The Haunting of Hill House

[osprey_archer]

I reread Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House last week, and argued violently with the introduction in the edition I read. The author argues that sex is “a topic Jackson avoided,” when in fact Jackson’s books are peppered with references to sex and sexual assault, to the extent that it forms part of the oppressive atmosphere in many of her books.

Most of the references to sex are oblique - but they’re omnipresent! They’re peppered all over The Road through the Wall (two of the characters are implied to have sex behind the titular wall, for God’s sake) and The Sundial (Fanny Halloran knocking on Essex’s door at night, whispering, “I’m only forty-three!”), and implied sexual assaults are structurally important in Hangsaman and The Bird’s Nest.

The theme is less persistent in The Haunting of Hill House itself, admittedly. Eleanor's emotional needs are so great that any sexual frustration takes a distant back seat. But you can’t say an author avoids a topic when it’s a major component in two-thirds of her novels.

The introduction writer is also baffled by Eleanor’s confession that “I am always afraid of being alone” - “an astonishing remark, considering how many of her fantasies involve solitude and seclusion.” Well, of course: Eleanor holds only the most fragile hope of ever getting what she really wants (human love and warmth and connection), so of course she fantasizes about something that feels more possible: a solitude that she actually enjoys. Perhaps with the right trappings, the right setting, the house with the rose bushes and the white cat and the white curtains - perhaps then she could enjoy solitude, instead of feeling trapped and alone even (especially!) when she is surrounded by people.

Eleanor wants people, but they make her feel inadequate. She really can’t seem to cope with more than one person at a time: she wants to be the center of attention and hates this quality in herself so much that she can barely recognize it (her bitterest accusation against others is that they want to be the center of attention), and in a group of three or more there are inevitably moments where the other people are paying more attention to each other than they are to Eleanor.

Of course she fantasizes about basking in happy solitude. That’s so much simpler, so much easier to envision, than a life where she can actually enjoy being with people.

Comments

[kore]

The author argues that sex is “a topic Jackson avoided,”

//EYEROLL Yyyyyeah no. I've seen this argued elsewhere about Jackson, and it's really kind of puzzling. There's a similar weird take on queerness in her books. I think, like so much else about her work, it's kind of liminal, and people don't know how to categorize her, because she wasn't about separate categories at all.

Re Eleanor, she's so isolated and alienated, but has she really ever been alone in her life? She was stuck with her mother and I don't think she ever went to college, then she nursed her dying mother, then she has a literal cot at her sister's or something. And even at Hill House she's sharing with Theodora. And the big moment with the house is when she 'agrees' desperately to join it, that it can take her -- even right at the very end, she thinks "I am doing this, me, all by myself," which is very questionable. People always want something from her that she can't give, or she never measures up. True happy solitude could definitely linger as a dream.

[sovay]

Re Eleanor, she's so isolated and alienated, but has she really ever been alone in her life?

Which makes it both attractive and terrifying: who is she without some superstructure (family, temporary colleagues, house) to tell her?

[osprey_archer]

It's so puzzling! It's like if the critical consensus on Narnia was that it has nothing to do with Christianity, nope, why would you even read the lion sacrifice scene as analogous to the crucifixion, don't you know that Christianity was a topic C. S. Lewis avoided? When really that topic is right there all the time, right underneath the surface.

But of course sexuality in Jackson is intertwined with queerness (Theo and her "friend," Theo and Eleanor, Natalie and Tony), and also with sexual assault - and it occurs to me that perhaps Jackson's engagement with sexual assault is also difficult for critics, because it doesn't follow the usual literary Tess of the d'Urbervilles pattern, where the girl is utterly ruined by it.

My impression (this arises mainly from movie reviews, but I think it's true of books too) is that many critics recognize just a few stories about women: "girl meets boy," "girl succeeds in male-dominated field," "sad girl is beautifully sad" - and they just can't cope when they have to parse something that deviates from those expected patterns. And of course none of Jackson's stories fit any of those patterns.

Eleanor lived with her mom till her mom died, at which point she moved in with her sister and slept on a cot in the baby's room (an unpaid live-in nanny!), so the only solitude she's ever actually experienced is emotional - feeling alone while surrounded by people. So of course the idea of living alone seems attractive to her - but also scary. What if living alone by herself is just as lonely as living surrounded by other people who don't want her? That scene where Theo asks "Do you always go where you're not wanted?" and Eleanor answers, "No one has ever wanted me" - my heart.

[sovay]

The author argues that sex is “a topic Jackson avoided,”

Well, that's not a very good introduction.

[osprey_archer]

It's not even an argument, really. She says that as an aside, as if it's so obvious and well-known that she doesn't even have to prove it.