The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Day 12

Chapter 5, Part 2-4

This section starts with the Hill House crew performing a parody of a family vacation, although one, notably, in which there’s no maternal figure. (By the end of the section, Eleanor and Theo will be “practically twins,” sharing a room and clothes.) Eleanor, Luke, and Theodora wander the grounds and pick strawberries, while the doctor watches over them and makes them do their homework. “Having a perfectly splendid time here in jolly old Hill House,” Eleanor jokes. But it’s the truth. She feels as if she belongs here, among these people, because it’s the closest she’s ever come to belonging anywhere.

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The house doesn’t wait for long. This time it’s Theodora who cracks. Red paint, Eleanor calls it, like the red nail polish that Theo put on her toes earlier, but it’s clear that what’s on Theo’s clothes is blood. Some critics who take the psychological approach to the novel—nothing that happens in the house is supernatural; everything has another possible explanation—identify it as menstrual blood that Eleanor has smeared on Theo’s clothes. Not surprisingly, these are male critics who don’t realize that there’s no way a woman’s period could produce enough blood to soak a wardrobe full of clothing.

But the disgust with which Eleanor reacts does suggest something unclean, as menstrual blood has often been thought to be, particularly in a religious context. The dynamic between the two of them, building on the distrust created in the previous scene, has drastically shifted. Note that it’s a red sweater that Theo borrows—or maybe appropriates—from Eleanor.

I was recently listening to a song by Johnny Cash called “Belshazzar,” which retells a biblical story from the book of Daniel in which writing—presumably in the hand of God—appears on the wall in blood. Could that story be one of Jackson’s inspirations here? Her husband, Stanley Edgar Hyman, knew the Old Testament well.

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The novel needs Eleanor and Theo to be in the same room for the chapter’s final scene to be possible. As with the blood, there are many interpretations. The psychological one argues that Eleanor is holding her own hand. But the novel shows us that that isn’t what’s happening, because at one point Eleanor holds on with both her hands. I’m also struck by the phrase “God God—whose hand was I holding?”—not “Good God,” as our brains want us to read it. If this, as Jackson wrote in her notes on one of the drafts, is the “key line” of the novel, what does it mean? I have my own theory about what’s going on here, but I’ll save it. I can’t wait to read your comments on this one.

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