I’ve wondered ever since if I did wake up. If I did wake up and hear her, and if I just went back to sleep. It would have been easy, and I’ve wondered about it.” -- Did Eleanor accidentally or intentionally kill her mother. She says “But of course, no matter when it happened it was going to be my fault.” It seems that Eleanor was raised with a lot of guilt, because no matter what happened she was going to feel at fault.
I think Eleanor now feels disconnected and unmoored and lonely. She is grasping at Theo for companionship. Its sad!
Yes, there was definitely a sinister undertone in that declaration for me. She repeats the phrase "I never woke up," which also makes me wonder about her current mental state. Especially since there are sections of Part 3 where the point of view doesn't come across very clearly; we know it must be Eleanor's POV here, but it feels extremely detached.
Yes! Eleanor seems detached and the others are mocking her. Theo says “you should’ve forgotten all that by now” after Eleanor talks about her mothers death. Geez that’s cold!
That kind of comment is what makes me wonder how separate Eleanor and Theo are by now (or if they ever were at all). We're told Theo has psychic powers, but we only see them in relation to Eleanor. So when she says something like "you should have forgotten," it feels more like Eleanor talking to herself.
I think we can imagine eleanor has real reason to feel guilt for her mother’s death. She clearly felt a great deal of rage twd her in life and one cd imagine her gritting her teeth when hearing her mother pounding and demanding her assistance in the muddle of the night. Guilt , fear of her mother’s retribution in the afterlife , remorse when a hated mother did die, and no grounding in her own life— eleanor was clearly the one susceptible to the house’s embrace
Very sad...but the guilt and loneliness do seem tied up in making her the one most vulnerable. I also keep remembering the stones that fell on Eleanor’s roof, which was the reason why Dr. Montegue selected her. Was that already Hill House singling her out?
“DEAD DEAD”. . . .“FAMILY FAMILY.” Thanks Ruth, for that creepy addition. It does feel like an underpinning for Eleanor’s experience; the fact that the phrase/chant “FAMILY FAMILY” didn’t make it into the manuscript makes it read like an additional apparition underlying the text.
It also reminds me of this in part 3 of today’s pages:
“ “Eleanor, Eleanor,” and she heard it inside and outside her head; this was a call she had been listening for all her life. ”
Even before reading Ruth’s commentary, I underlined the two-word repetition of Eleanor’s name that is repeated. “DEAD DEAD,” “FAMILY FAMILY,” ELEANOR ELEANOR,” the repeated two words reflect both a loneliness and longing-ness (not certain that longingness is a word but will keep it). The house and its haunted spirits are so skillfully seducing Eleanor through her vulnerability. I also am reminded that the months after losing parent (as Eleanor may be in this book) can for some create a sense of non-being or relearning how to firmly be in the present world.
I still don’t know what to think of Mrs. Montegue. I see this as a good thing…Jackson is pulling me in the narrative even in these last chapters, to see where it all will end.
I admired Jackson’s choice to put Eleanor into silent mode. After her abortive effort to have Theo adopt her in section 2, she says, “Theo?” once at the beginning of section 3, and then goes dark for two pages. Luke and Theo talk around her, talk for her, but she says nothing until she claims the blame for her mother’s death. It punches up her confession even more and escalates the tension in the scene. I’ve gotta remember that a character saying nothing is more powerful than one jabbering on.
I went back here to Twelfth Night at the end of section 3. It’s clear Luke and Theo are the lovers meeting, so who--or more to the point, what--is left for Eleanor?
I looked at the rest of the Twelfth Night excerpt, particularly the line “your true love’s coming that can sing both high and low,” which captures the voices of Hill House, described as alternately low babbling and rising laughter. Jackson seems to have used the excerpt as a blueprint for how HH will woo Eleanor.
For me, the quotation establishes Eleanor’s state of mind, and by extension, the timeline of Eleanor’s story. Her journey, according to her own perceptions, ends with meeting her lover. But she’s running out of prospects: she’s auditioned Luke for the role, briefly, and then Theo, desperately. The scene by the brook in which she sees the vacant footsteps moving away suggests to me that her last chance at love is moving on too. So when she sees Luke and Theo leaning against the tree together? When Theo says first that they thought she heard them calling and then that “we were going to come along in a minute. Weren’t we, Luke?” and Luke repeats the lie? It suggests to me intimacy--particularly through their complicity in the lies--and for me, implies they are lovers or on their way there. Then, I think Eleanor must feel an urgency in the pursuit of her last possible lover: HH. That’s how I read it, anyway. I’m definitely interested in hearing alternate readings—
Where I depart from you, maybe significantly, is in the idea that Theo and Luke are lovers or going to be. Instead, I think they are not lovers at all - Theo is a lesbian and who knows what Luke is, really. Which is not to say that combination could not still become lovers - but I don't think they do. I think they use one another as a way of excluding Eleanor. Nothing they say is about love or togetherness but only violence and want, jokes and the like. I think everything that happens in the book relates to Eleanor in some way or other.
I wholeheartedly agree with your reading: they are deliberately excluding Eleanor with their playacting. And I agree that Theo is a lesbian--or at least, Jackson supplies us with the subtext for that reading, subjected to the confines of her time. I think in Eleanor’s mind, they are lovers.
I love your interpretation- and I also wonder if the whole scene between Luke and Theo is completely in E’s head, put there by HH to create the urgency you describe. E has become an unreliable narrator at this point,I think, through no fault of her own.
These sections show the chasms between the characters. Mrs M goes on about dust and no activity while Arthur gripes about the branch while our four were all in hell. And Mrs M persists in thinking of the manifestations as external and individuated not realizing that the call is coming from within the house--both to and from Eleanor.
In section 2, Eleanor reaches out to Theo and is rejected. "Lightly" says the text. And rather than being crushed and hurt, E is placid. She is used to being unwanted. How mundane and horrible. Then, there is no real gap between 2 and 3. Why make them segmented other than to emphasize the fragmentation, alienation, disintegration? It's like they're not even in the same room. Nell's only dialogue in the next section is "Theo?" It's the other two talking about her, Theo casual and cruel, Luke not descending to that level. Both talking AT Eleanor, not with her. Then a white space, then the trip down to the brook, we get back in Eleanor's head, hear a calling and approach but she finds Theo and Luke not there and something else approaching, calling, wanting. When she runs away, accuses them they have their veneer of cool politesse back on, the kind of mask, hard candy shell, that Eleanor just doesn't possess. (And is even thicker for Mrs M and Mrs Dudley!)
The rushing down the hill and calling reminded me of a story with a house on a hill in a picture, and someone calling, and places being swapped. I found it in the Shirley Jackson collection Dark Tales, "The Story We Used to Tell"
I've been getting big "swapping" vibes on this read that reminded me of that story, and also the horror movie It Follows.
Wow. That is so interesting about the sleepwalking pages. I would say that, in Eleanor’s case, DEAD DEAD and FAMILY FAMILY are, sadly, the same.
These chapters were some of the most powerful for me. From the opening sentence, (I laughed outloud) when Theo echoes Mrs. Dudley’s words about clearing at 10, in my mind, I heard her saying those words in a flat and robotic way, just like Mrs. Dudley; but I thought this could be interpreted as Theo just being sarcastic or showing that Theo is now becoming as robotic as Mrs. Dudley in the daily routines of the meals.
Eleanor can now hear everything in the house. They are in tune with one another. Unsurprisingly, Mrs.D and A heard and experienced nothing that the others did the night before.
When E. announces to Theo that she is going home with her, the scene was heartbreaking to me, with E saying “I want to be someplace where I belong.”
And when Theo finally snaps and says “Do you always go where you’re not wanted?” E’s reaction is to smile “placidly” (thank you adverb!) and says “I’ve never been wanted anywhere.” Creepy isn’t the right word, but it’s as if E has accepted and surrendered to her fate as “not wanted” and is actually embracing it? Very sad.
In the next section, when Luke uses the metaphor of the furniture to being “motherly...... Which turn out out to be hard... and reject you at once,” of course I thought of E’s mother and the fact the Luke had said his mother had died--- and all the mothers and children related to HH, and then a thought occurred to me.
Suddenly, I thought of the very FIRST MOTHER for whom Hill House was built and who, tragically, was never able to live within it with her family. The first mother, Hugh Crain’s wife, died when her carriage overturned in the driveway before she even entered the house. The thought occurred to me that perhaps she is the ghost haunting Hill House? And with all the sounds of children, and the way the nursery seems to be the most haunted place in the house. Just a thought. Hmmm.
Then Theo and Luke begin speaking to one another as if E isn’t there - after Theo’s mean comment to E. about writing on the walls made me wonder if HH is turning Theo against E. I was happy to see Luke call out Theo’s cruelty.
The shepherds dancing in the Easter egg with the shepherdess in pink and blue (there’s that blue again!) is interesting and I’m trying to figure out its meaning. It’s Biblical due to it being an Easter egg and shepherds.
Then, E’s confession that she thinks it’s her fault her mother died. The symmetry of her mother banging on the walls and the same sounds they hear at HH make perfect sense. E. seems completely relieved from her guilt when Theo tells her “If it hadn’t happened you would never have come to Hill House,” because E. is then “Smiling” and walking “comfortably” (Thank you adverb) and thinks “I will not be frightened or alone any more,” and she fantasizes about her future.
The final part of the chapter was, I think, so pivotal. Eleanor is now “leading” then to the top of the hill and believes she has finally “earned” her happiness. “I’m am caught in a kind of wonder, I am still with joy...In Will not forget this moment in my life” - There is a sense of foreboding when she hears Theo and Luke walking behind her with the grass moving “hissingly” (adverb)
Then, we return to ‘watching the unseen.’ E. sees and hears what seems to be invisible footsteps on the path, and hears her name called - and thinks it was “a call she had been listening for all her life.” It continues to call her, and then “she was held tight and safe” and says to the spirit “Don’t let me go.”
She sees the invisible footsteps walk over the water (another biblical reference ?)
It strikes me that this moment happens when she feels absolved of her guilt and finally feels “joy.”
Also, Jackson doesn’t describe the sound of the voice. She doesn’t say if it’s male or female? Maternal? A lover? All of the above?
This was truly a pivotal moment for Eleanor and the overall arc of the book, I think. Eleanor has now had physical contact with the spirit of HH, and wants it to come back.
Interesting comment about the sound of the voice. The voices inside the house, particularly those trying to get through the doors, seem (heartbreakingly) to be children. But the outside voices and the voices in control may be something other.
The word "earn" and variations of it show up in interesting places in the book .. for E. it seems she feels that her happiness must be deserved and she uses it to justify or explain her continuing on in the house when before she wanted to leave and seemed to know she should.
I read Theo's comments about clearing at ten as being simply her both mocking Mrs. Dudley's rigidity and wondering if anyone had the *temerity* to suggest to Mrs. M that there are rules even she must follow.
I saw eleanor asking theo if she cd come live with her as a last vestige of her wish to belong somewhere on the living plane to someone. That she has such a flat response to theos response shows how futile she already knos it is. She is really already too far gone in the houses deadly and deathly embrace
for me--and it may just be me--her placid response and later continued fantasy about living with Theo was chilling. I don't think she knows it's futile. I think she is growing farther and farther out of touch with reality.
Whew, that dialog in Section 2! From delusion ("I am going to follow you home" - "I can get a job, I won't get in your way." -E) to cruelty ("I am not in the habit of taking home stray cats." & Do you always go where you're not wanted?"- T) to sad resignation ("I am a kind of stray cat, aren't I?" & "I have never been wanted anywhere"- E) - to Theo's attempts to lay out the reality of their situation -- the entire conversation encapsulates the relationship between Eleanor and Theo that has developed in their short time at HH.
The conversation is sad...Theo is cold but also more realistic and ready to leave. Eleanor is the one who is more off....but also the men, Luke and Mr. Montegue, are less clear.
It surprised me how cruel Theo and Luke are in their joking. They previously, even with the Dr. Smile after she’s had a “spell” , but this seems like unnecessary digs. Aka “mean girls”. There is something in Eleanor’s being so naive and unstable that takes away the ghostliness for me. That is, there were invisible footsteps coming through the grass, well of course there were!
Finally, going back to the very start, remind me what Carrie’s deal is. I mean, Eleanor comes off like she’s not socialized at all and been locked up with mean crazy mom. What has Carrie’s role been as a supportive sibling and daughter?!
Like the mean sisters in Cinderella? Carrie seems to have taken on their mother's attitude to E. as her 'way to power'? Plus she's just an unpleasant selfish beast of a human being?
E. played bridge with her mother and her mother's lawyer .. E. has been socialized in a way, you could say, but not allowed any control over her life, not allowed her own life.
I always thought Anastasia and Drizella were a pair of doofuses. I was thinking more Rachel McAdams and Lindsay Lohan. She does play bridge and that takes skill. But her interior monologues through this adventure are pretty kooky. Might be the era.
I agree that Theo and Luke are mean to Eleanor and it does seem like Carrie where the kids pick on her for her social awkwardness. I'm wondering if that is a plot technique to build tension in the atmosphere. There has to be a reason for it because it is pretty nasty. Or maybe could it be just Eleanor's perception of what they said. Not likely given she isn't the narrator.
To your question, Ruth, “In the world of the novel, are the two essentially the same?”:
I think, yes.
And I also think that, perhaps—given Hyman (he would leap for Philippe Halsman, but not for fidelity), the confines of household, vacuuming, laundering, child rearing, etc—in Jackson’s life away from the novel, catching a breath to write was like gasping away the death of her spirit within family.
A part of me thinks that family, or FAMILY FAMILY is very much alive in these pages! Not dead or DEAD DEAD at all. The first word contextualizes the second. Like the difference between someone being dead and being dead dead. As family family means something that family by itself does not. As if someone might say, this is my real family, and this is my family family. Which it seems could be good or bad, depending. (Dead dead does seem pretty well dead. Whereas just dead seems sort of still .. alive??
Now that E. has given herself to the house, she is free ..which leads to her fantasies about living with Theo. Anything Theo says in response will not matter. E. is deep in a fantasy, a kind of comfort, if temporary?
When she is visited by a sensation of air catching hold of her, she likes it, doesn't want to it to go. Though she watches "without surprise" when it does go.
I feel that the more dependency E. shows on Theo and Luke the more sadistic they will become towards her. Cold, withholding, all of that.
Are they trying to torture her, or is that how E. reads the situation? It seems the only sure thing we have to go on here is the way in which Jackson portrays her characters, and Theo and Luke are written as being unkind and sarcastic and all of that. So I think they really are, that their failures as human beings are not just projections of Eleanor's needs and desires but true about them.
I like your interpretation that the first word contextualizes the second. I wonder if repeating words makes them more “real” like an absolute reality. When Jackson uses adverbs she layers two words together to create a mix of the two, something new from the combination. Layering the same word on top of itself emphasizes it, seems to make it more opaque, solid, and rigid in its own definition.
Mothers appear as haunting figures, who loom ominously in their children’s (Eleanor, Luke, Hill House’s “ghost” children?) psyches. There is almost a dark fairytale vibe to mothers – “real” mothers take on characteristics of “evil stepmothers”: “It’s all so motherly,” Luke said. “Everything so soft. Everything so padded. Great embracing chairs and sofas which turn out to be hard and unwelcome when you sit down, and reject you at once –”. And Eleanor’s tormented resentment at being controlled by her mother: “She knocked on the wall and called me and called me and I never woke up … I ought to have … I always did before,” leaves us with a taste of the “evil mother” who spends a lifetime shaming her child into feeling “no matter when it happened it [her mother’s death] was going to be her fault."
On the one hand, is it any wonder that Eleanor is consumed by “want[ing] to be someplace [she] belong[ed], to “not be frightened or alone anymore,” to readily embrace being held “tight and safe” by the “call she had been listening for all her life”: “Eleanor, Eleanor” resounding “inside and outside her head.” On the other hand, why denigrate mothers, so fulsomely? Is the focus on mothers - as an easy default for blame (with respect to a child’s/adult’s vulnerability, uncertainty, and weakness) - a critique of our tendencies to seek blame in others, rather than doing the complicated work of introspection?
I don’t see all the mothers as negative figures. Luke says he never had one, and based on his conversation with E, he is still looking for one. E obviously has been the “mothering” her own mother, caring for her, instead of the other way around, and then feels responsible for her death, so of course that’s going to create guilt and resentment, and trauma of all sorts- Crain’s first wife (mother of the girls) died before she even entered the house. I do agree with you that a lot of work and introspection to deal with the trauma of these events of the mother/child relationships would have been helpful, but except for maybe Luke, I felt more like there was more guilt associated with the thought of feeling angry about any of the mothers. Does that make sense? (It’s my understanding that SJ also had a very complicated relationship with her own mother- I don’t think she ever felt like she could live up to her mother’s expectations or standards- )
Eleanor's overture to Theodora surprised me. She has gone from worrying, just a few days before, that she is too unreserved to making herself entirely vulnerable with this declaration. And in between she has hated Theo violently at times. This exchange seems like a counterpart to the one she has with Luke. In neither case does Eleanor seem to have any illusions about the other person's feelings, but maybe yearning gets the better of her. That being said, she seems to be losing her grip on reality here. Her placid response to Theodora's scathing comments--comparing her to a stray cat and asking if she always goes where she's not wanted--make her seem unhinged, even as she calmly announces her intention. I think she likes the idea of living in the world and needs to follow/take up with someone in order to do it. Luke is not a possibility, so that leaves Theo.
“‘A mother house,’ Luke said…” which puts me in mind of a convent. The Everett mansion was owned for a time by the Holy Cross Novitiate, as I learned from Franklin's post "The real-life Hill House?" And Mrs. Montague makes reference to a buried nun. A virgin woman. No sexual life. Walled up one way or another. That’s Eleanor. Something unseen and disembodied holds her briefly, then slips away. I guess if Eleanor is going to know any companionship or intimacy, it's not going to be human.
Interesting, Maureen! I never thought of the nun as being representative of Eleanor. Makes me wonder if the monk could be Hugh? He did have extreme views about the denial of earthly desires.
As Eleanor slips more and more into fantasies, I find myself drawn back to the first line: "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality." Is this Eleanor's attempt to hold her sanity? Talking about living with Theo, and going back to the way she used to daydream in the first chapter about all the lives she could live, could function as a way of keeping the absolute reality of Hill House at bay. But Luke and Theo won't play along. After all their make believe, with the bullfighting and the scenes they imagine at Hill House, they don't let Eleanor make believe--because hers is too close to her actual desire? Because she does want to go home with Theodora, she does want to help in the shop, and so it's too close to reality? I don't know, but I worry about the effects of both the other people in the house, and Hill House itself, constantly trying to force Eleanor back to reality.
I’ve wondered ever since if I did wake up. If I did wake up and hear her, and if I just went back to sleep. It would have been easy, and I’ve wondered about it.” -- Did Eleanor accidentally or intentionally kill her mother. She says “But of course, no matter when it happened it was going to be my fault.” It seems that Eleanor was raised with a lot of guilt, because no matter what happened she was going to feel at fault.
I think Eleanor now feels disconnected and unmoored and lonely. She is grasping at Theo for companionship. Its sad!
Yes, there was definitely a sinister undertone in that declaration for me. She repeats the phrase "I never woke up," which also makes me wonder about her current mental state. Especially since there are sections of Part 3 where the point of view doesn't come across very clearly; we know it must be Eleanor's POV here, but it feels extremely detached.
Yes! Eleanor seems detached and the others are mocking her. Theo says “you should’ve forgotten all that by now” after Eleanor talks about her mothers death. Geez that’s cold!
That kind of comment is what makes me wonder how separate Eleanor and Theo are by now (or if they ever were at all). We're told Theo has psychic powers, but we only see them in relation to Eleanor. So when she says something like "you should have forgotten," it feels more like Eleanor talking to herself.
I think we can imagine eleanor has real reason to feel guilt for her mother’s death. She clearly felt a great deal of rage twd her in life and one cd imagine her gritting her teeth when hearing her mother pounding and demanding her assistance in the muddle of the night. Guilt , fear of her mother’s retribution in the afterlife , remorse when a hated mother did die, and no grounding in her own life— eleanor was clearly the one susceptible to the house’s embrace
Yes!
So true! It almost seems like an existential conflict wanting the person who gave you life to die!
But ger mother sounds like she mught have been an unloving hav even before she was bedridden
Very sad...but the guilt and loneliness do seem tied up in making her the one most vulnerable. I also keep remembering the stones that fell on Eleanor’s roof, which was the reason why Dr. Montegue selected her. Was that already Hill House singling her out?
I have thought this from the beginning....
“DEAD DEAD”. . . .“FAMILY FAMILY.” Thanks Ruth, for that creepy addition. It does feel like an underpinning for Eleanor’s experience; the fact that the phrase/chant “FAMILY FAMILY” didn’t make it into the manuscript makes it read like an additional apparition underlying the text.
It also reminds me of this in part 3 of today’s pages:
“ “Eleanor, Eleanor,” and she heard it inside and outside her head; this was a call she had been listening for all her life. ”
Even before reading Ruth’s commentary, I underlined the two-word repetition of Eleanor’s name that is repeated. “DEAD DEAD,” “FAMILY FAMILY,” ELEANOR ELEANOR,” the repeated two words reflect both a loneliness and longing-ness (not certain that longingness is a word but will keep it). The house and its haunted spirits are so skillfully seducing Eleanor through her vulnerability. I also am reminded that the months after losing parent (as Eleanor may be in this book) can for some create a sense of non-being or relearning how to firmly be in the present world.
I still don’t know what to think of Mrs. Montegue. I see this as a good thing…Jackson is pulling me in the narrative even in these last chapters, to see where it all will end.
Thinking about the two-word repetitions, I'm also reminded of the earlier remarked-on 'God God'.
I admired Jackson’s choice to put Eleanor into silent mode. After her abortive effort to have Theo adopt her in section 2, she says, “Theo?” once at the beginning of section 3, and then goes dark for two pages. Luke and Theo talk around her, talk for her, but she says nothing until she claims the blame for her mother’s death. It punches up her confession even more and escalates the tension in the scene. I’ve gotta remember that a character saying nothing is more powerful than one jabbering on.
I went back here to Twelfth Night at the end of section 3. It’s clear Luke and Theo are the lovers meeting, so who--or more to the point, what--is left for Eleanor?
I looked at the rest of the Twelfth Night excerpt, particularly the line “your true love’s coming that can sing both high and low,” which captures the voices of Hill House, described as alternately low babbling and rising laughter. Jackson seems to have used the excerpt as a blueprint for how HH will woo Eleanor.
By the lovers meeting being Luke and Theo - can you expand on that? What do you think is going on btw them?
And what about the 'journeys end' part? : )
For me, the quotation establishes Eleanor’s state of mind, and by extension, the timeline of Eleanor’s story. Her journey, according to her own perceptions, ends with meeting her lover. But she’s running out of prospects: she’s auditioned Luke for the role, briefly, and then Theo, desperately. The scene by the brook in which she sees the vacant footsteps moving away suggests to me that her last chance at love is moving on too. So when she sees Luke and Theo leaning against the tree together? When Theo says first that they thought she heard them calling and then that “we were going to come along in a minute. Weren’t we, Luke?” and Luke repeats the lie? It suggests to me intimacy--particularly through their complicity in the lies--and for me, implies they are lovers or on their way there. Then, I think Eleanor must feel an urgency in the pursuit of her last possible lover: HH. That’s how I read it, anyway. I’m definitely interested in hearing alternate readings—
Thank you! That is so fascinating a reading.
Where I depart from you, maybe significantly, is in the idea that Theo and Luke are lovers or going to be. Instead, I think they are not lovers at all - Theo is a lesbian and who knows what Luke is, really. Which is not to say that combination could not still become lovers - but I don't think they do. I think they use one another as a way of excluding Eleanor. Nothing they say is about love or togetherness but only violence and want, jokes and the like. I think everything that happens in the book relates to Eleanor in some way or other.
I wholeheartedly agree with your reading: they are deliberately excluding Eleanor with their playacting. And I agree that Theo is a lesbian--or at least, Jackson supplies us with the subtext for that reading, subjected to the confines of her time. I think in Eleanor’s mind, they are lovers.
Oh I wonder if that is true! In E.'s mind they are lovers. That seems very possible.
I agree, Amanda. I see Luke and Theo as most likely just having a shared reaction to Eleanor's weirdness.
I love your interpretation- and I also wonder if the whole scene between Luke and Theo is completely in E’s head, put there by HH to create the urgency you describe. E has become an unreliable narrator at this point,I think, through no fault of her own.
I like that notion: a narrator with evolving reliability.
These sections show the chasms between the characters. Mrs M goes on about dust and no activity while Arthur gripes about the branch while our four were all in hell. And Mrs M persists in thinking of the manifestations as external and individuated not realizing that the call is coming from within the house--both to and from Eleanor.
In section 2, Eleanor reaches out to Theo and is rejected. "Lightly" says the text. And rather than being crushed and hurt, E is placid. She is used to being unwanted. How mundane and horrible. Then, there is no real gap between 2 and 3. Why make them segmented other than to emphasize the fragmentation, alienation, disintegration? It's like they're not even in the same room. Nell's only dialogue in the next section is "Theo?" It's the other two talking about her, Theo casual and cruel, Luke not descending to that level. Both talking AT Eleanor, not with her. Then a white space, then the trip down to the brook, we get back in Eleanor's head, hear a calling and approach but she finds Theo and Luke not there and something else approaching, calling, wanting. When she runs away, accuses them they have their veneer of cool politesse back on, the kind of mask, hard candy shell, that Eleanor just doesn't possess. (And is even thicker for Mrs M and Mrs Dudley!)
The rushing down the hill and calling reminded me of a story with a house on a hill in a picture, and someone calling, and places being swapped. I found it in the Shirley Jackson collection Dark Tales, "The Story We Used to Tell"
I've been getting big "swapping" vibes on this read that reminded me of that story, and also the horror movie It Follows.
Wow. That is so interesting about the sleepwalking pages. I would say that, in Eleanor’s case, DEAD DEAD and FAMILY FAMILY are, sadly, the same.
These chapters were some of the most powerful for me. From the opening sentence, (I laughed outloud) when Theo echoes Mrs. Dudley’s words about clearing at 10, in my mind, I heard her saying those words in a flat and robotic way, just like Mrs. Dudley; but I thought this could be interpreted as Theo just being sarcastic or showing that Theo is now becoming as robotic as Mrs. Dudley in the daily routines of the meals.
Eleanor can now hear everything in the house. They are in tune with one another. Unsurprisingly, Mrs.D and A heard and experienced nothing that the others did the night before.
When E. announces to Theo that she is going home with her, the scene was heartbreaking to me, with E saying “I want to be someplace where I belong.”
And when Theo finally snaps and says “Do you always go where you’re not wanted?” E’s reaction is to smile “placidly” (thank you adverb!) and says “I’ve never been wanted anywhere.” Creepy isn’t the right word, but it’s as if E has accepted and surrendered to her fate as “not wanted” and is actually embracing it? Very sad.
In the next section, when Luke uses the metaphor of the furniture to being “motherly...... Which turn out out to be hard... and reject you at once,” of course I thought of E’s mother and the fact the Luke had said his mother had died--- and all the mothers and children related to HH, and then a thought occurred to me.
Suddenly, I thought of the very FIRST MOTHER for whom Hill House was built and who, tragically, was never able to live within it with her family. The first mother, Hugh Crain’s wife, died when her carriage overturned in the driveway before she even entered the house. The thought occurred to me that perhaps she is the ghost haunting Hill House? And with all the sounds of children, and the way the nursery seems to be the most haunted place in the house. Just a thought. Hmmm.
Then Theo and Luke begin speaking to one another as if E isn’t there - after Theo’s mean comment to E. about writing on the walls made me wonder if HH is turning Theo against E. I was happy to see Luke call out Theo’s cruelty.
The shepherds dancing in the Easter egg with the shepherdess in pink and blue (there’s that blue again!) is interesting and I’m trying to figure out its meaning. It’s Biblical due to it being an Easter egg and shepherds.
Then, E’s confession that she thinks it’s her fault her mother died. The symmetry of her mother banging on the walls and the same sounds they hear at HH make perfect sense. E. seems completely relieved from her guilt when Theo tells her “If it hadn’t happened you would never have come to Hill House,” because E. is then “Smiling” and walking “comfortably” (Thank you adverb) and thinks “I will not be frightened or alone any more,” and she fantasizes about her future.
The final part of the chapter was, I think, so pivotal. Eleanor is now “leading” then to the top of the hill and believes she has finally “earned” her happiness. “I’m am caught in a kind of wonder, I am still with joy...In Will not forget this moment in my life” - There is a sense of foreboding when she hears Theo and Luke walking behind her with the grass moving “hissingly” (adverb)
Then, we return to ‘watching the unseen.’ E. sees and hears what seems to be invisible footsteps on the path, and hears her name called - and thinks it was “a call she had been listening for all her life.” It continues to call her, and then “she was held tight and safe” and says to the spirit “Don’t let me go.”
She sees the invisible footsteps walk over the water (another biblical reference ?)
It strikes me that this moment happens when she feels absolved of her guilt and finally feels “joy.”
Also, Jackson doesn’t describe the sound of the voice. She doesn’t say if it’s male or female? Maternal? A lover? All of the above?
This was truly a pivotal moment for Eleanor and the overall arc of the book, I think. Eleanor has now had physical contact with the spirit of HH, and wants it to come back.
I guess we’ll see.
Interesting comment about the sound of the voice. The voices inside the house, particularly those trying to get through the doors, seem (heartbreakingly) to be children. But the outside voices and the voices in control may be something other.
Sorry- Luke technically said he never had a mother- not that she died.
The word "earn" and variations of it show up in interesting places in the book .. for E. it seems she feels that her happiness must be deserved and she uses it to justify or explain her continuing on in the house when before she wanted to leave and seemed to know she should.
I read Theo's comments about clearing at ten as being simply her both mocking Mrs. Dudley's rigidity and wondering if anyone had the *temerity* to suggest to Mrs. M that there are rules even she must follow.
I saw eleanor asking theo if she cd come live with her as a last vestige of her wish to belong somewhere on the living plane to someone. That she has such a flat response to theos response shows how futile she already knos it is. She is really already too far gone in the houses deadly and deathly embrace
for me--and it may just be me--her placid response and later continued fantasy about living with Theo was chilling. I don't think she knows it's futile. I think she is growing farther and farther out of touch with reality.
I thought it was her last attempt to stay and velong the living
Whew, that dialog in Section 2! From delusion ("I am going to follow you home" - "I can get a job, I won't get in your way." -E) to cruelty ("I am not in the habit of taking home stray cats." & Do you always go where you're not wanted?"- T) to sad resignation ("I am a kind of stray cat, aren't I?" & "I have never been wanted anywhere"- E) - to Theo's attempts to lay out the reality of their situation -- the entire conversation encapsulates the relationship between Eleanor and Theo that has developed in their short time at HH.
The conversation is sad...Theo is cold but also more realistic and ready to leave. Eleanor is the one who is more off....but also the men, Luke and Mr. Montegue, are less clear.
It surprised me how cruel Theo and Luke are in their joking. They previously, even with the Dr. Smile after she’s had a “spell” , but this seems like unnecessary digs. Aka “mean girls”. There is something in Eleanor’s being so naive and unstable that takes away the ghostliness for me. That is, there were invisible footsteps coming through the grass, well of course there were!
Finally, going back to the very start, remind me what Carrie’s deal is. I mean, Eleanor comes off like she’s not socialized at all and been locked up with mean crazy mom. What has Carrie’s role been as a supportive sibling and daughter?!
Like the mean sisters in Cinderella? Carrie seems to have taken on their mother's attitude to E. as her 'way to power'? Plus she's just an unpleasant selfish beast of a human being?
E. played bridge with her mother and her mother's lawyer .. E. has been socialized in a way, you could say, but not allowed any control over her life, not allowed her own life.
I always thought Anastasia and Drizella were a pair of doofuses. I was thinking more Rachel McAdams and Lindsay Lohan. She does play bridge and that takes skill. But her interior monologues through this adventure are pretty kooky. Might be the era.
Oh BTW, Lady Tremaine is one of my favorite villains.
A classic!
I agree that Theo and Luke are mean to Eleanor and it does seem like Carrie where the kids pick on her for her social awkwardness. I'm wondering if that is a plot technique to build tension in the atmosphere. There has to be a reason for it because it is pretty nasty. Or maybe could it be just Eleanor's perception of what they said. Not likely given she isn't the narrator.
To your question, Ruth, “In the world of the novel, are the two essentially the same?”:
I think, yes.
And I also think that, perhaps—given Hyman (he would leap for Philippe Halsman, but not for fidelity), the confines of household, vacuuming, laundering, child rearing, etc—in Jackson’s life away from the novel, catching a breath to write was like gasping away the death of her spirit within family.
A part of me thinks that family, or FAMILY FAMILY is very much alive in these pages! Not dead or DEAD DEAD at all. The first word contextualizes the second. Like the difference between someone being dead and being dead dead. As family family means something that family by itself does not. As if someone might say, this is my real family, and this is my family family. Which it seems could be good or bad, depending. (Dead dead does seem pretty well dead. Whereas just dead seems sort of still .. alive??
Now that E. has given herself to the house, she is free ..which leads to her fantasies about living with Theo. Anything Theo says in response will not matter. E. is deep in a fantasy, a kind of comfort, if temporary?
When she is visited by a sensation of air catching hold of her, she likes it, doesn't want to it to go. Though she watches "without surprise" when it does go.
I feel that the more dependency E. shows on Theo and Luke the more sadistic they will become towards her. Cold, withholding, all of that.
Are they trying to torture her, or is that how E. reads the situation? It seems the only sure thing we have to go on here is the way in which Jackson portrays her characters, and Theo and Luke are written as being unkind and sarcastic and all of that. So I think they really are, that their failures as human beings are not just projections of Eleanor's needs and desires but true about them.
I like your interpretation that the first word contextualizes the second. I wonder if repeating words makes them more “real” like an absolute reality. When Jackson uses adverbs she layers two words together to create a mix of the two, something new from the combination. Layering the same word on top of itself emphasizes it, seems to make it more opaque, solid, and rigid in its own definition.
Maybe I should have said modifies, from a grammatical standpoint!
I agree, the repetition gives the second word more weight and solidity!
Mothers appear as haunting figures, who loom ominously in their children’s (Eleanor, Luke, Hill House’s “ghost” children?) psyches. There is almost a dark fairytale vibe to mothers – “real” mothers take on characteristics of “evil stepmothers”: “It’s all so motherly,” Luke said. “Everything so soft. Everything so padded. Great embracing chairs and sofas which turn out to be hard and unwelcome when you sit down, and reject you at once –”. And Eleanor’s tormented resentment at being controlled by her mother: “She knocked on the wall and called me and called me and I never woke up … I ought to have … I always did before,” leaves us with a taste of the “evil mother” who spends a lifetime shaming her child into feeling “no matter when it happened it [her mother’s death] was going to be her fault."
On the one hand, is it any wonder that Eleanor is consumed by “want[ing] to be someplace [she] belong[ed], to “not be frightened or alone anymore,” to readily embrace being held “tight and safe” by the “call she had been listening for all her life”: “Eleanor, Eleanor” resounding “inside and outside her head.” On the other hand, why denigrate mothers, so fulsomely? Is the focus on mothers - as an easy default for blame (with respect to a child’s/adult’s vulnerability, uncertainty, and weakness) - a critique of our tendencies to seek blame in others, rather than doing the complicated work of introspection?
I don’t see all the mothers as negative figures. Luke says he never had one, and based on his conversation with E, he is still looking for one. E obviously has been the “mothering” her own mother, caring for her, instead of the other way around, and then feels responsible for her death, so of course that’s going to create guilt and resentment, and trauma of all sorts- Crain’s first wife (mother of the girls) died before she even entered the house. I do agree with you that a lot of work and introspection to deal with the trauma of these events of the mother/child relationships would have been helpful, but except for maybe Luke, I felt more like there was more guilt associated with the thought of feeling angry about any of the mothers. Does that make sense? (It’s my understanding that SJ also had a very complicated relationship with her own mother- I don’t think she ever felt like she could live up to her mother’s expectations or standards- )
Sorry -E. obviously had been “mothering” her own mother .....
Eleanor's overture to Theodora surprised me. She has gone from worrying, just a few days before, that she is too unreserved to making herself entirely vulnerable with this declaration. And in between she has hated Theo violently at times. This exchange seems like a counterpart to the one she has with Luke. In neither case does Eleanor seem to have any illusions about the other person's feelings, but maybe yearning gets the better of her. That being said, she seems to be losing her grip on reality here. Her placid response to Theodora's scathing comments--comparing her to a stray cat and asking if she always goes where she's not wanted--make her seem unhinged, even as she calmly announces her intention. I think she likes the idea of living in the world and needs to follow/take up with someone in order to do it. Luke is not a possibility, so that leaves Theo.
“‘A mother house,’ Luke said…” which puts me in mind of a convent. The Everett mansion was owned for a time by the Holy Cross Novitiate, as I learned from Franklin's post "The real-life Hill House?" And Mrs. Montague makes reference to a buried nun. A virgin woman. No sexual life. Walled up one way or another. That’s Eleanor. Something unseen and disembodied holds her briefly, then slips away. I guess if Eleanor is going to know any companionship or intimacy, it's not going to be human.
Interesting, Maureen! I never thought of the nun as being representative of Eleanor. Makes me wonder if the monk could be Hugh? He did have extreme views about the denial of earthly desires.
As Eleanor slips more and more into fantasies, I find myself drawn back to the first line: "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality." Is this Eleanor's attempt to hold her sanity? Talking about living with Theo, and going back to the way she used to daydream in the first chapter about all the lives she could live, could function as a way of keeping the absolute reality of Hill House at bay. But Luke and Theo won't play along. After all their make believe, with the bullfighting and the scenes they imagine at Hill House, they don't let Eleanor make believe--because hers is too close to her actual desire? Because she does want to go home with Theodora, she does want to help in the shop, and so it's too close to reality? I don't know, but I worry about the effects of both the other people in the house, and Hill House itself, constantly trying to force Eleanor back to reality.