The relationship I’ve hyper-fixated on in this section is Eleanor’s with her mother. One instance that struck me was the moment the Doctor reveals the library to which Eleanor replies, “‘I can’t go in there... My mother-‘ not knowing what she wanted to tell them, and pressed herself against the wall.”
The second moment was in the kitchen. “It’s a nice kitchen... In my mother’s house the kitchen was dark and narrow, and nothing you cooked there ever had any taste or color.”
Eleanor, the narrator says in the opening chapter, “would have gone anywhere” following the abuse imposed by her mother as she cared for the sick woman and following her death.
Hill House itself has been described as sick, leprous, which parallels with Eleanor’s mother. Tending to her mother rendered her unable to have a happy moment in her adult life and unable to have anyone to love. Is the House a representation of a malevolent matriarchal figure? Does the house keep her from being able to connect to the others in the way they seem to connect to one another and even to her without her being able to reciprocate? Most every physical interaction with Theo turns sour with Eleanor’s internal feelings of dirtiness, for instance. It seems her trauma from her mother is possibly being replicated by the house in that the house has got her under its spell (almost falling off the veranda if not for Luke catching her, thinking the kitchen is lovely, great first night of sleep) which keeps her from forming true community with the others.
Yes! Eleanor’s continued mentioning of her dead mother feels very Norman Bates! Both Hill House and Psycho were written in 1959! I wonder what triggered this creepy mother theme.
I wonder if it’s a remnant of the shift in family unit during WWII/ many families losing the father figure to the war literally or figuratively. Instead of finding a NEW family unit, American families forced/recreated/maintained a patriarchal structure with the mother at the head instead of finding a new, healthy, sustainable unit such as you would find in ancient matriarchal communities.
If the house is the matriarch, it has placed itself at the head of a patriarchal system put in place by Hugh Crain. The patriarchy will keep this group (Theo, Luke, Doc, Eleanor) from being able to form a new, healthy community.
Yes! Sounds right. definitely something to do with dominating moms. Even Stephen King’s Carrie had a dominating mom. Carrie’s dad was killed in a construction accident rather than a war but same concept as you describe! Good call!
What is it about dominating moms that make them good horror story subjects? Is it that their children have mixed emotions and want to kill their moms? 🤔
The Dr calls the house “A masterpiece of architectural misdirection” So it was intentionally designed to make its inhabitants feel off balance. This makes me think the creepy house vibe is a creation of a mortal being and not a haunting. I have inner ear issues that make me feel off balance and it feels like you are possessed in that you try to move your body one way and it pulls you in another. That’s creepy.
The doctor does seem to blame the people who made the house this chapter--my ears perked up when he said "Hugh Crain must have detested other people and their sensible squared-away houses, because he made his house to suit his mind."
I love thinking about strange Mrs. Dudley and her soufflé. As others have said, the strange, dark feelings Eleanor has about her mother also seem to haunt this chapter. But the doctor is just as creepy as Mrs. Dudley. His cool talk about suicide also unnerves me:
“Can you see the little trapdoor up there in the shadows?” he was asking. “It leads out onto a little balcony, and of course that’s where she is commonly supposed to have hanged herself—the girl, you remember. A most suitable spot, certainly; more suitable for suicides, I would think, than for books. She is supposed to have tied the rope onto the iron railing and then just stepped—. . . ”
The suicide seems to haunt the house and all of them except the doctor. I’m beginning to get more than a little suspicious of his creepy, calculating motives.
Love Jackson's use of repetition. Eleanor: "What happens when you go back to a real house?...I mean - a - well a *real* house?" Theo, when she glimpses the statue: "It's not there...I don't believe it's there." It underscores the irreality Jackson creates with the house.
There's a couple of stylistic things that have struck me in these last couple of chapters. One is the slight head hopping going on, sometimes within the same sentence. The other, possibly linked, is the movement of the group around the house. It's making the reader work harder because we aren't told about all the travel around the house, I'm sure this would get repetitive so I imagine Jackson perhaps had a lot of the "stage directions" removed during editing.
Both of these decisions add to the uncomfortable feeling of reading the story.
I am impressed with how Jackson moves all her characters around the house, in and out of rooms, without generating confusion in the reader. Everything feels very distinct and yet one whole. It feels remarkably like you are "there" with them all. Almost like a dance of its own.
Oops I got a bit ahead of today's reading in my post for yesterday's reading - which I just wrote today!
Yes, the soufflé, with its aroma of French sophistication and culinary accomplishment. Is it a piece with the Dr. reading Pamela and Theodora going to private school to learn to curtsy (tongue in cheek maybe but I am guessing the private school was real). That is I wonder if Jackson is not playing with some tropes of class to make points about her characters?
Theodora's tracking - I keep forgetting she is clairvoyant and find her turns of personality unsettling, dangerous for Eleanor. It is very hard not to worry about Eleanor all the time and feel desperately sorry for her. Saying that, it strikes me that this is hard thing to pull off, to put someone so compromised at the center of your book.
Mrs. Dudley seems to be going all out on the cooking front! From my first impression, I had honestly expected her to cook the bare minimum in terms of both quantity and quality.
My favorite passage from today's reading is Eleanor talking about all the doors in the kitchen: "Eleanor turned abruptly and went back to the veranda. "I wonder if she had Dudley cut in extra doors for her. I wonder how she likes working in a kitchen where a door in back of her might open without her knowing it. I wonder, actually, just what Mrs. Dudley is in the habit of meeting in her kitchen so that she wants to make sure that she'll find a way out no matter which direction she runs. I wonder--"
Theo cuts her off, but this is one of the scariest passages for me so far. The repetition of I wonder, when it seems like she's almost reciting fact (though I doubt that the doors were cut in extra, somehow--I don't feel the house would allow it). The passage just builds and builds until Theo cuts in, and I get the feeling that the scariest and truest thing was just about to be said.
And it reminds me of Eleanor asking about them being able to break out of the house. Is Mrs. Dudley also always ready to break out? Or do her rules (never there in the dark, in the night) keep her safe?
"'Shut up,' Theodora said amiably." What to do with the "amiably"? Is Theo just annoyed or is she shutting down some sinister utterance? Calming Eleanor?
I recently read "Like Mother Used to Make," which I loved, but what happens to David made me exclaim out loud. I wanted desperately for him to say something, but he seemed to be under a spell. Also, his obsession with having all his things in their place when he's not using them makes me think of Mrs. Dudley's repeated assertion that the dishes belong on the shelf between meals.
Archetype-ally speaking, mothers are supposed to make things comfortable and cozy, which Eleanor's mother did not. Mrs. Dudley is an unexpectedly good cook, but no one would call her warm. Hill House seems to woo with its comfortable beds, but it's the opposite of motherly too. Nicholson's comment about the house representing a "malevolent matriarchal figure" makes sense to me.
Welp! If being a bad cook shows that something is off about a person, that would explain a lot about me😂.
As for the comfortable house and delicious meals, I believe it’s just HH’s way of keeping people IN if they are brave/crazy/curious enough to even go inside in the first place, based on its exterior “vileness.” Perhaps Mrs.Dudley is under the spell of HH, and therefore able to create even a perfect soufflé in such an unbalanced kitchen. Or maybe she has done it for so long, she is used to it. It makes me wonder if she could do it in anyone else’s kitchen that is on level ground.
Which brings me to the next intriguing idea. It’s interesting to contemplate Eleanor’s question about returning to a “real” house after living at Hill House. I think of Eleanor’s life, and wonder if she questions whether or not she can ever have a “normal” life, like most of her peers, after living the life she has lived for so many years. Maybe her question isn’t about HH-?
I also think about anyone who is brought up in a traumatic family situation, or someone who goes through trauma at any point in their life, and how they wonder if their life can ever go back to as it was before- after it has been turned upside down; especially if they were raised in a very dysfunctional family; or abused, or were forced to deal with a catastrophic event or chronic illness.
Almost all of SJ’s characters seem to have been “broken” by something, and we watch as they struggle to put the pieces of themselves back together- Once you’ve been to that place, whatever it is, can you return back; whole?
“It’s obviously a bad idea to lie to a clairvoyant” is obviously my favorite sentence of this discussion group, so far.
The relationship I’ve hyper-fixated on in this section is Eleanor’s with her mother. One instance that struck me was the moment the Doctor reveals the library to which Eleanor replies, “‘I can’t go in there... My mother-‘ not knowing what she wanted to tell them, and pressed herself against the wall.”
The second moment was in the kitchen. “It’s a nice kitchen... In my mother’s house the kitchen was dark and narrow, and nothing you cooked there ever had any taste or color.”
Eleanor, the narrator says in the opening chapter, “would have gone anywhere” following the abuse imposed by her mother as she cared for the sick woman and following her death.
Hill House itself has been described as sick, leprous, which parallels with Eleanor’s mother. Tending to her mother rendered her unable to have a happy moment in her adult life and unable to have anyone to love. Is the House a representation of a malevolent matriarchal figure? Does the house keep her from being able to connect to the others in the way they seem to connect to one another and even to her without her being able to reciprocate? Most every physical interaction with Theo turns sour with Eleanor’s internal feelings of dirtiness, for instance. It seems her trauma from her mother is possibly being replicated by the house in that the house has got her under its spell (almost falling off the veranda if not for Luke catching her, thinking the kitchen is lovely, great first night of sleep) which keeps her from forming true community with the others.
Yes! Eleanor’s continued mentioning of her dead mother feels very Norman Bates! Both Hill House and Psycho were written in 1959! I wonder what triggered this creepy mother theme.
I wonder if it’s a remnant of the shift in family unit during WWII/ many families losing the father figure to the war literally or figuratively. Instead of finding a NEW family unit, American families forced/recreated/maintained a patriarchal structure with the mother at the head instead of finding a new, healthy, sustainable unit such as you would find in ancient matriarchal communities.
If the house is the matriarch, it has placed itself at the head of a patriarchal system put in place by Hugh Crain. The patriarchy will keep this group (Theo, Luke, Doc, Eleanor) from being able to form a new, healthy community.
Yes! Sounds right. definitely something to do with dominating moms. Even Stephen King’s Carrie had a dominating mom. Carrie’s dad was killed in a construction accident rather than a war but same concept as you describe! Good call!
FWIW, Jackson also had a dominating mom.
What is it about dominating moms that make them good horror story subjects? Is it that their children have mixed emotions and want to kill their moms? 🤔
I’m a musical theatre professor and, oddly enough I’m teaching on Gypsy the musical tomorrow. Another 1959 piece about a domineering mother!
The Dr calls the house “A masterpiece of architectural misdirection” So it was intentionally designed to make its inhabitants feel off balance. This makes me think the creepy house vibe is a creation of a mortal being and not a haunting. I have inner ear issues that make me feel off balance and it feels like you are possessed in that you try to move your body one way and it pulls you in another. That’s creepy.
The doctor does seem to blame the people who made the house this chapter--my ears perked up when he said "Hugh Crain must have detested other people and their sensible squared-away houses, because he made his house to suit his mind."
I love thinking about strange Mrs. Dudley and her soufflé. As others have said, the strange, dark feelings Eleanor has about her mother also seem to haunt this chapter. But the doctor is just as creepy as Mrs. Dudley. His cool talk about suicide also unnerves me:
“Can you see the little trapdoor up there in the shadows?” he was asking. “It leads out onto a little balcony, and of course that’s where she is commonly supposed to have hanged herself—the girl, you remember. A most suitable spot, certainly; more suitable for suicides, I would think, than for books. She is supposed to have tied the rope onto the iron railing and then just stepped—. . . ”
The suicide seems to haunt the house and all of them except the doctor. I’m beginning to get more than a little suspicious of his creepy, calculating motives.
Love Jackson's use of repetition. Eleanor: "What happens when you go back to a real house?...I mean - a - well a *real* house?" Theo, when she glimpses the statue: "It's not there...I don't believe it's there." It underscores the irreality Jackson creates with the house.
There's a couple of stylistic things that have struck me in these last couple of chapters. One is the slight head hopping going on, sometimes within the same sentence. The other, possibly linked, is the movement of the group around the house. It's making the reader work harder because we aren't told about all the travel around the house, I'm sure this would get repetitive so I imagine Jackson perhaps had a lot of the "stage directions" removed during editing.
Both of these decisions add to the uncomfortable feeling of reading the story.
I am impressed with how Jackson moves all her characters around the house, in and out of rooms, without generating confusion in the reader. Everything feels very distinct and yet one whole. It feels remarkably like you are "there" with them all. Almost like a dance of its own.
I agree. It's a feat to create a dramatic tour of a house, full of description but taut at the same time.
Yes! Descriptive and taut. Good way of putting it!
Oops I got a bit ahead of today's reading in my post for yesterday's reading - which I just wrote today!
Yes, the soufflé, with its aroma of French sophistication and culinary accomplishment. Is it a piece with the Dr. reading Pamela and Theodora going to private school to learn to curtsy (tongue in cheek maybe but I am guessing the private school was real). That is I wonder if Jackson is not playing with some tropes of class to make points about her characters?
Theodora's tracking - I keep forgetting she is clairvoyant and find her turns of personality unsettling, dangerous for Eleanor. It is very hard not to worry about Eleanor all the time and feel desperately sorry for her. Saying that, it strikes me that this is hard thing to pull off, to put someone so compromised at the center of your book.
Mrs. Dudley seems to be going all out on the cooking front! From my first impression, I had honestly expected her to cook the bare minimum in terms of both quantity and quality.
My favorite passage from today's reading is Eleanor talking about all the doors in the kitchen: "Eleanor turned abruptly and went back to the veranda. "I wonder if she had Dudley cut in extra doors for her. I wonder how she likes working in a kitchen where a door in back of her might open without her knowing it. I wonder, actually, just what Mrs. Dudley is in the habit of meeting in her kitchen so that she wants to make sure that she'll find a way out no matter which direction she runs. I wonder--"
Theo cuts her off, but this is one of the scariest passages for me so far. The repetition of I wonder, when it seems like she's almost reciting fact (though I doubt that the doors were cut in extra, somehow--I don't feel the house would allow it). The passage just builds and builds until Theo cuts in, and I get the feeling that the scariest and truest thing was just about to be said.
And it reminds me of Eleanor asking about them being able to break out of the house. Is Mrs. Dudley also always ready to break out? Or do her rules (never there in the dark, in the night) keep her safe?
"'Shut up,' Theodora said amiably." What to do with the "amiably"? Is Theo just annoyed or is she shutting down some sinister utterance? Calming Eleanor?
I recently read "Like Mother Used to Make," which I loved, but what happens to David made me exclaim out loud. I wanted desperately for him to say something, but he seemed to be under a spell. Also, his obsession with having all his things in their place when he's not using them makes me think of Mrs. Dudley's repeated assertion that the dishes belong on the shelf between meals.
Archetype-ally speaking, mothers are supposed to make things comfortable and cozy, which Eleanor's mother did not. Mrs. Dudley is an unexpectedly good cook, but no one would call her warm. Hill House seems to woo with its comfortable beds, but it's the opposite of motherly too. Nicholson's comment about the house representing a "malevolent matriarchal figure" makes sense to me.
Welp! If being a bad cook shows that something is off about a person, that would explain a lot about me😂.
As for the comfortable house and delicious meals, I believe it’s just HH’s way of keeping people IN if they are brave/crazy/curious enough to even go inside in the first place, based on its exterior “vileness.” Perhaps Mrs.Dudley is under the spell of HH, and therefore able to create even a perfect soufflé in such an unbalanced kitchen. Or maybe she has done it for so long, she is used to it. It makes me wonder if she could do it in anyone else’s kitchen that is on level ground.
Which brings me to the next intriguing idea. It’s interesting to contemplate Eleanor’s question about returning to a “real” house after living at Hill House. I think of Eleanor’s life, and wonder if she questions whether or not she can ever have a “normal” life, like most of her peers, after living the life she has lived for so many years. Maybe her question isn’t about HH-?
I also think about anyone who is brought up in a traumatic family situation, or someone who goes through trauma at any point in their life, and how they wonder if their life can ever go back to as it was before- after it has been turned upside down; especially if they were raised in a very dysfunctional family; or abused, or were forced to deal with a catastrophic event or chronic illness.
Almost all of SJ’s characters seem to have been “broken” by something, and we watch as they struggle to put the pieces of themselves back together- Once you’ve been to that place, whatever it is, can you return back; whole?