The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Day 14
Chapter 7, Part 1-2
Just when things start to get really intense, Jackson throws us some comic relief in the form of Mrs. Montague and Arthur. You’d think a ghost hunter and a medium would make a good match, but these two don’t have a very happy or warm marriage. Mrs. Montague has her own ideas about how to investigate Hill House and couldn’t be less interested in her husband’s—she won’t even let him finish a sentence. We find Jackson’s comic touch in Mrs. Montague’s dialogue—all those italicized words demonstrating her haughty, smug tone—and, more understatedly, in the others’ baffled reactions to her.
And the adverbs! They pull a lot of weight here, as elsewhere. Dr. Montague: obediently, hopefully, hesitantly, soothingly, wearily. Luke’s rhyme: primly and grimly. Mrs. Montague: irritably (twice), daintily, speculatively. Perhaps the best: “Don’t let me interrupt your dinner,” Mrs. Montague says finally.
My mind keeps returning to the first paragraph of this chapter, which feels at first like a throwaway, but contains some of Jackson’s most uncanny writing: the trees and flowers “interrupted in their pressing occupations of growing and dying” to pay attention to Eleanor, the daisy that dies in her fingers, her look “into its dead face.” So much death in the space of a few sentences, yet Eleanor can think only of her own “overwhelming wild happiness.” The final question—repeated—both gives her agency and takes it away. Does she have control over what she will do? Did she ever?
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I really enjoyed that intro paragraph, too, Ruth. And thanks for noting the doubling of the question at the end, with it's differing emphasis. Modern science has shown that trees and plants do respond to humans and other animals, and if Hill House can covet and affect Eleanor than why not nature? I am so glad for her moment of freedom and her brief moment of "overwhelming wild happiness."
I also love Eleanor's piercing insights amidst the chaos: "Poor Dr Montague...he is so uncomfortable; I wonder how long she is going to stay." And when she concurs w Arthur, to Theo, that Luke is a coward.
But my favorite part of this is the introduction of my favorite minor character.
"Please, sir," Luke was saying meekly, "who is planchette?"
I find it hilarious that Mrs. M carries on about planchette as if it were a person. I was so disappointed that The 1963 Haunting film didn't include her wittering on about planchette.
I was also most struck by the first paragraph. Eleanor ‘wanting only to be secret and out from under the heavy dark wood of the house’ makes the house feel like a coffin. When she lies down on the spot on the ground it feels like a grave. And yet she isn't rooted, is in fact 'heartbreakingly mobile' (great adverb!). She looks up into a (the daisy's) dead face, as so often here a reversal of what's expected. The final question is repeated but with a different intonation due both to the repetition and the italics in the first iteration: 'What *am* I going to do? What am I going to do?' Does the emphasis move from 'am' to 'do' in the second question? From being to doing?