke try for a clean break, Theo cant. And I loved (/hated/was saddened by) the fact that she was silent until Eleanor said her name, and then she came running. I wonder if she was regretting her cruel moments, worried that Eleanor had stopped loving her because of them?
Theo seemed very sincere in her caring good-bye, but geez- I never know with her! I want to believe she really did care for Eleanor, but then part of me wonders if she was placating her (if that’s the right word) because she knew it would get her to leave. Am I being too cynical?
I'm admittedly biased because i want their love/hate relationship to have real love or care in it, but i cant read her "I thought you werent going to say goodbye to me" as anything but genuine. The rest, maybe, I could have read either way, but that line (repeated at the start and end of her goodbye) makes it all feel real for me
I recommend Ruth Franklin's book, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, too. It was on my To Read list before our APS discussion, and Jackson's life is full of contradictions, mystery, and a critical, not-very-loving mother. I'll always remember the passage about the green mashed potatoes!
I immediately ran out and bought Ruth’s book after reading HH for the first time about 7ish years-ish ago. After reading it, I became obsessed with Shirley, read all of her novels, most of her short stories, (always referring back to Ruth’s book when reading them) and now I even have a first edition copy of “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” and paperbacks of “The Lottery” collection and “Hangsaman”from the 1950s AND (yes, Shirley haunts me) a vintage TYPEWRITER that is the same make and model that Shirley used at some point in the mid 1950s!! And it works! I’ll be happy to show y’all during our zoom meeting if you’d like 😂
Needless to say, my copy of Ruth’s book is so tattered and torn from use, I need to buy another one!
SJ has long been one of my favorite authors (perhaps *the* favorite) and, knowing that Ruth's book was coming out, I rushed to the publisher's booth when exhibits opened at a library conference. I was overjoyed when I saw they had galleys, and immediately grabbed a copy and started reading it that night. Of course I also pre-ordered a copy so I could have the "real thing" on day of publication!
That Shirley! So sneaky. The one she is hiding from me now is “Raising Demons.” I looked for it for over half an hour yesterday and still can’t find it. I think SJ is mad because I’ve had it on my shelf for about 6 years and haven’t read it yet😂
Oh, Lisa, that interpretation of Eleanor's final living moment is, literally, bringing tears to my eyes. (I am on the verge on choking up.) The House cannot even let Eleanor die "peacefully" hanging on to the belief she has finally arrived. Hill House is definitely evil and not sane.
I wonder if the stories of the tree did not put the idea to kill herself in that fashion into E.'s receptive mind. I contrast it with her arrival at Hill House when she feels a murderous instinct to run over Mr. Dudley with her car. A woman flees a horrible, lifeless situation to come to Hill House, and a mere week later ends up dying there in the car she once wanted to use as a weapon - it's like a small parable of the loss and depletion and I would argue robbing of her agency until she makes a final grab at it. The car becomes her escape route after all.
That very well could be the case. I hadn’t thought of that. And I had forgotten about her wanting to run over Mr. D! Yes- Even though she didn’t want to leave, the act of driving the car brings everything back full circle to her taking some type of control of her life/ death.
If I’m not mistaken, SJ loved to drive, and there are so very many examples of her female protagonists using cars or buses to escape, or sometimes enter into, unpleasant/toxic relationships/situations.
The ending of Hill House hits you so hard. For me, the first time I read it, the scene from the staircase through to the end was one long trudge through dread; I knew there was no chance Eleanor was going to make it out alive. The characters seem to be in denial, or maybe the fundamentally misunderstand something, but Eleanor was entirely hopeless by that point. I really can't imagine why they thought it was a good idea to put a clearly disturbed woman in a car to drive to a place she doesn't want to go and where she's not welcome; even Mrs. Montague seemed to have some clue of the bleakness of Eleanor's family life. What really hits me the hardest is Eleanor's question: "Why don't they stop me?" Why doesn't anyone care enough to do anything?
Since Ruth and a few comments have mentioned Mike Flanagan, I wanted to mention that I've really enjoyed all of his Netflix shows EXCEPT for The Haunting of Hill House. It seems like such a fundamental misunderstanding of the point. Hill House is a tragedy; it must end with catharsis, or the whole thing is empty. It's so frustrating to see a show from an otherwise talented filmmaker who's completely unwilling to provide the emotional closure that the story calls for.
To me, the ending of The Haunting of Hill House is somehow both painful and uplifting because it allows pain to be seen. Everyone has experienced the pain of loneliness, isolation, and disconnection, but it's not something that's talked about. You keep your pain to yourself because we can't spend our time trauma dumping on each other. But a tragedy gives a communal place for that pain; a tragedy tells you that you're not the only one in pain. Tragedy allows you to face that pain without hiding from it, which is what people need to heal.
Thank you, Ruth, for this wonderful experience. It was such a treat to be led through a reading of the book by someone who has such deep knowledge of Shirley Jackson's life and works. Looking forward to the Zoom session on Monday night!
I think the repetition of images is vital to the meaning of the book, and also a very smart and useful way to build a book. They give the story a lapidary quality, like light cutting through layers of water. And they give it structure and shape.
In a way the book seems like a long poem to me.
I don't find any of them overused, and "journeys end in lovers' meeting" which began as an odd-sounding snippet to me, became alive and potent.
To the question Ruth asks, paraphrase, does the house have supernatural powers or is E. an unstable lonely woman whose mind is generating the phenomena - I see it as a both/and not an either/or. E. the individual responds to the house, also an individual, and that meeting is what makes what happens, happen. That the house is still standing at the end is because it is a house and not a person.
Luke from early on in the book: "It's harder to burn down a house than you think."
E., Ch. 9 part 1: "I learned to sleep very lightly, she told herself comfortingly, when I was listening for my mother." Again the deliberately chosen adverb, in this case comfortingly, that modifies the thought to convey the precise emotion inside the thought.
E. not even sleeping any more enters the spirit of the house. She is a child and the idea of her becoming Theo's or Luke's lover is no longer possible to imagine. They all all treat her like an unloved child at the end, expressing their ostensible concern for her through banishment so they do not have to care for her themselves. Even Theo, whose conscience pricks her, but not sharply enough.
It is impossible not to think of E.'s guilt about her mother and her fear that she did not wake up when she was called. She is a lost child inside a house of pain. And no one can release her from it. They all turn deaf ears on her pleas. She lives in a world in misunderstanding.
"Why don't they stop me?"
Oh my gosh.
Well this is not the lightest of books hardly need to say - but reading it with Ruth Franklin (!!) and all of you has made it a light-filled joy for me these past weeks. Thank you. I am looking forward to the zoom meet!
“She is a child lost in a house of pain... and they all turn deaf ears on her pleas,” is such an apt description of the tragedy of Eleanor’s life. I’m tearing up after reading your comment here.😢
The ending really is tragic - in the true sense. The suffering seems to transcend individual choices. Eleanor's plea that "It’s the only time anything happened to me, and I liked it.”
179 and then decides to join the house by killing herself, might seem like a moment of twisted transcendence, but her last thought was wondering why no one tried to stop her. Dr. M's entire endeavor is a laughing stock. Only Hill House itself remains.
{Just a little fun aside: I have enjoyed all the comparisons to “Psycho.” In my mind, I’ve also been seeing scenes and themes from “The Shining.” (And we know how much S. King loves SJ) The large, secluded, empty, old haunted “house” with the straight hallway with doors on either side. Just a small number of inhabitants that are “family,” and one of them being seemingly haunted by, and then as time goes on, completely possessed by, the house/hotel and its ghosts, all from the past, btw.. In The Shining, the son, is similar to Theo, in that he has a sense of clairvoyance. The message in blood on the wall. At the end, the one “chosen” by the house dies, and in the film version, there’s the creepy scene at the end where we see the old photo of Jack, (after he has frozen to death) as if he was either a part of the hotel in the past, or has been “absorbed” by the hotel as one of its spirits. Granted, there is no bloody murderous rampage in HH- “Heeeeeeere’s Eleanor!” (Sorry. I had to do it) but some of the other images and plot lines stood out to me…… }
“The Cask of Amontillado.” Yes, I thought of that as well. I love that story so much, a few years ago my husband bought me a bottle of Amontillado Sherry to drink on Halloween, 🎃 as I read the story. That empty bottle now sits on my bookshelf next to my Poe collection. 📕 🍷
This is my first reading of the novel so I didn’t know the ending. However, our close reading helped me see the journey to Eleanor’s loss of self and so her death was the inevitable final, tragic step. I know I have always distrusted the doctor from ‘Pamela’ onwards and so the fact he makes another ill-judged, irresponsible and actually heartless decision does not surprise me. That of the two it is Mrs M who demonstrated a greater duty of care is telling. She also judged Carrie well - a ‘vulgar’ individual more worried about her car and holiday than her sister. It also interests me that Luke goes off to Paris, his aunt hoping he stays for a while. It reminds me of Hugh Crain leaving his daughters and going to live in Europe where he eventually died. You might guess I’m also not a fan of Luke!
As I was reading the novel I wondered if Eleanor could have defeated her demons but however much I would have liked that for her, SJ’s choice of ending is the truer one. When the emptiness of Eleanor’s life is laid bare to the group it is unbearably sad - how does one overcome such lack? I suppose in a way Eleanor does in her final moments have some sort of breakthrough ‘Why am I doing this?’ but of course it comes too late.
Reading with APS is also a first for me and I have thoroughly enjoyed your esteemed company and fascinating insights. Reading your comments has enriched the reading experience for me and enhanced my admiration for Shirley Jackson’s craft. Thanks to you all.
Such a fun and enriching experience with you all! Makes the rereading so much deeper an experience than simply reading on one’s own. Thank you Ruth and the group!
Thank you so much for sharing all your insights and knowledge. Did you see that Elizabeth Hand has a novel out this month called A Haunting on the Hill? Set in the same house. I believe it's reviewed on the cover of this Sunday's NYTimes book review.
Yes, Eleanor was in no state to drive. How callous of Dr. M.
Makes me wonder if HH hasn’t possessed all of them except Mrs. M. by that point to not be thinking rationally, so that It could finally destroy her.
I thought the same.
Another thought: Perhaps they weren't thoughtless. Perhaps they knew her mental health would worsen if she stayed in the house. Perhaps Dr. M insisted she leave - and on her own - b/c he knew the only way for her to recover her mental health was if she held agency over it. Perhaps they all meant well, and it just went terribly terribly wrong. It's just another angle. Like everything else in this book, I think SJ means for it to be ambiguous. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel almost as destabilized reading this book as the characters inside of it!
Good point. Dr. M. does seem to firmly believe that she has to leave alone or it will somehow stay with her if Arthur is with her. And yes, this is why I LOVE SJ so much. She destabilizes the reader as much as the characters in her books! This is also how I felt reading her novel
“Hangsaman” Wow! What a trip!
Thank you Ruth for one of the best group reads I have ever participated in. Both you and the group have been enlightening and entertaining. I agree that the ending is so very sad watching Eleanor slowly slip into insanity. Could she have been helped? We will never know.
You ask about Mike Flanagan's HH ending and I personally did not like it (my husband did). I really don't like when a work of art like this gets whitewashed to make us feel good. It makes me feel like the writer thinks we are children that cannot handle some truths. My husband said it was a hopeful ending and maybe it was but "feel good" was not Jackson's intent. The depths of mental illness, depression and loneliness are dark, frightening places and sometimes they reach the point of no return.
Thank you once again for all our hard work and insights! P.S. If you are looking for a really good Mike Flanagan series try Midnight Mass! Great series.
Hear, hear! Thank you, Ruth.
And another thank you, Ruth!
I generally like Mike Flanagan's, and also think Midnight Mass is one of the best shows I've watched. But I was also not a huge fan of his HHH. I like it, but the entire project never took off for me. I have re-watch the last episode after reading the book.
If Flanagan had only changed the title and the names of the characters, maybe the series could have worked better for me. (He maddeningly, instead, kept (some of, or parts of) the names and *drastically* changed the characters themselves.) And the ending was nothing but the *antithesis* of SJ's novel. If the book were in public domain, the idea of this having been done might not bother me as much. But I find the fact that the Hyman family (i.e. the Jackson estate) gave license to have this done to the property saddens me.
I'm frightened thinking of what lies within the new Elizabeth Hand novel "A Haunting on the Hill". I can't imagine how It be true to the character of Hill House itself without being, in essence, just a retelling of the same story--it would require some incredibly engaging new characters to make the journey interesting. Hill House most definitely *is* a character (the main character?) in Jackson's novel, and to have the House do anything out of character would be a huge betrayal.
What struck me on this reading is how Mrs M is right there, insisting on sense--Arthur drives her, yes, please! And the core group dismisses her to their immediate and lasting regret.
I suppose Hill House is the definition of a hungry ghost, one that lures w whatever the weakest desires, in Eleanor's case, community, presses on the others to alienate and eject her, and voila, the house has another woman to add to its mix, which is a lonely, single, malevolent, entity.
(Rather like Marion Crane in Psycho, who grabs the money and runs, hoping for freedom but meeting w another hungry ghost.)
Nice comparison to Psycho! I didn't think of that.
Thank you! I also kept seeing parallels to Psycho at the beginning, the long drive I feared might lead nowhere.
yes I LOVED that Mrs. M., who begins as such a complete joke, is the only one who understands what a terrible idea it is to let Eleanor drive.
Now that everyone’s finished and there’s no chance of spoilers, I’ve been thinking about Jackson’s red herrings. They’re brilliant: she escalates the tension, over and over, with references to a grim ending. She arms Arthur with a Chekhov’s gun, has him talk about the importance of keeping it in good working order, about staying up with it—even has Dr. Montague suggest that he’s going to end up shooting someone. But nobody gets shot. She performs the Grattan song for us, with the wire around the throat reference, as well as Theo’s scarf and the rusty staircase and she throws in a yardarm reference for good measure. But the door to the tower is nailed shut. There’s the blood all over the walls and Theo’s clothes, which I took to be a reference to suicide by bloodletting. All of these allusions give us good cause to believe that Eleanor is going to take her life. But she doesn’t choose any of those methods, and I think that suggests in the end what Jackson has decided haunts Hill House: that first, untimely death, and with it the death of the family, left to infighting and disturbing parental advice. All of them are haunted by and undone by the premature death of the mother. As Eleanor is in the end, too—though her great loss occurred well before her mother’s actual death.
We tell, over and over, our own particular ghost stories of the events that haunt our lives. I wonder if this is what haunted Jackson, the absence of a loving, devoted mother. I was reading a New Yorker article, trying to find corroboration for my theory. Our intrepid leader’s biography is cited, and that’s when I realize: I’m an idiot. Why not just ask?
So Ruth, one last question before we let you go—with another great, big thank you—do you think what’s haunting Hill House is the absence of a mother? If not, what?
'“Eleanor has to go back the way she came,” Dr. Montague insists' - that was one of the sentences that leapt out at me reading the final sections. The other was: '"Walled up alive." Eleanor began to laugh again at their stone faces. "Walled up alive," she said. "I want to stay here."' Their stone faces conjures both the walls of Hill House and the stones from Eleanor's past. Eleanor has lived her life 'walled up alive'.
When Dr Montague says Eleanor has to go back the way she came, at first that felt hopeful to me - retracing the steps of her literal journey to Hill House and of a personal journey to arrive where she started anew - courtesy of T S Eliot, 'the end of all [her] exploring will be to arrive where [she] started and know the place for the first time.' Maybe. (I was reminded of the children's voices in the rose garden in the garden picnic scene earlier in the novel.) But it is not to be. It is therefore so disappointing when Eleanor isn't able to make that journey back though her last thoughts are revealing: 'she thought clearly,Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me?' For once she thinks 'clearly'. Again there's a repetition of the same words as we've noted before. The final question hands responsibility to others, a pattern we associate with Eleanor, looking for care and support from elsewhere, with an underdeveloped locus of self-determination and self-valuation. Eleanor says of her time at Hill House, "It's the only time anything's ever happened to me. I liked it." and even then something's happened to her, it's not that she's made something happen. When she makes something happen, driving into the tree, it's due to loss of her faculties and possession by something other than her rational self.
My further feelings are a kind of frustration and anger that Dr Montague has decreed that she has to go back the way she came. If he had accepted Mrs Montague's quite sensible suggestion that she travel with Arthur, might that have been a better outcome for Eleanor? Uncertain but possible. She might have survived the journey and lived to tell the tale.
What do people make of the ending? What is this novel about? I'm left wondering.
I so loved that "walled up alive" bit--one more way in which the seemingly idiotic/purely comic Mrs. M. was right. This house does in fact need a nun to be walled up alive, and in the end it is Eleanor: "and whatever walks there, walks alone." The repetition of that line, the one that brings Ruth Franklin to tears, breaks my heart too. But for me the cruelest moment in the narrative is Eleanor's final sudden moment of clarity before her death. The house/SJ might have spared and Eleanor (and me!!) that devastation. (Of course not really; I think it's brilliant. It just destroys me.)
That’s exactly what I thought.
I'm unsure what Eleanor means when she says "walled up alive": is it that staying there she will be walled up alive and that's what she wants, or is it that she feels going back to where she came from would be being "walled up alive"?
oh wow, interesting ambiguity I had missed. Although with the association of Hill House with home and mother, maybe it's the same?
Eleanor’s sudden moment of clarity, that wondering what she is doing, also terrified me. It feels like the last moment of regret someone attempting suicide might have...realizing there is no turning back. I can’t help wonder if Jackson too hadn’t found herself at that brink....
If you are still there - it's November 5 - Karin and I are planning to read Margaret Drabble's The Seven Sisters. We would love to have you on board. If you get this and are interested, I can send you a few inspiring passages - not lengthy ones - that I have excerpted. I think Drabble's is a lovely and very worthy follow on to To The Lighthouse. The theme of spiritual aspiration is as brilliantly accomplished - or, well OK, almost as brilliantly. Would be great to have you be part of this. And anyone else you cared to recommend.
Hi Alfred, thanks for the invite and Drabble’s book sounds wonderful. I haven’t read it (yet). Right now, I’m a bit over scheduled with traveling and writing projects, but do let me know when and where you have the reading group started! Best wishes to you (and all) from the edge of the Acropolis in Athens!
The edge of the Acropolis. The Acropolis. I think I learned at some early stage in my long life that that's in Greece. And the word "edge" - edge of the Acropolis - carries very effective symbolic weight too. One doesn't ordinarily think of an edge as being something of weight. But, then, all the same, edges are vital, and often numinous. Slip off the edge, step over the edge, and then what? The edge of the Acropolis! Whew! What I mean to say is that the whole point of the story of The Seven Sisters is: the protagonist, the woman-hero, one of seven "sisters", makes a Virgilian voyage to Greece, in Greece, to Lake Avernus, to Cumae, to consult the Sybil? Life, life itself, is demanding she submit. She will not submit. The essence of the book is in the reason for that voyage, the necessity of that voyage and the catastrophically wonderful, wonderfully unpredictable outcome. Do let me send excerpts when you are no longer so much on the edge.
Alfred-Patrick
I love the TS Eliot reference, and it also reminds me of all the images of “circles” in the previous section. E. Dancing in circles, the circle song, the spiral staircase, etc. Everything is coming back around to the beginning. All the way to the wife dying inside her “carriage” in front of HH.
yes, I noted those circles too. The mention of the spiral staircase makes me think that a spiral is different than a circle though, i'm not sure of the significance of that observation!
Interesting point. Makes me think of the expression “Spiraling out of control” - Hmmmm. Something to ponder…
Imagining Arthur getting into that car with her is about as possible for me as imagining them all actually doing something to help Eleanor at the end rather than washing their hands of her.
I agree, Arthur is not the most likely candidate for travelling back with her. Every time I think of Dr Montague insisting she go back on her own now, I just keep thinking of today's risk assessments and safeguarding requirements. He set up the event, he's a 'doctor', surely he had to fill in all those risk assessment forms. I wonder what her sister made of him letting Eleanor get behind the wheel and set off on her own? (Well, that's a dead end, I'm sure!) The world is so very different now (or is it?) I would never have thought of any of these things when I first read the book and that would have affected how I read and responded to it. Fascinating! (to me)
Yes, I agree! Different world, in some ways! Thinking of Jackson's descriptions of how Dr. M. went about choosing the people he invited to Hill House. "When he had then crossed off the names of those who seemed to him publicity seekers, of subnormal intelligence, or unsuitable because of a clear tendency to take the center of the stage, he had a list of perhaps a dozen names."
Ha ha! So very scientific.
Dr. M's research project is SO unscientific, devoid of anything suggesting serious methodology, and ultimately unethical.
Unethical, yes. His wife scolds him for his methods and in that at least she seems to be right!
Though might one not very gently like to ask, according to what and whose system of values and perspectives? Montague deliberately pointed out the skewed architectural geometry of Hills House and made it clear that these might evoke serious and even dangerous distortions of material and spiritual perception, might, for example, inspire supernatural interventions and heighten the susceptibility of the occupants. You could be injured, you could be made ill, you might even die. Or so I think he implied. And he set himself up as their guardian, he of all people, with his onanistic bedtime stories, Pamela and Clarissa. Head witch of the coven to be sure. Ha, ha!
Ambiguity, ambivalence, obscurity, delusion reign here. Not so much, as in Macbeth, for example, that nothing is but what is not. Although that, too, can be very well the case. The bedroom, the blood, the clothes. The rabbit, the dog, the garden, the picnic and much else. What is ghostly? What physically exists and what does not? Etc. This place is ontologically so odd ball, so mysteriously skewed, what standard of physical perception can the inhabitants reliably apply, by what and whose ethical principles are they to proceed? And is that any clearer for us, the reader? The one person in the book who is absolutely clear as to what the ethical and perceptual norms are meant to be is Mrs Montague and it is for that very reason, perhaps, that she is so starkly presented as the grossest caricature of spiritual insight, practical good sense and moral virtue. The very personification of arrogant unwisdom itself. (And maybe, because so exaggerated, one of the books incorrigible literary flaws, possibly?).
Is it possible that in such an unprecedented universe as this Doctor Montague’s semi-educated anthropological quackery is the indispensable ambiguity that keeps the strangely fertile lunacy from settling too far into the sterility of conventional sanity? To apply such a standard and such a perspective to the world as we ordinarily live in it, outside the book - outside the dreamworld if you wish - would simply be madness and self-destruction. Within the symbolic poetics of the book, the story, the narrative, the suspension of realty dream, it’s altogether a different kind of universe, a different kind of experience. But in the end all I can say is that, however confident a pose I may strike, I simply do not understand it.
Absolutely! He was supposed to be the responsible one, and seemed to care about Eleanor. But he just dismisses her at the end, and it's his wife who's most worried about her.
Thank you Ruth and everyone for a great read-along!
Does anyone know what happened to the blood on the clothes?
pg 176
"Theodora's room? Luke asked. "I wouldn't like to go in there again.
Mrs. Montague sounded surprised. "I can't think why not," she said. "There's nothing wrong with it."
"I went in and looked at my clothes," Theodora said to the doctor . "They're perfectly fine."
Why don't they see the blood anymore?
Good point. Like the hysteria of the Salem witch trials. Instead of "seeing is believing" you have "believing is seeing." That sounds good.
I’m inclined to agree with both of you. Or that there’s an actual haunting. But I can’t help rooting for Mrs. Dudley. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if it was the Dudleys, all along? And they’d have gotten away with it too, if not for those meddling kids--
I like the Dudley’s idea. Maybe the Dudleys were the caretakers from the 1800’s that never left.
They’ve always been the caretakers at the Overlook Hotel.
Stephen King should pay Shirley Jackson a commission! 😉
And SJ did do research into the Salem witch trials, and even wrote a book!
Yes! I have the book!
Ooh, I'm jealous! I need to order a copy.
in the context of this story I 'd call it something more like group possession. (Or else they have had a LOT of group hysterics)
Mrs. Dudley?
I don't think there's a definitive answer to be had. Rather, I think the point is to keep the reader wondering what is real and what's not real; the point is the unanswerable mystery of Hill House.
Agree
Yes i agree. I dont think there is a definitive answer. They all smelled the awful smell and saw the ripped and bloodied clothes. Just as the stoning “by the neighbors”. Was that really what happened or was it really supernatural or both?
I thought it was because Mrs. Dudley and Arthur are not in tune with the house (they think they are, of course). Theo at the end is also not in tune, she can't see the blood any more because then she'd still be seeing things like E. does. It is a sign that she will abandon E. at the end.
Marvellously Jackson has Theo continue to wear E.'s clothes and this seems an act of usurpation.
Regardless of Theo's intent, deliberate or no.
I think it is Jackson's intent that is more interesting.
Dr. M.: "Theodora will go up and pack for you."
E: "She can't. She won't have anything to wear."
E. knows the score.
Amanda, do you think the house has completely turned them against E. at this point, (they no longer see the blood, T. is wearing E’s red sweater - color of blood, etc) or do you think they are just basically heartless? Or both?
I resisted the idea of haunted house in the beginning. I was like, no it is going to be all psychological. But Jackson is very clear about the house being evil. Somewhere along the line I realized I had to give up my prejudices and believe what she said.
One day while in the thick of our reading I took a walk around my neighborhood looking carefully at the houses I passed. It is a dense neighborhood, mixed, but a lot of older homes. And it was just extraordinary to me how many looked not right. Even if handsome in some ways, some houses just look creepy from the outside, and all the stuff Jackson wrote about angles and lines and things being not quite in alignment made total sense to me in a new way.
As for ghosts and things, I think .. I think we often forget how closely we interact with our physical environments and how sensitive the effects on our mental health they can be ..
What do you think, Lisa?
I hope that you will accept an answer of both. I’ve said, and I think others here have also, that the house and the people “feed” off of one another; the house seemingly finding the worst or most vulnerable qualities in the people who inhabit it; perhaps stemming from the sisters of fear and guilt, and amplifying them? This just, in turn, creates a stronger monster/more evil house. And the same could be said of toxic relationships, no? A toxic marriage creating a sense of darkness and negativity in a household, which then just compounds in on itself. I probably just reiterated a lot of what you just expressed.
It also makes me think again of the perception of reality vs fantasy question. In the end, it doesn’t really matter, because whatever it is, “it” is causing real damage, and in this case, the death of Eleanor, and those before her.
I’m fascinated by your observations of the houses while on your walk in your neighborhood. I will have to pay more attention to that on my next walk. I will say that regarding my own house,(built in ‘98), we noticed after we bought it in ‘06 and moved in, that the walls in the powder room downstairs were not 90° angles when we were putting in a shelf. It kind of freaked me out, especially because it was one of my favorite things about the house, with a marble pedestal sink, and I had painted it powder blue (there’s that blue again!)
Now, in just the past couple of years, the house is showing cracks on some of the walls and windows inside, from the extreme temperature changes. (I’ve lived in Texas almost 60 years and have never experienced anything like the temperatures we have had in the past few years. Our infrastructure was not designed for it) In going from single digits to 118° heat index temps, all within 6 months, it’s as if the house itself is trying desperately to adjust to conditions for which it was not designed. All that contraction and expansion to adjust to the extremes. (I think I just thought of the metaphor for my next poem- thanks!)
Anyway, it’s been a real pleasure reading your thoughts here. Thanks for indulging mine. 😊
I agree completely - so much about relationships in this book. E. is seeking positive ones (it seems to me) and instead she gets .. not so much positive.
So interesting about your house. Temperature extremes are not just hard on people, plants, etc., but just about everything apparently.
Same here - a total pleasure conversing with you, and others here. A privilege.
See you Monday! : )
Because the blood was part of Eleanor's vision
This has been my first time rereading Hill House, and the whole time the last chapter has been ringing in my ears--especially Eleanor's last moment of lucidity, where she can only ask "why am i doing this? why dont they stop me?" It's a brilliantly crafted tragedy, and it sticks in my heart. I expect to reread it many more times, and I dont expect it to ever stop hurting.
All of my friends have had to listen to my rants about the netflix adaptation, and most of them havent read the book or seen the show, so i'm happy to talk about it here where there's a little more context lol
First, to answer your question about the end: I hate the new ending. I dont mind horror that focuses on hope or love or has a happy ending, but this is not that story, so to twist it up into that feels like a betrayal. (And that's without getting into the Audacity to edit Shirley Jackson's final paragraph, which is one of my favorite final paragraphs of all time even as it breaks my heart.)
The thing is, I would love the netflix show if it didnt have the hill house name & approximately three quotes from the book attached to it. It's a well done horror show, with genuine scares and a reveal that I thought was perfect. But as an adaptation, I feel like it took every theme that the book deals with and flips it entirely. Eleanor in the book is traumatized by her biological family treating her poorly, and the effects of that (along with the haunting) are the horror of the novel; in the show, the horror is that a biological family is broken up by ghosts and a malevolent house. Eleanor as a character is shattered across the other characters, to the point where Mrs. Dudley gives the cup of stars speech to Eleanor as a child, rather than Eleanor thinking it herself as an adult. And, honestly, as a lesbian, changing Theo and Eleanor to sisters and having Theo be out to her family and in a relationship with a woman who isnt central to the plot, is so much less meaningful than the subtext in the book. Like, Eleanor's simultaneous admiration of and fear of Theodora, and the moments where they dont quite talk about it, and even the moments when Eleanor is talking to Luke and trying to figure out what she's /supposed/ to be feeling, are all so resonant. Theodora in the netflix show might've been good representation, I dont know, but she wasn't resonant.
Anyway, that's probably enough rambling haha. The funny thing is i actually enjoyed the show! It's just once I was finished watching and had time to think about it, I got so frustrated with it as an adaptation.
Also just registered for the zoom event--hope to see y'all there!
Mary Emma, thanks for that critique of the Flanagan series (I will refuse to call it an adaptation). Pretty much exactly my own take on it. (Except for the "enjoying" aspect--I think I was too frustrated and angered to really enjoy it, and also thought there were too many inconsistencies or very poorly connected elements.) I did think that the funeral home episode was very good, though--suspenseful, creepy, heartbreaking, and masterfully filmed and edited. But it all had nothing to do with what the book is about.
I noped out of the Flanagan series in the first episode bc I was so mad that it seemed to bear no relation to the book. But I enjoyed another of his series' enough that I will try this one again and just pretend it is completely unrelated to this beautiful heartbreaking book.
Thank you, Ruth, and everyone here, for welcoming me to the group as a latecomer. It has been such a privilege reading details about the background of this remarkable novel, and I can’t tell you how much I have looked forward to reading everyone’s observations, comments, questions, - What an incredible group of thinkers you all are! It’s been a blast. Thank you so much. 😊
Such a tragic ending, but sadly, not surprising, considering the way in which HH and E. have become so enmeshed by this point.
I agree, Ruth, that knowing the dynamic of SJ’s marriage makes this all the more heartbreaking. I can’t help but think of Shirley’s early letters to Stan when they first meet in college: Shirley is a gushing, innocent young woman full of hope and trust; and years later, after many betrayals, she writes him a letter of bitterness and heartbreak, telling him that the worst lie he ever told her was that she would never be lonely. 😢
I also think of how, even with all her success, she was still constantly criticized by her mother.
The feeling of rejection from 2 of the most crucial people in her life, along with the “villagers” of Bennington must have been excruciating.
I did watch the Flanagan series, but have no recollection of how it ended. I didn’t like it much.
My observations- Apologies if they are too obvious or repetitive of others’
-The sunlight in the morning- a foreboding sign of things to come. Thanks for clueing us into that, Ruth.
- The fact that E. sleeps in the baby’s room at her sister’s - Both echo the NURSERY and, again, the SISTERS.
- E. dies by crashing her car into the tree- Just as Hugh Crain’s first wife’s carriage overturned in front of the house, killing her, and, in chapter 3, Dr. M. tells them that a man tried to leave at night 18 years earlier, and died by his horse running into that tree.
- E thinks “Hill House belongs to me!” Has the spirit of the first wife overtaken her? Especially considering their deaths, and how she danced with Hugh?
- When E. says “Walled up alive,” it echoes what Mrs. M’s planchette wrote about the nuns. Would E. rather be walled up alive
in HH rather than leave? And E. knew she would, once again, feel walled up alive if she returned to her sisters house. Did SJ feel walled up alive? (She did become agoraphobic at one point in her later life)
- The route Dr. M. tells her to take goes back to the use of the numbers 5 and 3’s- Rt. 5, and 39 (3x3) and then the table is set for 5 instead of 6. What was this about, I wonder?. (I’m going to look up what those numbers mean in Tarot later)
- I was struck by Mrs. M wanting Arthur to drive her home. Yes! For some reason, Dr. M. felt like HH would follow her if she didn’t make some kind of clean break....Had HH put a spell on everyone except Mrs. M to make them not realize what a bad idea this was?
- When Theo is so kind in her goodbye to E. and talks about E. coming back to HH so they can have their picnic, it broke my heart, because it’s clear she is saying this in hopes it will get E. to go home.
- “Why am am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?” SJ tells us E. thinks “clearly.” It seems that HH’s final and cruelest curse on E. was to remove the spell from her in the final moment of her life so that she would be full of confusion and as to what had happened to her while at HH, and to feel the horror of what was now about to happen, and the anguish of no one helping her when she needed it most. At least, that’s my interpretation. I know there can be many different views of this.
-This is what makes me cry for Shirley. I’m sure she asked herself these questions many times. And it makes me sad....
Today and tomorrow, I will reread “The Tooth” and “The Visitor” and I think there were some other stories Ruth mentioned. It’s been a while, and I need me some more Shirley!
Theo's goodbye breaks my heart too--while the doctor and luke try for a clean break, Theo cant. And I loved (/hated/was saddened by) the fact that she was silent until Eleanor said her name, and then she came running. I wonder if she was regretting her cruel moments, worried that Eleanor had stopped loving her because of them?
Theo seemed very sincere in her caring good-bye, but geez- I never know with her! I want to believe she really did care for Eleanor, but then part of me wonders if she was placating her (if that’s the right word) because she knew it would get her to leave. Am I being too cynical?
She, if anyone knows full well eneanor is not going “ back” to anything. She isnt being saved by leaving; there will be no saving of eleanor anywhere
I'm admittedly biased because i want their love/hate relationship to have real love or care in it, but i cant read her "I thought you werent going to say goodbye to me" as anything but genuine. The rest, maybe, I could have read either way, but that line (repeated at the start and end of her goodbye) makes it all feel real for me
I recommend Ruth Franklin's book, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, too. It was on my To Read list before our APS discussion, and Jackson's life is full of contradictions, mystery, and a critical, not-very-loving mother. I'll always remember the passage about the green mashed potatoes!
I immediately ran out and bought Ruth’s book after reading HH for the first time about 7ish years-ish ago. After reading it, I became obsessed with Shirley, read all of her novels, most of her short stories, (always referring back to Ruth’s book when reading them) and now I even have a first edition copy of “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” and paperbacks of “The Lottery” collection and “Hangsaman”from the 1950s AND (yes, Shirley haunts me) a vintage TYPEWRITER that is the same make and model that Shirley used at some point in the mid 1950s!! And it works! I’ll be happy to show y’all during our zoom meeting if you’d like 😂
Needless to say, my copy of Ruth’s book is so tattered and torn from use, I need to buy another one!
SJ has long been one of my favorite authors (perhaps *the* favorite) and, knowing that Ruth's book was coming out, I rushed to the publisher's booth when exhibits opened at a library conference. I was overjoyed when I saw they had galleys, and immediately grabbed a copy and started reading it that night. Of course I also pre-ordered a copy so I could have the "real thing" on day of publication!
Wow! I’m jealous! What a treasure.
I read it and enjoyed it when it first came out. Now i cant find it! And i am cery careful and orderly abt my books! Mysteries abound!
That Shirley! So sneaky. The one she is hiding from me now is “Raising Demons.” I looked for it for over half an hour yesterday and still can’t find it. I think SJ is mad because I’ve had it on my shelf for about 6 years and haven’t read it yet😂
Too funny
Yes, quite a just punishment! 😄
Oh, Lisa, that interpretation of Eleanor's final living moment is, literally, bringing tears to my eyes. (I am on the verge on choking up.) The House cannot even let Eleanor die "peacefully" hanging on to the belief she has finally arrived. Hill House is definitely evil and not sane.
And your comment makes me realize that Hill House lifted the curse in order that, ironically, and cruelly, Eleanor would die, sane. 😢
I wonder if the stories of the tree did not put the idea to kill herself in that fashion into E.'s receptive mind. I contrast it with her arrival at Hill House when she feels a murderous instinct to run over Mr. Dudley with her car. A woman flees a horrible, lifeless situation to come to Hill House, and a mere week later ends up dying there in the car she once wanted to use as a weapon - it's like a small parable of the loss and depletion and I would argue robbing of her agency until she makes a final grab at it. The car becomes her escape route after all.
That very well could be the case. I hadn’t thought of that. And I had forgotten about her wanting to run over Mr. D! Yes- Even though she didn’t want to leave, the act of driving the car brings everything back full circle to her taking some type of control of her life/ death.
If I’m not mistaken, SJ loved to drive, and there are so very many examples of her female protagonists using cars or buses to escape, or sometimes enter into, unpleasant/toxic relationships/situations.
The ending of Hill House hits you so hard. For me, the first time I read it, the scene from the staircase through to the end was one long trudge through dread; I knew there was no chance Eleanor was going to make it out alive. The characters seem to be in denial, or maybe the fundamentally misunderstand something, but Eleanor was entirely hopeless by that point. I really can't imagine why they thought it was a good idea to put a clearly disturbed woman in a car to drive to a place she doesn't want to go and where she's not welcome; even Mrs. Montague seemed to have some clue of the bleakness of Eleanor's family life. What really hits me the hardest is Eleanor's question: "Why don't they stop me?" Why doesn't anyone care enough to do anything?
Since Ruth and a few comments have mentioned Mike Flanagan, I wanted to mention that I've really enjoyed all of his Netflix shows EXCEPT for The Haunting of Hill House. It seems like such a fundamental misunderstanding of the point. Hill House is a tragedy; it must end with catharsis, or the whole thing is empty. It's so frustrating to see a show from an otherwise talented filmmaker who's completely unwilling to provide the emotional closure that the story calls for.
To me, the ending of The Haunting of Hill House is somehow both painful and uplifting because it allows pain to be seen. Everyone has experienced the pain of loneliness, isolation, and disconnection, but it's not something that's talked about. You keep your pain to yourself because we can't spend our time trauma dumping on each other. But a tragedy gives a communal place for that pain; a tragedy tells you that you're not the only one in pain. Tragedy allows you to face that pain without hiding from it, which is what people need to heal.
Thank you, Ruth, for this wonderful experience. It was such a treat to be led through a reading of the book by someone who has such deep knowledge of Shirley Jackson's life and works. Looking forward to the Zoom session on Monday night!
I am responding to yesterday's and today's posts.
I think the repetition of images is vital to the meaning of the book, and also a very smart and useful way to build a book. They give the story a lapidary quality, like light cutting through layers of water. And they give it structure and shape.
In a way the book seems like a long poem to me.
I don't find any of them overused, and "journeys end in lovers' meeting" which began as an odd-sounding snippet to me, became alive and potent.
To the question Ruth asks, paraphrase, does the house have supernatural powers or is E. an unstable lonely woman whose mind is generating the phenomena - I see it as a both/and not an either/or. E. the individual responds to the house, also an individual, and that meeting is what makes what happens, happen. That the house is still standing at the end is because it is a house and not a person.
Luke from early on in the book: "It's harder to burn down a house than you think."
E., Ch. 9 part 1: "I learned to sleep very lightly, she told herself comfortingly, when I was listening for my mother." Again the deliberately chosen adverb, in this case comfortingly, that modifies the thought to convey the precise emotion inside the thought.
E. not even sleeping any more enters the spirit of the house. She is a child and the idea of her becoming Theo's or Luke's lover is no longer possible to imagine. They all all treat her like an unloved child at the end, expressing their ostensible concern for her through banishment so they do not have to care for her themselves. Even Theo, whose conscience pricks her, but not sharply enough.
It is impossible not to think of E.'s guilt about her mother and her fear that she did not wake up when she was called. She is a lost child inside a house of pain. And no one can release her from it. They all turn deaf ears on her pleas. She lives in a world in misunderstanding.
"Why don't they stop me?"
Oh my gosh.
Well this is not the lightest of books hardly need to say - but reading it with Ruth Franklin (!!) and all of you has made it a light-filled joy for me these past weeks. Thank you. I am looking forward to the zoom meet!
“She is a child lost in a house of pain... and they all turn deaf ears on her pleas,” is such an apt description of the tragedy of Eleanor’s life. I’m tearing up after reading your comment here.😢
Me too!
The ending really is tragic - in the true sense. The suffering seems to transcend individual choices. Eleanor's plea that "It’s the only time anything happened to me, and I liked it.”
179 and then decides to join the house by killing herself, might seem like a moment of twisted transcendence, but her last thought was wondering why no one tried to stop her. Dr. M's entire endeavor is a laughing stock. Only Hill House itself remains.
{Just a little fun aside: I have enjoyed all the comparisons to “Psycho.” In my mind, I’ve also been seeing scenes and themes from “The Shining.” (And we know how much S. King loves SJ) The large, secluded, empty, old haunted “house” with the straight hallway with doors on either side. Just a small number of inhabitants that are “family,” and one of them being seemingly haunted by, and then as time goes on, completely possessed by, the house/hotel and its ghosts, all from the past, btw.. In The Shining, the son, is similar to Theo, in that he has a sense of clairvoyance. The message in blood on the wall. At the end, the one “chosen” by the house dies, and in the film version, there’s the creepy scene at the end where we see the old photo of Jack, (after he has frozen to death) as if he was either a part of the hotel in the past, or has been “absorbed” by the hotel as one of its spirits. Granted, there is no bloody murderous rampage in HH- “Heeeeeeere’s Eleanor!” (Sorry. I had to do it) but some of the other images and plot lines stood out to me…… }
Edgar alan Poe also had that awful image of someone being walled in alive. Such a terrifying image and one im afraid SJ was all too familiar with
“The Cask of Amontillado.” Yes, I thought of that as well. I love that story so much, a few years ago my husband bought me a bottle of Amontillado Sherry to drink on Halloween, 🎃 as I read the story. That empty bottle now sits on my bookshelf next to my Poe collection. 📕 🍷
That is so funny. I have a collection of his stories on tape to listen to in the car late at night
Oooo- There is no way I could focus on listening to those stories while driving at night. Well, I can barely drive at night anyway😂
This is my first reading of the novel so I didn’t know the ending. However, our close reading helped me see the journey to Eleanor’s loss of self and so her death was the inevitable final, tragic step. I know I have always distrusted the doctor from ‘Pamela’ onwards and so the fact he makes another ill-judged, irresponsible and actually heartless decision does not surprise me. That of the two it is Mrs M who demonstrated a greater duty of care is telling. She also judged Carrie well - a ‘vulgar’ individual more worried about her car and holiday than her sister. It also interests me that Luke goes off to Paris, his aunt hoping he stays for a while. It reminds me of Hugh Crain leaving his daughters and going to live in Europe where he eventually died. You might guess I’m also not a fan of Luke!
As I was reading the novel I wondered if Eleanor could have defeated her demons but however much I would have liked that for her, SJ’s choice of ending is the truer one. When the emptiness of Eleanor’s life is laid bare to the group it is unbearably sad - how does one overcome such lack? I suppose in a way Eleanor does in her final moments have some sort of breakthrough ‘Why am I doing this?’ but of course it comes too late.
Reading with APS is also a first for me and I have thoroughly enjoyed your esteemed company and fascinating insights. Reading your comments has enriched the reading experience for me and enhanced my admiration for Shirley Jackson’s craft. Thanks to you all.
Such a fun and enriching experience with you all! Makes the rereading so much deeper an experience than simply reading on one’s own. Thank you Ruth and the group!
Thank you so much for sharing all your insights and knowledge. Did you see that Elizabeth Hand has a novel out this month called A Haunting on the Hill? Set in the same house. I believe it's reviewed on the cover of this Sunday's NYTimes book review.