Tue 8 Mar 2022
Reviewed by Tony Baer: SHIRLEY JACKSON – The Haunting of Hill House.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[11] Comments
SHIRLEY JACKSON – The Haunting of Hill House. Viking, hardcover, 1959. Popular Library, paperback, 1962. Reprinted many times. Film#1: Argyle, 1963, as The Haunting (director: Robert Wise). Film #2: DreamWorks, 1999, as The Haunting (director: Jan de Bont).
Eleanor is lonely. Very, very lonely.
A 30ish shy caretaker for her now dead mother, she lets a room in her sister’s house.
Lucky her, she sees an ad. A professor is looking for volunteers to spend the summer at a well-known supposedly ‘haunted house’ to research psychic phenomena and prove the existence of the paranormal. Room and board included.
Eleanor’s got nothing better to do. So writes back to the PO Box, steals her sister’s car and drives out to the house.
There’s a group of four: Professor, Eleanor, another unattached young woman, and Luke, an eligible bachelor who stands to inherit the estate.
The house is labyrinth. Lots of doors and halls and connected rooms, many without windows. It’s nearly impossible to navigate. It’s dark. The heavy doors won’t stay open.
Inexplicable noises appear in the night. The doors shake. They’re coming for me. I should let myself go. Then they’ll leave you alone, Eleanor says to the others. They’re only after me.
One night, Eleanor’s name is found written on a wall. Urging her to come home. Maybe she wrote it herself.
But I have no home, says Eleanor.
This is my home.
The home wants me here.
Eleanor begins to believe, more and more, that she belongs. Finally, she belongs. She must stay here forever.
Her erratic behavior is interfering with the Professor’s investigations. She’s becoming very annoying to the others. They ask her to leave.
But she can’t.
___
Can’t say I loved it. It was okay. A bit of a slog. And, in a haunted sense, nothing much happens. On the other hand, the subtlety of the haunting, the blurring of ghosts and schizophrenia, makes it more believable. I guess if it wasn’t called “The Haunting of Hill House†and was just called “Eleanor Goes Insane,†I’d have liked it more.
Now have read both this and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which I prefer. It is about 2 eccentric lonely sisters in a dilapidated old mansion at the center for a conservative little town. One is a beautiful and waifish maiden, thought by all to have been the murderess of the remainder of their family. The other, an ugly, impish creature, thought to be dumb, but with a hateful, plotting mind. I suppose I like it more because I believe in insanity more than I believe in ghosts.
March 8th, 2022 at 5:56 pm
I’m shocked and intrigued to see the one-and-only Shirley Jackson reviewed, above.
She and her works are well worth discussing. I just never assumed the notable crime & detective aficionados hereabouts, would harbor any interest in her highly “ambiguous” style of suspense narrative.
Jackson is an author who divides audiences. Some readers immediately get her –some never do –and that’s never the fault of any particular reader.
I myself am not a fan of many of her lesser works, such as ‘The Sundial’ or, ‘The BirdCage’ or what-have-you. I admit I found those efforts tepid.
But I have raved, drooled, and gushed all over the www, about both “Hill House” (famously adapted into one of the most powerful horror films of all time) and “Castle” (which I doubt can ever be successfully adapted).
I deem “Hill House” as the more serviceable, better-written, more restrained, more classically perfect exercise in the supernatural. It is satisfyingly spooky in an anatomical way (although many, many readers would probably disagree with this).
The general complaint of the nay-sayers is just as the reviewer expressed it above. Nothing very much happens in the plot. But an opposing cadre of readers are stupefied by this reaction, and rave about the adroit psychological inventiveness found in ‘Eleanor’. The debate is unsolvable.
I think both camps should always be able to step back and enjoy Jackson’s dab hand with short horror tales, however. “The Lottery” is a gem appreciated by generations of fiction readers. Jackson’s short works are well-received; heavily-anthologized; sharp and intelligent and succinct. Most fans would probably agree with that.
When it comes to, “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” –her other most famous novel –I know where I stand with regard to the muddle over Jackson’s reputation. I’m firmly and resolutely in admiration of this work. It is much more so my personal favorite from her than is, “Hill House”.
“Castle” –for me –was a deeply disturbing work of the supernatural; in a way I hesitate to attempt to describe. It affected me for a long, long, time after I consumed it. I don’t know how many other readers found it that way, but I certainly did. It’s so personal a reading experience that I’ve never gone back to it. I’d be too apprehensive to try.
The ill-starred Blackwood family –their fey, wooded estate; the closely intimate sisters “Constance” and “Merricat” –this is not just the story is about. It’s just gruesome in some subtle and ugly way; nasty; unwholesome.
Though not as technically sound as ‘Hill House” I privately rank “We Have Always Lived in the Castle” as the most reverberating work of the supernatural I’ve ever encountered. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum from great examples of graphic horror, but still worth highest honors overall.
On the strength of this one grisly read I’ve always rated Jackson the finest authoress in her genre. I’ve called her out as the best female fiction author in America and the best in her century. I’ve even gone so far as to rate her overall as our third or fourth best American writer, regardless of gender.
That’s going about as far as praise can go, for a cynic and misogynist like myself.
March 8th, 2022 at 9:07 pm
There’s an interesting interpretation of this book, namely that there is no haunting and no ghost, but that Eleanor is causing all the ghost like goings on with her latent power, and as is said at the end “whatever walks in Hill House walks alone.” That Eleanor is the only ghost who ever walks there or ever will, the house only a creepy old place until she gives it life with her latent powers and neurosis.
It is one of the few great literary horror novels, intelligent, disturbing, but with few ‘gotcha” moments, certainly, none of the gore or jumpup moments of modern horror novels or films.
I have always found it more effective for that, but frankly prefer the frisson to the shock.
I always think of Richard Matheson’s THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE as a companion piece, a book with more standard chills, but also one where the ‘supernatural’ is questionable and the ‘evil’ human foibles.
March 9th, 2022 at 5:58 am
“I suppose I like it more because I believe in insanity more than I believe in ghosts.”
The old exchange: “Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No. but I’m afraid of them.”
March 9th, 2022 at 9:42 am
And let’s not forget her humorous LIFE AMONG THE SAVAGES and RAISING DEMONS.
I remember reading THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE and thinking, “you know who would be perfect to play Eleanor? Julie Harris.”
So, someone got it right.
March 9th, 2022 at 9:43 am
Whereas I tend to think of Matheson’s HELL HOUSE (the longer title is that of the film version, David, as opposed to the excellent and atrocious films cropping the title of the Jackson) as an attempt to play a more blatant, perfervid riff on the Jackson, which aside from sleaze adds insufficiently to the mix; A STIR OF ECHOES is a much better Matheson in this mode by me. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE is an old favorite of mine, and for me, if a bit ambiguous, falls solidly into horror rather than suspense of the psychologically-afflicted-imaginings sort.
March 9th, 2022 at 1:19 pm
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE has a great opening paragraph, one of the best. If reading that doesn’t get you excited about reading the book or perhaps send a chill up your spine, you probably will not be interested in the rest. A great study in psychological horror and perhaps suspense with enough hooks for other books that could sustain a series for years.
March 10th, 2022 at 12:08 pm
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.â€
(first line)
March 10th, 2022 at 12:59 pm
That’s interesting–going back to that first line. It really implies that the horror is in Eleanor’s own mind. Only after her rejection by the other characters (and her public admission that she is homeless) does she completely lose her bearings. She still has hope that Theodora (another hill house tenant) will let her come to live with her. It’s only after that rejection that she spirals out of control. It’s the absolute loneliness of Eleanor’s reality that she is finally forced to acknowledge–or else to accept the only available alternative: that Hill House beckons her from beyond.
March 10th, 2022 at 1:47 pm
Indeed. Grim stuff.
One more quote for fun:
“Ghosts don’t haunt us. That’s not how it works. They’re present among us because we won’t let go of them.†–Sue Grafton
March 11th, 2022 at 8:38 am
A Mystery*File Review of WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=34455
March 11th, 2022 at 11:34 am
Thanks, Bill, for remembering this old review of Dan’s. Well worth reading, including the comments.