Thank you for the clarifying context regarding Jackson's perspective on marriage. Knowing that "marriage, to her, was one way in which women lost their identities" certainly elevates the resonance of Eleanor's musings regarding her time spent with Luke: “All I want is to be cherished, she thought, and here I am talking gibberish with a selfish man” (123). I must admit, this line made me chuckle.
Oct 22, 2023·edited Oct 22, 2023Liked by Ruth Franklin
I thought the last chapter was creepy, but this one felt a bit like experiencing the world through the distortions of a "fun-house mirror." I don't know which was more frightening, the fleeting encounter of "perfect normalcy" envisioned through observation (imagined vision?) of a "happy" family, and children's joyously innocent voices of glee, or the manic movement of hands, running, and "screaming still."
An eerie juxtaposition of movement, fear, and touch – the hand reappears. “[W]alking side by side in the most extreme intimacy of expectation” Theodora’s hand returns – as a sanctuary (?), guide (?), torment (?), haunting (?) for Eleanor: “Theodora’s hand tightened, warning her to be quiet” / “nausea of fear” … “her arm shivered under Theodora’s holding hand” / “Now I am really afraid” / “Theodora’s hand was pale and luminous”/ “they walked slowly … moving their feet precisely because it was the only physical act … left to keep them from sinking into the awful blackness and whiteness and luminous glow of evil” / “Now I am really afraid”/ “remotely she could still feel Theodora’s hand on her arm”/ “bitterly cold, with no human warmth near”/ “Now I am really afraid”/ “shivering with mindless cold"/ “Theodora’s hand tightened”/ “something moved … beckoning … watching”/ “the soundless night”/ “[R]un!” Theodora “screaming still”/ “They ran … screaming still … crying and gasping and somehow holding hands” / [Eleanor’s] “hands, scratched and bleeding and shaking without her knowledge” / “holding Theodora” Eleanor felt “time, as she had always known time, stop.”
Whoa! What does it mean that time – as one has always known time – stops [for Eleanor] when she no longer recoils from physical contact, but instead, allows Theodora to “put her head against her,” as well as, choosing to “hold her”? Is the “haunting hand” not evil, but a transcendent bridge to the potential for authentic connection?
Thank your for the great thoughts. I followed the link you gave us to the ghost story Jackson loved. Fascinating. I hope to read further tonight. I was struck by the silence the women kept for a week after the experience. I loved the detail that they reported crossing a bridge at Versailles that was no longer there, but had been at the time Marie Antoinette lived there. I see how she drew on this story for her own picnic.
Though Theo doesn’t contradict Eleanor’s account of the vision, perhaps she saw something different?
Her “panic” reminded me of Pan, the Greek god whose voice could instill fear in humans, causing them to flee without understanding why. E.M. Forster uses this idea of Pan/panic in a woodlands story (whose name is escaping me) that also has a homosexual subtext.
I am reminded now of how Eleanor was introduced to us initially, with the sentence, "The only person she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister." Then Jackson goes on to tell us she dislikes her brother-in-law and niece and has no friends and has never been happy in her adult life. I don't necessarily think she has any reason to like Luke or Theodora, but she is scathing in her thoughts. On one hand she is astute about people in their shallowness and selfishness; on the other, she seems ill equipped to like anyone herself. "...don't let me, she hoped concretely, don't let me know too surely what he thinks of me." That's a sobering line, if ever there was one.
I found Eleanor's introduction funny in its bluntness. Her enmity seemed a form of defiance. But I found this chapter rather humorless, except when they are viewing Crain's illustration of lust (which Jackson leaves to our imagination).
"Was ever woman in this humor wooed?" (Luke)
"'Good heavens,' said the doctor, 'Good Heavens.'"
"'He must have drawn it himself,' Luke said."
I think the women abstain.
I don't know what to make of the picnic and Theodora's vision (also left to our imaginations). She's lucky she does not turn into a pillar of salt. I look forward to reading about Moberly and Jourdain.
I do think that there's something more than friendship between Eleanor and Theodora - or at least, that there's a reason Theo's so irritated with her and Luke. She said earlier that she's afraid of knowing what she wants, and we know she got into a fight with her "roommate" for what seems like little to no reason. There are plenty of people who are afraid of their own desires, but it must be especially difficult for a queer woman in the 1950s.
I've never been sure what to make of this scene where Theo sees something that Eleanor doesn't. Of course, it's all the scarier for not knowing, but what could it be? Why is Theo the only one to see it? She felt very strongly about the book that Luke found. Is there something especially horrific to her about the scenario?
What fascinated me in this chapter was first of all the detailed reporting on Hugh Crain's book for his daughter which also prompted me to realise what is in fact obvious, that Hill House is Hell House - so of course there can be no good God only God, God as you powerfully noted before.
Eleanor says 'I think I will skip hell' and the doctor says (acerbicly?) 'Wise of you'. But the house is hell and they can't skip or escape it.
Eleanor and Theo's walk through the dark away from Hill House feels like a distorted version of Adam and Eve leaving the garden of Eden:
'The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.'
Then they end up with the picnic which might have been entering into the garden of Eden but it's a garden of hell where the bright cinematic colours of the child's scarlet jumper and the other strong colours are abrasive and terrifying and momentarily they are trapped in the garden 'screaming still and begging to be let out, until a rusted iron gate gave way'. No happy families here. Everything is topsy-turvy, upside down, no wonder time has stopped.
What intrigued me most about Hugh Crain's book was that it was made for only one of his daughters.
The final line, about time stopping and everything tilting once again for Eleanor... Something interesting is going on there, in terms of how she perceives the world.
I found this chapter harrowing! And it made me think: might one of the origins of “horror” Jackson seeks to explore be the power of (female) intuition? Theo and Eleanor’s “blind” walk felt like a stumbling through some shared psychic terrain--light, dark, shadows, and then an epiphanic mirage. I too am curious about the “looking back”--couldn’t help but think of Lot’s wife.
When looking at the scrapbook, Theo shows interest in the depiction of the deadly sin gluttony. As with the other 6 sins we don’t know what Hugh Crain drew but it makes her say “I’m not sure I’ll ever be hungry again.” I recall her in Chapter 4 banging on the bathroom door to hurry up Eleanor for breakfast “I’ll starve to death.” Then later imagining the horror of opening doors but “not able to find any way to get out -
I wondered if the happy family could be one of the tenants that had rented the house then quickly left. I appreciate how Jackson leaves the horrors, of Crain's book and of what Theo sees when she turns back, to our imagination. I guessed at something horrible form the puppy or child, since threatening those is a standard horror trope.
I like the comments here, about how Luke and Eleanor are having separate convos, in and out of their heads. I do not think Luke is to be trusted. That one line about receiving gifts from his grandmother's friends who flirted w him, and stealing money from her sketched his character for me. I believed Eleanor in her analysis that he is playing a part. I have wondered if he is flirting w E to make Theo jealous. Theo seems much more his speed.
As for Theo seeing the horror and E not, it reinforced the dynamic of Eleanor being sheltered (not having talked alone w a man, among other things) and Theo being worldly, and even of Theo trying to protect Eleanor that we've seen before.
I'm not sure who said that there are six people in a lovers' bed, the two lovers and their parents hovering over. There are a lot of people in this house, but none of them in love.
“Why do people what to talk to each other. I mean what things are people are always trying to find out about other people?”... “what can I ever know about you, beyond what I see? She was the least of the words she might have chosen, but it was the safest." This a major theme of the novel - that what there is to really know is beyond what we can see, learn empirically or through conversation.
At the end of Ch. 6, the last line is so striking: “And, holding Theodora, Eleanor looked up at Luke and the doctor, and felt the room rock madly, and time, as she had always known time, stop.” Such a beautiful, sad, and haunting scene after “seeing” the picnic. The last line, Eleanor feeling “time stop,” is so exquisitely placed.
Thanks for the comments today, Ruth! The discussion of Jackson’s marriage really adds to the reading for me.
Ruth, thanks so much for the info on the ghost story that Shirley loved. I just can’t get enough of Shirley!
As for the scene with E and L, so much more about MOTHERS!
I’m not exactly sure why E is so defensive except that she is, as many have said, protecting herself. Or perhaps, because the first thing out of his mouth, is about never having had a mother and she thinks he is mocking her. I think she is angry because he is “Always hoping that someone will tell me to behave, someone will make herself responsible for me and make me a grown-up.”
He may be totally sincere in telling her these things, but E. is just the opposite. She has been told to behave and been forced to be a responsible grown up her entire life. And then to top it off, he tells her she was “lucky” she had a mother- I’m sure this comment fills her with pain, anguish, guilt, regret, and so many unprocessed emotions.
The disturbing book that Crain created for his daughter also made me think of HH as being a type of metaphor of Dante’s Inferno with the 9 rings of Hell (concentric circles, like the rooms in the house) Only now, we have all the deadly sins, grotesquely illustrated and described in detail. And his own blood.
And, once again, R. And T. experience a haunted “experience” while alone together. (I also underlined “Fear and guilt are sisters” So much about sisters in this book- Do E. And T both feel fear and guilt for different reasons?)
I’m still pondering the vision they had. Again, the colors- - White - for purity, innocence? Red flowers and scarlet jumper, poppy in the grass- for blood? It’s interesting that Theo screams just after the mother leans over to pick up a plate of bright fruit-
Makes me think of Garden of Eden, or Snow White- Was the mother going to offer it to them? Maybe Theo saw everything closing in on them - like they would be trapped if they didn’t hurry and get out- and was worried if E saw it, she would freeze up? Hmmm.... Makes me think back to all the images of the oleanders “protecting” the houses earlier in the book. And once they start to run, it all changes. A broken cup to a stone; flowers to bushes. And time, for Eleanor, stops- She’s now lost her sense of self and time and place at some point.
Thank you for the clarifying context regarding Jackson's perspective on marriage. Knowing that "marriage, to her, was one way in which women lost their identities" certainly elevates the resonance of Eleanor's musings regarding her time spent with Luke: “All I want is to be cherished, she thought, and here I am talking gibberish with a selfish man” (123). I must admit, this line made me chuckle.
I thought the last chapter was creepy, but this one felt a bit like experiencing the world through the distortions of a "fun-house mirror." I don't know which was more frightening, the fleeting encounter of "perfect normalcy" envisioned through observation (imagined vision?) of a "happy" family, and children's joyously innocent voices of glee, or the manic movement of hands, running, and "screaming still."
An eerie juxtaposition of movement, fear, and touch – the hand reappears. “[W]alking side by side in the most extreme intimacy of expectation” Theodora’s hand returns – as a sanctuary (?), guide (?), torment (?), haunting (?) for Eleanor: “Theodora’s hand tightened, warning her to be quiet” / “nausea of fear” … “her arm shivered under Theodora’s holding hand” / “Now I am really afraid” / “Theodora’s hand was pale and luminous”/ “they walked slowly … moving their feet precisely because it was the only physical act … left to keep them from sinking into the awful blackness and whiteness and luminous glow of evil” / “Now I am really afraid”/ “remotely she could still feel Theodora’s hand on her arm”/ “bitterly cold, with no human warmth near”/ “Now I am really afraid”/ “shivering with mindless cold"/ “Theodora’s hand tightened”/ “something moved … beckoning … watching”/ “the soundless night”/ “[R]un!” Theodora “screaming still”/ “They ran … screaming still … crying and gasping and somehow holding hands” / [Eleanor’s] “hands, scratched and bleeding and shaking without her knowledge” / “holding Theodora” Eleanor felt “time, as she had always known time, stop.”
Whoa! What does it mean that time – as one has always known time – stops [for Eleanor] when she no longer recoils from physical contact, but instead, allows Theodora to “put her head against her,” as well as, choosing to “hold her”? Is the “haunting hand” not evil, but a transcendent bridge to the potential for authentic connection?
Thank your for the great thoughts. I followed the link you gave us to the ghost story Jackson loved. Fascinating. I hope to read further tonight. I was struck by the silence the women kept for a week after the experience. I loved the detail that they reported crossing a bridge at Versailles that was no longer there, but had been at the time Marie Antoinette lived there. I see how she drew on this story for her own picnic.
Though Theo doesn’t contradict Eleanor’s account of the vision, perhaps she saw something different?
Her “panic” reminded me of Pan, the Greek god whose voice could instill fear in humans, causing them to flee without understanding why. E.M. Forster uses this idea of Pan/panic in a woodlands story (whose name is escaping me) that also has a homosexual subtext.
I am reminded now of how Eleanor was introduced to us initially, with the sentence, "The only person she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister." Then Jackson goes on to tell us she dislikes her brother-in-law and niece and has no friends and has never been happy in her adult life. I don't necessarily think she has any reason to like Luke or Theodora, but she is scathing in her thoughts. On one hand she is astute about people in their shallowness and selfishness; on the other, she seems ill equipped to like anyone herself. "...don't let me, she hoped concretely, don't let me know too surely what he thinks of me." That's a sobering line, if ever there was one.
I found Eleanor's introduction funny in its bluntness. Her enmity seemed a form of defiance. But I found this chapter rather humorless, except when they are viewing Crain's illustration of lust (which Jackson leaves to our imagination).
"Was ever woman in this humor wooed?" (Luke)
"'Good heavens,' said the doctor, 'Good Heavens.'"
"'He must have drawn it himself,' Luke said."
I think the women abstain.
I don't know what to make of the picnic and Theodora's vision (also left to our imaginations). She's lucky she does not turn into a pillar of salt. I look forward to reading about Moberly and Jourdain.
I do think that there's something more than friendship between Eleanor and Theodora - or at least, that there's a reason Theo's so irritated with her and Luke. She said earlier that she's afraid of knowing what she wants, and we know she got into a fight with her "roommate" for what seems like little to no reason. There are plenty of people who are afraid of their own desires, but it must be especially difficult for a queer woman in the 1950s.
I've never been sure what to make of this scene where Theo sees something that Eleanor doesn't. Of course, it's all the scarier for not knowing, but what could it be? Why is Theo the only one to see it? She felt very strongly about the book that Luke found. Is there something especially horrific to her about the scenario?
What fascinated me in this chapter was first of all the detailed reporting on Hugh Crain's book for his daughter which also prompted me to realise what is in fact obvious, that Hill House is Hell House - so of course there can be no good God only God, God as you powerfully noted before.
Eleanor says 'I think I will skip hell' and the doctor says (acerbicly?) 'Wise of you'. But the house is hell and they can't skip or escape it.
Eleanor and Theo's walk through the dark away from Hill House feels like a distorted version of Adam and Eve leaving the garden of Eden:
'The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitarie way.'
Then they end up with the picnic which might have been entering into the garden of Eden but it's a garden of hell where the bright cinematic colours of the child's scarlet jumper and the other strong colours are abrasive and terrifying and momentarily they are trapped in the garden 'screaming still and begging to be let out, until a rusted iron gate gave way'. No happy families here. Everything is topsy-turvy, upside down, no wonder time has stopped.
What intrigued me most about Hugh Crain's book was that it was made for only one of his daughters.
The final line, about time stopping and everything tilting once again for Eleanor... Something interesting is going on there, in terms of how she perceives the world.
I found this chapter harrowing! And it made me think: might one of the origins of “horror” Jackson seeks to explore be the power of (female) intuition? Theo and Eleanor’s “blind” walk felt like a stumbling through some shared psychic terrain--light, dark, shadows, and then an epiphanic mirage. I too am curious about the “looking back”--couldn’t help but think of Lot’s wife.
When looking at the scrapbook, Theo shows interest in the depiction of the deadly sin gluttony. As with the other 6 sins we don’t know what Hugh Crain drew but it makes her say “I’m not sure I’ll ever be hungry again.” I recall her in Chapter 4 banging on the bathroom door to hurry up Eleanor for breakfast “I’ll starve to death.” Then later imagining the horror of opening doors but “not able to find any way to get out -
“And nothing to eat,” Eleanor said unkindly.”
I wondered if the happy family could be one of the tenants that had rented the house then quickly left. I appreciate how Jackson leaves the horrors, of Crain's book and of what Theo sees when she turns back, to our imagination. I guessed at something horrible form the puppy or child, since threatening those is a standard horror trope.
I like the comments here, about how Luke and Eleanor are having separate convos, in and out of their heads. I do not think Luke is to be trusted. That one line about receiving gifts from his grandmother's friends who flirted w him, and stealing money from her sketched his character for me. I believed Eleanor in her analysis that he is playing a part. I have wondered if he is flirting w E to make Theo jealous. Theo seems much more his speed.
As for Theo seeing the horror and E not, it reinforced the dynamic of Eleanor being sheltered (not having talked alone w a man, among other things) and Theo being worldly, and even of Theo trying to protect Eleanor that we've seen before.
I'm not sure who said that there are six people in a lovers' bed, the two lovers and their parents hovering over. There are a lot of people in this house, but none of them in love.
“Why do people what to talk to each other. I mean what things are people are always trying to find out about other people?”... “what can I ever know about you, beyond what I see? She was the least of the words she might have chosen, but it was the safest." This a major theme of the novel - that what there is to really know is beyond what we can see, learn empirically or through conversation.
Am I the only one getting annoyed by the constant repitition of the phrase "Journeys end in lovers meeting"?
At the end of Ch. 6, the last line is so striking: “And, holding Theodora, Eleanor looked up at Luke and the doctor, and felt the room rock madly, and time, as she had always known time, stop.” Such a beautiful, sad, and haunting scene after “seeing” the picnic. The last line, Eleanor feeling “time stop,” is so exquisitely placed.
Thanks for the comments today, Ruth! The discussion of Jackson’s marriage really adds to the reading for me.
Ruth, thanks so much for the info on the ghost story that Shirley loved. I just can’t get enough of Shirley!
As for the scene with E and L, so much more about MOTHERS!
I’m not exactly sure why E is so defensive except that she is, as many have said, protecting herself. Or perhaps, because the first thing out of his mouth, is about never having had a mother and she thinks he is mocking her. I think she is angry because he is “Always hoping that someone will tell me to behave, someone will make herself responsible for me and make me a grown-up.”
He may be totally sincere in telling her these things, but E. is just the opposite. She has been told to behave and been forced to be a responsible grown up her entire life. And then to top it off, he tells her she was “lucky” she had a mother- I’m sure this comment fills her with pain, anguish, guilt, regret, and so many unprocessed emotions.
The disturbing book that Crain created for his daughter also made me think of HH as being a type of metaphor of Dante’s Inferno with the 9 rings of Hell (concentric circles, like the rooms in the house) Only now, we have all the deadly sins, grotesquely illustrated and described in detail. And his own blood.
And, once again, R. And T. experience a haunted “experience” while alone together. (I also underlined “Fear and guilt are sisters” So much about sisters in this book- Do E. And T both feel fear and guilt for different reasons?)
I’m still pondering the vision they had. Again, the colors- - White - for purity, innocence? Red flowers and scarlet jumper, poppy in the grass- for blood? It’s interesting that Theo screams just after the mother leans over to pick up a plate of bright fruit-
Makes me think of Garden of Eden, or Snow White- Was the mother going to offer it to them? Maybe Theo saw everything closing in on them - like they would be trapped if they didn’t hurry and get out- and was worried if E saw it, she would freeze up? Hmmm.... Makes me think back to all the images of the oleanders “protecting” the houses earlier in the book. And once they start to run, it all changes. A broken cup to a stone; flowers to bushes. And time, for Eleanor, stops- She’s now lost her sense of self and time and place at some point.