'Watching something unseen' feels like a combining of the senses. 'Hill House came around her in a rush'. The observer has a creepy feeling, feels they are being watched by, engulfed by something they can't see, and strains to see what is not there to be seen. This takes us to a level of perception other than the rational, other than the discrete and compartmentalised. I'll now be looking out for this as I continue the reading adventure.
“Watching something unseen” seems to be a theme of both of these chapters. I think also of how we can’t “see” fully what we are immersed in, something bigger than ourselves. Eleanor puts this thought concisely into text when she stands alone in the Blue Room and thinks of Hill House: “ I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside. ”
And Theodora’s strangeness made me want to remember why she was chosen by Dr. Montegue. So, I went back to Chapter 1 for the story of the cards in the laboratory and got sucked in to the Wikipedia page on the life of Alfred de Musset, the author of the volume Theordora's friend “ripped to shreds” to hurt her. I don’t know that I need to read him, but his story is fascinating and I’m wondering if anyone else has read him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_de_Musset. I love how this book reads like a haunted house itself with all of the references and spooky backstories. And that open-air conversation between Eleanor and Theodora which ends with T declaring, “Yes, we’re related” is so quirky and bizarre, it almost makes sense...until it doesn’t. So much humor skillfully mixed with horror.
I *love* both Savages and Raising Demons. I'm thinking now that perhaps they are my favorite of Jackson's works, and not Hill House. I have never found anything funnier, and maybe that's because they are so grounded in the real world and full of very relatable situations. Interestingly, I now have the thought that the narrator of those books seems at times to be a bit lost and befuddled by everything around her, not an awful lot unlike Eleanor in these early passages. The two books of family stories are so very positive, full of the mother's love for her children.
I don't know anything about Alfred de Musset, but I couldn't help wondering if Theo's "roommate" was reading this one: "He is also believed to be the anonymous author of Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1833), a lesbian erotic novel also believed to be modeled on Sand."
Theodora and Eleanor’s rapport is immediately familiar and terribly clever. I felt it eroding the tension from the scene--until the last line of the chapter, when Theodora uses their invented relationship to keep Eleanor at Hill House against her better instincts. Jackson’s playing the long game, making us start to wonder if their alliance--that comfortable familiarity--will prove their undoing.
The repetition of "Journeys end in lovers meeting" is more chilling on your second reading, especially considering that Eleanor remembers it as soon as she approaches Hill House.
Had the line appeared yet? I feel like previously she had the song in her head and only when she arrived at HH and confronts it in Ch2 does the Journeys end w lovers meeting line emerge.
All of the repetition is chilling. What about Mrs. Dudley's repetition, the exact same speech delivered to both Eleanor and Theo, like she is more machine than human.
Yes! Especially how the second time she gives her speech, Eleanor and Theo are basically talking over her, and she just drones on and on, and even smiles at the end like she did the first time. It was really eerie. She also reminds me a bit of Mrs. Danvers from Du Maurier's Rebecca (and Hill House has a Manderley feel to it too).
yes! I'm reading a copy I already annotated and when Mrs. Dudley was repeating her speech without acknowledging Theo & Eleanor's conversation at all, I wrote "is /she/ a ghost??" in the margins. Felt like she's stuck doing the same things over and over--or, when she takes the vase away so the door can shut, stuck doing Hill House's bidding
Does Mrs. Dudley ever actually *engage* with anyone? Does she actually respond to something specific that someone has said or done, or is it all rote? Chilling!
I remembered Ruth’s note from the first day, that this passage is from Twelfth Night. I looked up the context and was surprised to see it only a few lines before this famous bit:
“Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure...”
Feels very apt for everything we’ve seen so far (including the great humor in this section especially!) and the constant reminders of uncertainty and unpredictability with Jackson’s use of an unsettling “perhaps,” “seemingly,” and “maybe” throughout.
Parts of it are referenced throughout the first chapter, but the line "Journeys end in lovers meeting" is repeated most often, and the first time it appears is in chapter 2.
I read Hill House earlier this year with a group of coworkers, all of whom were much younger than me. I am Gen X, they are Millennials or Gen Z. They were unimpressed with Hill House. They didn't find it scary enough, or horrifying enough, or the humor funny enough. *Meh* and *shrug* and *boring* were the gist of their reactions. I was the only one who had read it before, which I think lends to my appreciation of it, and I did my best to highlight what I loved about the book. But I thought the generational divide was interesting. They've grown up with Saw and The Purge. Maybe they're desensitized to the moody slow burn?
I’m Gen Z and this is my first time reading Hill House, and nothing’s very scary to me yet! It’s probably just too early, I don’t know what kind of scares to expect but I think it might be best to go in blind. I am really enjoying it so far, the characters are compelling and reading everyone’s comments makes me appreciate the quality of writing.
I’m a millennial, and I know there are other people my age who love this book. If you want horror that’s intense and shocking, this isn’t it, but what is here hits deeper and its impression lasts longer than more extreme horror - at least for me.
This is interesting to think about. I'm a millennial who's always found the book deeply unsettling. I read Hill House years ago with a group of freinds ranging from millennials to baby boomers. Much to my dismay, it was pretty universally disliked. But the complaints, particularly from the older readers, concerned an antipathy to Eleanor. People found her too childish, too whiney, too self-absorbed. Eleanor wasn't grown up enough to take her fears seriously. And what reader would be frightened for someone they found so grating? Someone even the narrator seemed to want to mock? This was the opposite of my reading. And I wonder if it takes a particular kind of person to connect with the novel? Or if the uniform response was a function of reading in a group?
This is interesting. I find Eleanor’s character compelling. She’s perhaps a cipher for the eventual haunting and for Jackson’s humor. I don’t need to “like” a character to get into the story. Interesting also to think of how she may have been perceived when the book was first published. Women had different expectations at that time....
I think Mary Emma makes a good point below--those who have experience/affection for Gothic horror might find this book easier to enjoy.
Eleanor isn't grown up! She's stunted and annoying! I find, broadly, that those who insist on liking main characters are reading for enjoyment (simple) not pleasure (complex). And that's fine! But, just because a book isn't for you doesn't mean it's not good!
I think it's less generational and more about genre expectations, in my experience. I'm in my early twenties and Hill House is one of my favorite books, and I know a couple other people around my age who loved it as well. I've noticed people who go in expecting Horror With A Capital H tend not to enjoy it, but people who are more familiar with gothic fiction have an easier time with the pacing (and other spoiler-y elements that I dont want to list).
This conversation makes me think of Stephen King. I often find very scary passages in his books, but for me it's not bombastic, gross-out stuff that's really scary but instead the effects on the characters. King is really a master of creating real living characters that are entirely relatable, and we experience the stories through their minds. I think that's the main reason I am very disappointed by most movies based on King's works. They dwell on the external "horror" and not the characters' psyches, and come across as cliche, dumb, or both. Also, King's short stories also I find lacking, because they don't have the space needed to get into the characters.
To connect all that to Hill House, I think the 1963 movie worked because the filmmakers knew the horror in the story was mostly internal, and they designed the film to reflect that as much as possible. The 1999 film did the same thing as most King movies, thinking that the scares were supposed to come from seeing all these "scary things" happening on screen, and not the terror inside the characters' minds. (As for the TV series, the less said, the better...)
There was a horror novel in the late 70s called The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons that I remember sneakily reading and trading w a friend in high school, during our VC Andrews and Jean Auel stage of reading sex and horror books our parents wouldn't approve of. I won't re-read it, but the impression it left, and the "house as evil" remain with me still. And Steven King was a fan of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_Next_Door_(novel)
Eleanor bonding with Theodora emphasizes to me Eleanor's role as the innocent, naive one. Theo's been to boarding school, had a live in lover. This aspect reminded me of another book I adored when I was young, Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan, about a girl who goes to a remote boarding school and spooky things happen. I'm sure that both books were influenced by Hill House and Jackson's writing. I did read Lottery and watch the movie in high school, but didn't read Hill House or other Jackson till I was in my 40s.
It's so strange coming to the progenitor of later books I loved after the fact, and being able to see (and feel) the lineage and the connections back and forth over time, even if the books I was reading when young were popular and commercial, and less crafted than HoHH.
I love this chapter for how masterfully it layers childlike idyll with complex suspense. The relief Eleanor feels as Theodora takes occupancy of the room next door; them appraising one another's outfits; clattering down the stairs, "moving with color and life against the dark woodwork and the clouded light"--the light/dark motifs move with and in them, it seems. Amidst their merriment, and the giddiness of their eerily immediate connection, a shadow (the house? their own psyches?) looms. "'We'd really better hurry back,' [Eleanor] said and, because she did not herself understand her compelling anxiety, added, 'The others might be there by now.'" Is there anything more frightening than anxiety with no nameable origin?
I love the search for origin in these huge feelings in this chapter. I only clocked Theo’s line on courage: “We never know where our courage is coming from.” But I’m now so interested to see how your note plays out: where does our anxiety come from. Could it be the same place as our courage?
Love this. So much of what we’re given so far is about: not knowing, searching, “watching something unseen,” uncanny/improvisational conversations, hunches. I think the nature of fear itself is part of the drama being played out...
What struck me the most about this chapter was the housekeepers script didn't deviate. Almost like a preprogrammed robot which cannot compute alternative threads of conversation, or be spontaneous.
The mention of the house design struck me. I have sight in one eye which means screwy depth perception. So there are certain things that seem different being 2D but I haven’t been to Hill House and seen things as wrong.
I am writing a novel in which the house plays a central character. When I read Jackson's description of the house at the start of this chapter, I thought to myself: Good God, why do I even bother. Has the description of a physical dwelling ever held such weight? I couldn't help but think that Gaston Bachelard, author of The Poetics of Space would be proud.
"'I'm sure I've been here before,' Eleanor said. 'In a book of fairy tales, perhaps.'" There she goes with the fairy tales again. First time reader, but why am I getting the sense that this is a coming of age story? Maybe the terror of womanhood? Of the domestic?
Designed by Jackson's own great-great-grandfather? Wow, that is wild. Isn't it interesting how family talents can express themselves differently over generations?
Those houses Ruth linked to, of the railroad barons in San Francisco - I couldn't stop looking at them. Why did they want to live in museums? They come to seem more like luxurious prisons than luxury hotels. How many servants did it take to keep one running, I wonder?
The excess is grotesque, and fascinating. All for show and to show off wealth?
Compared to Hill House - now running with I think just two caretakers and left to its own devices, in a sense. Come down in life?
Your comment reminds me of the Amazon Prime documentary “Queen of Versailles” about the couple that tried to build the largest home in the US - 90,000 square feet - but it got the best of them and was never finished...then it experienced $10M in damage in a hurricane in 2022.
Eleanor really likes Theo and trusts her so quickly, maybe because Theo has the two qualities Eleanor wants the most: loveliness (“she is lovely... I wish I were lovely” p. 33-4) and bravery (“She’s much braver than I am” p. 36). Theo says, “We never know where our courage is coming from.” This feels like a very important line, that maybe we will figure out where both of their courage must come from, or if Theo is not to be trusted after all.
There are some incredible similes and metaphors that set the tone of the house beautifully. My favorite is: “like an almost inaudible echo of sobbing far away” (p. 28)
I’m definitely making note of how heavy the front door is...!!
Eleanor’s loneliness came back to me again in this section. She feels utterly, helplessly alone when she arrives and is the first one at Hill House, to the point that she actually forgets that others will be arriving soon and her loneliness is only temporary: “Why, she thought, there are other people coming; I am not going to be here all alone.” Along with how relieved and nervously thrilled she is when Theo arrives, and the repetition of “Journeys end in lovers meeting” (I counted 3 in this section! An auspicious number!)--Eleanor’s showing a different side of herself, one who has been lonely for so long that she will let her guard down at the first sign of companionship. It is wonderful *and* makes me very nervous for her!
"It is wonderful *and* makes me very nervous for her" that basically sums up my feelings on the first two chapters lol! Like I'm cheering Eleanor on with her new independence, and her new friend, but then there's Hill House looming over it all
Some 45 years ago, after my college roommate and I watched the 1963 movie version, The Haunting, we took to saying Mrs. Dudley’s words to each other: “In the night. In the dark.” I decided to text her this very minute to tell her I was reading The Haunting of Hill House. In the night. In the dark.
"Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed." So there it is, nothing to wonder about there. It's bad through and through and will stay that way until it's no more. For me the interesting thing in this chapter is seeing the effect Hill House has on Eleanor. It's not just the house, or Eleanor by herself, but the two of them together. We see more of how Eleanor won't let herself trust her instincts or her first impressions of other people, that she is always trying to chide herself out of these, as if she is trapped in a foregone conclusion, but the badness of the house she is sure about. Interesting how, after Theodora arrives, Eleanor is anxious that they not go too far from the house. You'd think she'd be glad to get as far away from it as possible, but she seems almost as afraid to leave it as she is to stay in it.
Is she worried about breaking rules or getting into trouble or some other worry from her old life?
I think we are being invited to wonder, can E. break out of her patterns and if she can, how will she?
purely procedural question: does anyone know what happened to the edit/delete little dots option under the comments? no more? that's a shame if it's the case!
'Watching something unseen' feels like a combining of the senses. 'Hill House came around her in a rush'. The observer has a creepy feeling, feels they are being watched by, engulfed by something they can't see, and strains to see what is not there to be seen. This takes us to a level of perception other than the rational, other than the discrete and compartmentalised. I'll now be looking out for this as I continue the reading adventure.
Very well said. I agree completely.
Hmm, so is Theodora *actually* psychic?
That’s why she was invited, yes? She’s the one who tested so insanely well on an ESP test.
“Watching something unseen” seems to be a theme of both of these chapters. I think also of how we can’t “see” fully what we are immersed in, something bigger than ourselves. Eleanor puts this thought concisely into text when she stands alone in the Blue Room and thinks of Hill House: “ I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside. ”
And Theodora’s strangeness made me want to remember why she was chosen by Dr. Montegue. So, I went back to Chapter 1 for the story of the cards in the laboratory and got sucked in to the Wikipedia page on the life of Alfred de Musset, the author of the volume Theordora's friend “ripped to shreds” to hurt her. I don’t know that I need to read him, but his story is fascinating and I’m wondering if anyone else has read him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_de_Musset. I love how this book reads like a haunted house itself with all of the references and spooky backstories. And that open-air conversation between Eleanor and Theodora which ends with T declaring, “Yes, we’re related” is so quirky and bizarre, it almost makes sense...until it doesn’t. So much humor skillfully mixed with horror.
I’ve also been struck how funny Jackson--especially for the genre. The progenitor of camp horror films?
If you read Ruth's biography of Jackson you'll see how humorous Jackson could be. Highly recommend it! Also Jackson's Life Among the Savages is a hoot
Will definitely read both!
I *love* both Savages and Raising Demons. I'm thinking now that perhaps they are my favorite of Jackson's works, and not Hill House. I have never found anything funnier, and maybe that's because they are so grounded in the real world and full of very relatable situations. Interestingly, I now have the thought that the narrator of those books seems at times to be a bit lost and befuddled by everything around her, not an awful lot unlike Eleanor in these early passages. The two books of family stories are so very positive, full of the mother's love for her children.
I don't know anything about Alfred de Musset, but I couldn't help wondering if Theo's "roommate" was reading this one: "He is also believed to be the anonymous author of Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1833), a lesbian erotic novel also believed to be modeled on Sand."
Theodora and Eleanor’s rapport is immediately familiar and terribly clever. I felt it eroding the tension from the scene--until the last line of the chapter, when Theodora uses their invented relationship to keep Eleanor at Hill House against her better instincts. Jackson’s playing the long game, making us start to wonder if their alliance--that comfortable familiarity--will prove their undoing.
The repetition of "Journeys end in lovers meeting" is more chilling on your second reading, especially considering that Eleanor remembers it as soon as she approaches Hill House.
Had the line appeared yet? I feel like previously she had the song in her head and only when she arrived at HH and confronts it in Ch2 does the Journeys end w lovers meeting line emerge.
Yes, I was referring to when she approaches the house on foot in Ch 2, not when she arrives by car.
All of the repetition is chilling. What about Mrs. Dudley's repetition, the exact same speech delivered to both Eleanor and Theo, like she is more machine than human.
Yes! Especially how the second time she gives her speech, Eleanor and Theo are basically talking over her, and she just drones on and on, and even smiles at the end like she did the first time. It was really eerie. She also reminds me a bit of Mrs. Danvers from Du Maurier's Rebecca (and Hill House has a Manderley feel to it too).
yes! I'm reading a copy I already annotated and when Mrs. Dudley was repeating her speech without acknowledging Theo & Eleanor's conversation at all, I wrote "is /she/ a ghost??" in the margins. Felt like she's stuck doing the same things over and over--or, when she takes the vase away so the door can shut, stuck doing Hill House's bidding
Does Mrs. Dudley ever actually *engage* with anyone? Does she actually respond to something specific that someone has said or done, or is it all rote? Chilling!
Both chilling and hilarious! That second identical speech really deflates the effect of the first one--Jackson playing with us.
The repetition really spooked me! It feels like an incantation or a curse. Or even like an initiation to whatever the house holds for Eleanor.
I remembered Ruth’s note from the first day, that this passage is from Twelfth Night. I looked up the context and was surprised to see it only a few lines before this famous bit:
“Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure...”
Feels very apt for everything we’ve seen so far (including the great humor in this section especially!) and the constant reminders of uncertainty and unpredictability with Jackson’s use of an unsettling “perhaps,” “seemingly,” and “maybe” throughout.
When was the first reference?
I mean "remembering the song at last"... What song?
It's a song from the Twelfth Night:
https://poets.org/poem/twelfth-night-act-ii-scene-iii-o-mistress-mine-where-are-you-roaming
Parts of it are referenced throughout the first chapter, but the line "Journeys end in lovers meeting" is repeated most often, and the first time it appears is in chapter 2.
Thanks I'll have to re-check the first chapter -- short memory :-)
I read Hill House earlier this year with a group of coworkers, all of whom were much younger than me. I am Gen X, they are Millennials or Gen Z. They were unimpressed with Hill House. They didn't find it scary enough, or horrifying enough, or the humor funny enough. *Meh* and *shrug* and *boring* were the gist of their reactions. I was the only one who had read it before, which I think lends to my appreciation of it, and I did my best to highlight what I loved about the book. But I thought the generational divide was interesting. They've grown up with Saw and The Purge. Maybe they're desensitized to the moody slow burn?
Is anyone reading here younger than Gen X?
I’m Gen Z and this is my first time reading Hill House, and nothing’s very scary to me yet! It’s probably just too early, I don’t know what kind of scares to expect but I think it might be best to go in blind. I am really enjoying it so far, the characters are compelling and reading everyone’s comments makes me appreciate the quality of writing.
Yay! Excited to hear what your experience is!
I’m a millennial, and I know there are other people my age who love this book. If you want horror that’s intense and shocking, this isn’t it, but what is here hits deeper and its impression lasts longer than more extreme horror - at least for me.
Yes! I think my friends were not used to the pace and vibe; it's very different.
This is interesting to think about. I'm a millennial who's always found the book deeply unsettling. I read Hill House years ago with a group of freinds ranging from millennials to baby boomers. Much to my dismay, it was pretty universally disliked. But the complaints, particularly from the older readers, concerned an antipathy to Eleanor. People found her too childish, too whiney, too self-absorbed. Eleanor wasn't grown up enough to take her fears seriously. And what reader would be frightened for someone they found so grating? Someone even the narrator seemed to want to mock? This was the opposite of my reading. And I wonder if it takes a particular kind of person to connect with the novel? Or if the uniform response was a function of reading in a group?
This is interesting. I find Eleanor’s character compelling. She’s perhaps a cipher for the eventual haunting and for Jackson’s humor. I don’t need to “like” a character to get into the story. Interesting also to think of how she may have been perceived when the book was first published. Women had different expectations at that time....
Yes, I find Eleanor absolutely compelling.
I do, too. She’s very brave, actually.
I think Mary Emma makes a good point below--those who have experience/affection for Gothic horror might find this book easier to enjoy.
Eleanor isn't grown up! She's stunted and annoying! I find, broadly, that those who insist on liking main characters are reading for enjoyment (simple) not pleasure (complex). And that's fine! But, just because a book isn't for you doesn't mean it's not good!
I think it's less generational and more about genre expectations, in my experience. I'm in my early twenties and Hill House is one of my favorite books, and I know a couple other people around my age who loved it as well. I've noticed people who go in expecting Horror With A Capital H tend not to enjoy it, but people who are more familiar with gothic fiction have an easier time with the pacing (and other spoiler-y elements that I dont want to list).
This conversation makes me think of Stephen King. I often find very scary passages in his books, but for me it's not bombastic, gross-out stuff that's really scary but instead the effects on the characters. King is really a master of creating real living characters that are entirely relatable, and we experience the stories through their minds. I think that's the main reason I am very disappointed by most movies based on King's works. They dwell on the external "horror" and not the characters' psyches, and come across as cliche, dumb, or both. Also, King's short stories also I find lacking, because they don't have the space needed to get into the characters.
To connect all that to Hill House, I think the 1963 movie worked because the filmmakers knew the horror in the story was mostly internal, and they designed the film to reflect that as much as possible. The 1999 film did the same thing as most King movies, thinking that the scares were supposed to come from seeing all these "scary things" happening on screen, and not the terror inside the characters' minds. (As for the TV series, the less said, the better...)
Thanks for comparing the film/tv versions. I think I’ll watch the 1963 movie after I finish the book.
I like your point about being familiar with Gothic fiction--being exposed to how it's different from modern horror, more mood, less explicit.
There was a horror novel in the late 70s called The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons that I remember sneakily reading and trading w a friend in high school, during our VC Andrews and Jean Auel stage of reading sex and horror books our parents wouldn't approve of. I won't re-read it, but the impression it left, and the "house as evil" remain with me still. And Steven King was a fan of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_Next_Door_(novel)
Eleanor bonding with Theodora emphasizes to me Eleanor's role as the innocent, naive one. Theo's been to boarding school, had a live in lover. This aspect reminded me of another book I adored when I was young, Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan, about a girl who goes to a remote boarding school and spooky things happen. I'm sure that both books were influenced by Hill House and Jackson's writing. I did read Lottery and watch the movie in high school, but didn't read Hill House or other Jackson till I was in my 40s.
It's so strange coming to the progenitor of later books I loved after the fact, and being able to see (and feel) the lineage and the connections back and forth over time, even if the books I was reading when young were popular and commercial, and less crafted than HoHH.
I love this chapter for how masterfully it layers childlike idyll with complex suspense. The relief Eleanor feels as Theodora takes occupancy of the room next door; them appraising one another's outfits; clattering down the stairs, "moving with color and life against the dark woodwork and the clouded light"--the light/dark motifs move with and in them, it seems. Amidst their merriment, and the giddiness of their eerily immediate connection, a shadow (the house? their own psyches?) looms. "'We'd really better hurry back,' [Eleanor] said and, because she did not herself understand her compelling anxiety, added, 'The others might be there by now.'" Is there anything more frightening than anxiety with no nameable origin?
I love the search for origin in these huge feelings in this chapter. I only clocked Theo’s line on courage: “We never know where our courage is coming from.” But I’m now so interested to see how your note plays out: where does our anxiety come from. Could it be the same place as our courage?
Love this. So much of what we’re given so far is about: not knowing, searching, “watching something unseen,” uncanny/improvisational conversations, hunches. I think the nature of fear itself is part of the drama being played out...
What struck me the most about this chapter was the housekeepers script didn't deviate. Almost like a preprogrammed robot which cannot compute alternative threads of conversation, or be spontaneous.
The mention of the house design struck me. I have sight in one eye which means screwy depth perception. So there are certain things that seem different being 2D but I haven’t been to Hill House and seen things as wrong.
I am writing a novel in which the house plays a central character. When I read Jackson's description of the house at the start of this chapter, I thought to myself: Good God, why do I even bother. Has the description of a physical dwelling ever held such weight? I couldn't help but think that Gaston Bachelard, author of The Poetics of Space would be proud.
"'I'm sure I've been here before,' Eleanor said. 'In a book of fairy tales, perhaps.'" There she goes with the fairy tales again. First time reader, but why am I getting the sense that this is a coming of age story? Maybe the terror of womanhood? Of the domestic?
Ooooo, yes! I’ve read this a few times and I’d say yes to all three.
Oh good take. Eleanor setting out on her own for the first time does give it a coming of age feel.
Designed by Jackson's own great-great-grandfather? Wow, that is wild. Isn't it interesting how family talents can express themselves differently over generations?
Those houses Ruth linked to, of the railroad barons in San Francisco - I couldn't stop looking at them. Why did they want to live in museums? They come to seem more like luxurious prisons than luxury hotels. How many servants did it take to keep one running, I wonder?
The excess is grotesque, and fascinating. All for show and to show off wealth?
Compared to Hill House - now running with I think just two caretakers and left to its own devices, in a sense. Come down in life?
Your comment reminds me of the Amazon Prime documentary “Queen of Versailles” about the couple that tried to build the largest home in the US - 90,000 square feet - but it got the best of them and was never finished...then it experienced $10M in damage in a hurricane in 2022.
That hurricane knew what it was doing : )
Ha! 😆😅
A few things stuck out to me in this chapter.
Eleanor really likes Theo and trusts her so quickly, maybe because Theo has the two qualities Eleanor wants the most: loveliness (“she is lovely... I wish I were lovely” p. 33-4) and bravery (“She’s much braver than I am” p. 36). Theo says, “We never know where our courage is coming from.” This feels like a very important line, that maybe we will figure out where both of their courage must come from, or if Theo is not to be trusted after all.
There are some incredible similes and metaphors that set the tone of the house beautifully. My favorite is: “like an almost inaudible echo of sobbing far away” (p. 28)
I’m definitely making note of how heavy the front door is...!!
Eleanor’s loneliness came back to me again in this section. She feels utterly, helplessly alone when she arrives and is the first one at Hill House, to the point that she actually forgets that others will be arriving soon and her loneliness is only temporary: “Why, she thought, there are other people coming; I am not going to be here all alone.” Along with how relieved and nervously thrilled she is when Theo arrives, and the repetition of “Journeys end in lovers meeting” (I counted 3 in this section! An auspicious number!)--Eleanor’s showing a different side of herself, one who has been lonely for so long that she will let her guard down at the first sign of companionship. It is wonderful *and* makes me very nervous for her!
"It is wonderful *and* makes me very nervous for her" that basically sums up my feelings on the first two chapters lol! Like I'm cheering Eleanor on with her new independence, and her new friend, but then there's Hill House looming over it all
Some 45 years ago, after my college roommate and I watched the 1963 movie version, The Haunting, we took to saying Mrs. Dudley’s words to each other: “In the night. In the dark.” I decided to text her this very minute to tell her I was reading The Haunting of Hill House. In the night. In the dark.
"Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed." So there it is, nothing to wonder about there. It's bad through and through and will stay that way until it's no more. For me the interesting thing in this chapter is seeing the effect Hill House has on Eleanor. It's not just the house, or Eleanor by herself, but the two of them together. We see more of how Eleanor won't let herself trust her instincts or her first impressions of other people, that she is always trying to chide herself out of these, as if she is trapped in a foregone conclusion, but the badness of the house she is sure about. Interesting how, after Theodora arrives, Eleanor is anxious that they not go too far from the house. You'd think she'd be glad to get as far away from it as possible, but she seems almost as afraid to leave it as she is to stay in it.
Is she worried about breaking rules or getting into trouble or some other worry from her old life?
I think we are being invited to wonder, can E. break out of her patterns and if she can, how will she?
purely procedural question: does anyone know what happened to the edit/delete little dots option under the comments? no more? that's a shame if it's the case!