The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: 9780143129370

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• The Haunting of Hill House: Characters
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During the watch for this review, I found myself looking around the screen admiring the set rather than paying attention to the movie and had to rewind a couple times. The main conflict of ‘The Haunting of Hill House‘ by Shirley Jackson is the conflict between the human main characters and the supernatural phenomena occurring within the home. This is particularly true for Eleanor, who forms a terrifying bond with the house while she’s there. This classic horror novel begins with Dr. John Montague renting out the haunted Hill House, a well-known home filled with supernatural occurrences. Hoping to prove to the world of science that supernatural/paranormal phenomena exist, he picks two people to help him record the many terrifying experiences that occur in the house. Dr. Montague explains that the house was built eighty years ago by a man named Hugh Crain.

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The Haunting of Hill House: Characters

Even the house itself attempting to rebel looks like a cartoon and not in a good way. While the story is interesting, the actual script and the deliveries and performances by the actors falls very flat. The culmination of the acting being a detriment is the lifeless reaction to Owen Wilson being decapitated in the fireplace. The way Liam Neeson looks away with a cringe is exactly how I feel about watching this movie again.

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They become almost more distant, their motivations a bit more hidden and even more malevolent. Theodora goes from Eleanor’s best friend at the beginning to steadily being described as proud and envious and jealous of Eleanor. Eleanor and Theodora, begin to break down and Theodora is paired with Luke towards the end. ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ is one of the best gothic horror novels of the 20th century.

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But, even as she leaves, she realizes that there is nothing she can do to get away from the house. Eleanor suddenly accelerates into an oak tree, feeling as though she’s totally lost control of her actions. In the last pages, Jackson explains that Dr. Montague published a paper explaining everything that happened in Hill House, and no one believes him. Hill House has two caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, who refuse to stay near the house at night. The blunt and single-minded Mrs. Dudley is a source of some comic relief.

Because from that moment on, the House has a very real personality. It feels twisted, wrong, just off by a small small margin, just enough to make you uncomfortable. Of all of Shirley Jackson’s works, “The Lottery” is considered to be one of the best works of horror ever written. The story is a chilling depiction of a small town’s idea of justice that’s read in schools around the world. Gothic horror often contains elements of romance, madness, and violence, as well as psychological and philosophical questions.

I remember printing many listed directions to get to where I needed to go and if you missed a turn, you were not given instant alternative directions. Not supernatural phenomena themselves, we’re left unsure to some degree as to what Hill House actually is or what inhabits it, but how the house destroys Eleanor. You see it stripping away her sanity, bit by bit, layer by layer until there’s nothing left. You see it isolating her, tearing them apart steadily to eventually crush Eleanor. That’s scarier than anything else in the book, how Hill House takes every insecurity of Eleanor’s, her abandonment issues, her isolation and turns them against her.

Crain designed Hill House as a series of cloistered, maze-like concentric circles that are almost impossible to navigate. Tragically, Crain’s wife never set foot into the house; she died when her carriage overturned in the driveway. Bitter and depressed, Crain stayed to raise his two daughters in the house. Over the years, the daughters fought over ownership of the house, and the house eventually landed in the hands of the older sister’s caretaker, a young woman from town.

‘Frankenstein‘ by Mary Shelley (1818) is another unavoidable comparison, as is Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula‘ published many years before Jackson’s novel in 1897. When the book was published, critics declared it a complete success, celebrating Jackson’s skill and superiority in the realm of gothic horror. This praise feels particularly emphatic as many horror novels of the time and decades prior were dismissed as nothing more than penny dreadfuls, lacking any real literary substance. ‘The Haunting of Hill House‘ by Shirley Jackson was first published in 1959. It is a chilling ghost story that has been adapted for film and television numerous times, each time offering its own unique take on the sinister events that take place in the titular house. All four of the inhabitants begin to experience strange events while in the house, including unseen noises and ghosts roaming the halls at night, strange writing on the walls and other unexplained events.

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Fearing for her safety, Montague and Luke declare that she must leave. Eleanor, however, now regards the house as her home and resists. Montague and Luke force her into her car; she bids them farewell and drives off, but before leaving the grounds of Hill House, she propels the car into a large oak tree to her implied death. Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience. Some of the themes explored in the novel include the power of suggestion, the influence of the past on the present, the nature of fear, and the relationship between the supernatural and the psychological.

The book follows a group of four investigators who spend multiple weeks in a haunted house with a long, dark history hoping to record supernatural phenomena. The home exerts an impressive pull on one of the characters —Eleanor, and she has an impossible time escaping it. The story of ‘The Haunting of Hill House‘ is a classic horror novel by Shirley Jackson, published in 1959.

Keep reading to hear from Amy Goldsmith about how the Horror genre has inspired her and what Horror books she recommends YA readers pick up next. Theodora finds the phrase “Help Eleanor” and “Come home, Eleanor” written on the wall. As time progresses, Mrs. Montague, John’s wife, shows up and states that even though her husband has made no progress, she’s going to change everything and record all the supernatural occurrences in the home.