Isaac Frimpong
Gothic Literature
Prof. Scanlan
12/10/2020
Eleanor And The Haunted Hill House
Are Paranormal and Supernatural events uncanny or are they constructed by our mind because of inner emotions of discomfort and fear towards a Gothic space? The answer can go both ways depending on who the question is related to. Others fear supernatural events and the unknown while others thirst for supernatural events and paranormal activities thriving on the thrills it gives whether they seek an adventure or a name as a result of their findings and investigation just like Dr. Montague in Shirley Jackson’s novel “The Haunting of Hill House”. The novel is fully packed with many gothic characteristics that unravel the supernatural events which take place at the Hill House. In the novel, the characters are observed to have a typical connection with each other that contributes to their fate at the end of their journey in the hill house, Eleanor and the Hill House are doubles in the novel because of the connection they shared during Eleanor’s stay at the Hill House. They opposed each other while they also share mutual comparison in their characteristics and actions. This why I picked this double because the connection they share in the novel cooperates with Eleanor’s fate and the status of the house.
Eleanor always wanted to escape from the reality of hatred she had for her sister and her deceased mother, she disliked her relatives and had no friends. She was a loner, isolated, and unhappy individual. Shirley Jackson writes in “The Haunting of Hill House” “The only person in the world she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister. She disliked her brother-in-law and her five-year-old niece, and she had no friends.”(Jackson Chapter 1, P.2) She viewed the Hill House as a fresh beginning and a solution to finally turn her life around and experience the desire towards engaging adulthood. Taking the car her sister and she argued about was just the beginning of Eleanor’s happiness, she felt she was free and a new person. The environment of Hill House was pretty gothic according to the description from Eleanor as she made her away from the gates in her. Hill House contained a few Gothic Architecture in Eleanor’s description of the strange environment, she states “ they put towers and turrets and buttresses and wooden lace on them, even sometimes Gothic spires and gargoyles; nothing was ever left undecorated. Perhaps Hill House has a tower or a secret chamber, or even a passageway going off into the hills and probably used by smugglers” ( Jackson, Chapter 1 P.5). The Hill House’s construction was Gothic with the addition of the Gargoyle which is included in the Gothic Architecture
The doubles, Eleanor and The Hill House opposed each other in many ways. The Hill House made her distressed and uneasy despite her low temper which was part of her lonely nature. She got the strange feeling of what the was like before she got there and it wasn’t a good feeling. To the readers, the Hill house feels alive because of the human attributes and characteristics Shirley Jackson gives the house she writes “ No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice” (Jackson Chapter 2, P.1). Eleanor’s interaction with the house is what proved that they opposed each other rather are attracted to each other. She starts to get second thoughts about coming to the Hill house as she starts to get cold and uncomfortable. She was afraid, and there was a voice continually telling her “Get away from here, get away” (Jackson, Chapter 2 P.2). We wouldn’t know if Eleanor was a threat to the Hill house that’s why she was experiencing supernatural events and the paranormal phenomenon that the research team experiences at the Hill house including the mysterious writing on the wall discovered by Luke in Chapter 5 addressing Eleanor for her help and to come home. Though the interaction between Eleanor and the Hill house wasn’t always amicable, the freedom Eleanor got from moving into the Hill house was pleasing and comforting to her Shirley Jackson writes “It was a surprise to find that she had slept until after eight, and she thought that it was ironic that the first good night’s sleep she had had in years had come to her in Hill House”(Jackson, Chapter 4 P1). She was able to finally be herself and relax while evolving into the perfect adult she always thought of with the people around her.
Ultimately, I chose Eleanor and the Hill House as doubles in the novel because of the connection they shared during Eleanor’s stay at the Hill House. I paired them together because of how they oppose each other and interact with each other. The Hill is given human attributes and Eleanor in some way relates to some of those attributes and at the same time opposes some of them because they are a threat to her life.
WORKS CITED
-Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
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