The Haunting of Hill House
 1st edition cover | |
| Author | Shirley Jackson |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Horror novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | 1959 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 246 pp |
| ISBN | NA Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
The Haunting of Hill House (not to be confused with Richard Matheson's novel Hell House, made into a film titled The Legend of Hell House) is a 1959 novel by author Shirley Jackson. Considered one of the finest literary ghost stories published in the twentieth century,[1] it has been made into two feature films and a play. It has often been compared to Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw and Stephen King's The Shining, a novel which was partially inspired by it.[citation needed] Jackson's novel relies on terror rather than horror to elicit emotion in the reader, utilizing complex relationships between the mysterious events in the house and the characters’ psyches.
Plot summary
The story revolves around five main characters: Dr. John Montague, an investigator of the supernatural; two young women, Eleanor and Theodora; and a young man, Luke, the heir to Hill House, who plays host to the others. The fifth main character is Hill House, an eighty year-old mansion built by a man named Hugh Crain.
One character, Doctor Montague, hopes to prove scientific evidence of the existence of the supernatural. He rents Hill House for a summer and invites a number of individuals to stay there as his guests. Of these invitees, whom he has chosen because at one point or another they have all experienced paranormal events, only Eleanor and Theodora accept. The story follows Eleanor as she travels to the house, where she and Theodora will live in isolation with Montague and Luke with the exception of two caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, who refuse to stay near Hill House at night. The blunt and single-minded Mrs. Dudley is a source of some comic relief.
The four begin to form friendships as Doctor Montague explains the building’s history, which encompasses suicide and other violent deaths. Eleanor resents having lived as a recluse who dutifully cared for her smothering invalid mother. She later meets Theodora (the only other female character for much of the story), with whom she develops a sister-like relationship.
All four of the inhabitants begin to experience supernatural events while in the house, including sounds and unseen spirits roaming the halls at night, 'blood' spattered on walls and among clothes, and other unexplained events. Eleanor tends to experience things to which the others are oblivious. At the same time, Eleanor may be losing touch with reality, and the narrative raises the possibility that at least some of the things that Eleanor witnesses are merely products of her imagination. The bossy and arrogant Mrs. Montague arrives, and applies her own methods to solving the mysteries of the house. Her lack of social skills provides another source of comic relief in the novel.
Many of the hauntings that occur throughout the book are only vaguely described, or else are partly hidden from the characters themselves. They might be in a bedroom with an unseen force trying the door, or Eleanor may realize after the fact that the hand she was holding in the darkness was not Theodora’s. In one episode, as Theodora and Eleanor walk outside Hill House at night, Theodora looks behind them and screams in fear for Eleanor to run, though the book never explains what Theodora saw.
By this point in the book it is becoming clear to the characters that the house is beginning to possess Eleanor. In fear for her safety, Doctor Montague declares that she must leave. But now under Hill House’s spell, Eleanor resists. The others practically have to force her into her car, but she then kills herself by crashing the car at full speed into a large oak tree on the property in order to defy them all and "stay" at a house she now regards as being her home. The reader is left uncertain about whether Eleanor was simply an emotionally disturbed woman who committed suicide, or whether her death at Hill House was a fulfillment of her destiny.
Criticism
Stephen King, in his "Danse Macabre," a non-fiction review of the horror genre, lists The Haunting of Hill House as one of the finest horror novels of the late 20th century and provides a lengthy review.
Adaptations
The book has been adapted to film twice, once in 1963 and once in 1999, both times under the title The Haunting. The 1963 version is a relatively faithful adaptation, while the 1999 version departs considerably from Jackson's novel.
It isn't to be confused with the 1973 film The Legend of Hell House, which was based on the 1971 novel Hell House.
References
- 1984, The Haunting of Hill House, Penguin, ISBN 0-14-007108-3
See also
- The Haunting (1963), the first film adaptation.
- The Haunting (1999), the second adaptation.