mtvessel | Women and Property

Nov 2020
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson – Penguin Classics, 2009
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This is one of those books that may be too subtle for its own good. I read most of it in a state of mild annoyance with the characters and the author for the obvious things that she was not telling us. It was only towards the end that it snapped into focus and I saw just how clever Jackson was being. As a told tale, it is brilliant. But the moment-to-moment experience of reading it, at least for the first time, was not.

The story concerns an investigation into the paranormal. Dr John Montague. an academic who is obsessed with the analysis of supernatural manifestations, recruits a group of "assistants" with connections to the paranormal to stay at Hill House and investigate the unsavoury stories that surround it. These are Theodora, a free spirit with a talent for card-reading; Luke Sanderson, whom we are told is "a liar and a thief" and who is also the heir to Hill House; and main viewpoint character Eleanor Vance, a reserved and shy woman who has spent her early adulthood resentfully caring for her disabled, demanding and now deceased mother. All three are running away from situations that are uncomfortable for them, which perhaps explains why they are so eager to accept Montague's invitation, even though, as Eleanor observes the first time she sets eyes on it, the house is vile and diseased and should be avoided at all costs. She is of course right; the jolly 1920s party atmosphere that the four investigators create among themselves is disturbed by a series of increasingly uncanny and terrifying events. But what - or who - is responsible for them?

Much of the atmosphere comes from the miasma of uncertainty that surrounds every aspect of the narrative. After the introductory paragraphs about them, we learn almost nothing more about the personal histories of the protagonists and have to infer their personalities from dialogue, which is largely jokey banter that is clearly insincere. The events of the haunting are vividly described, but the characters don't always experience them together, and disagree about what they mean when they do. All this is fine, but sometimes the vagueness goes too far. For example, Montague tells the history of the long feud between the two daughters of Hugh Crain, the builder, for possession of the house, but he never names them despite the fact that their names must have been on the legal papers that he examined to construct the story. From a plotting point of view I can sort of see why - Jackson is teasing the reader into making parallels between the sisters and the main characters, including the possibility that one of them shares a name - but the lack of plausibility took me out of the story and hence blunted its scariness.

This happened in several other places, particularly in the relationships of the characters, which change dramatically for no reason that we are told. For example, Theodora, Luke and Montague adopt an increasingly condescending attitude to Eleanor, referring to her as "Nell", and it is unclear why. Towards the end a few things become apparent that provide at least a superficial explanation for some of the lacunae, but trying to put all the events of the novel into a consistent narrative is, I fear, a exercise in futility.

This is probably as it should be, but as a result, it is difficult to say what, if anything, the book is about. One theme I did notice was the close relationship between women and property, both in the experience of existing in a place and as a symbol of independent living - a parallel with We have Always Lived in the Castle. I think it's also fair to say - and I hope that this is not too much of a spoiler - that the title of the novel is intentionally misleading. It is not the house that is haunted. It is the house that is doing the haunting. And that is a very interesting idea, but for me its execution was a little lacking. At least on the first read.