WARNING: This episode contains SPOILERS!!!!
In 1959, one hundred and sixty five years after Ann Radcliffe’s THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO, one might reasonably have thought that there was nothing new to be found under the gloomy Gothic moon. Such a supposition, however, would be discounting the immense talent of Shirley Jackson, one of America’s greatest writers.
In THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, Jackson not only created a uniquely terrifying novel–per the master horror writer, Stephen King— but she also innovates the Gothic genre. In this episode, Sonja and Vanessa explore what it was about Jackson’s life that made her the only person who could write this singular book. And yet, despite HILL HOUSE's sui generis status, the novel depicts a widespread, bleak existence that many female readers of the mid-twentieth century would have recognized. Jackson fully explores the metaphorical possibilities of the Gothic genre to dramatize invisible forces shaping 1950's and 1960's American women’s identities, dreams, and place in the fabled nuclear family.
Along the way, Sonja speculates on the possibility that all children carry a dash of the demonic, and Vanessa confirms that the family “portrait” that Sonja thinks is naked is, indeed, naked.
REFERENCES:
Here is a link to the article by Barb Lien-Cooper that makes the case that Hill House works to rid itself of the non-Crain-family guests, not unlike the Oscar Wilde story, "The Canterville Ghost," (that is mentioned in Jackson’s novel).
Vanessa quotes a writer wondering if we are beyond needing a haunted house metaphor to express the condition of women’s lives, and it’s worth checking out the whole article, by C.J. Hauser, entitled “Some Reasons My Niece is Probably the Reincarnation of Shirley Jackson.”
To read about what Vanessa calls the “happy ending” theory, check out this fascinating 2017 article by Brittany Roberts, “Helping Eleanor Come Home: A Reassessment of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.” Roberts makes a very convincing argument that the house is actually trying to help Eleanor. Roberts argues: “If previous readings of Hill House have largely focused on the relationship between Eleanor and Hill House as abusive and unidirectional, a relationship that ignites a process of madness and dissolution of selfhood for Eleanor, I instead argue that the process undergone by Eleanor and Hill House is one of mutual fulfilment, a process of accommodating one another’s needs. As I demonstrate, Hill House encourages Eleanor to achieve the romance of isolation that she fantasises about, thereby propelling Eleanor to actualise both the self she has begun to construct through fantasy and her most inwardly cherished desires.15 In return, Eleanor provides a genuine love and appreciation for Hill House and the seclusion, isolation, and silence it promises. Far from participating in the dissolution of Eleanor’s selfhood, then, Hill House, and the many nonhuman emblems of domesticity and seclusion that Eleanor comes to care for throughout the novel, are instead co-creators of Eleanor’s newfound identity.”
