The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

Step inside a house that feeds on longing. We tackle Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House through Eleanor Vance’s eyes, asking whether the terror is truly supernatural or the slow burn of a life starved of choice. From the first “turn back” at the gate to that devastating, decisive final drive, we unpack how Jackson binds architecture to psychology—how skewed angles, slamming doors, and whispering halls mirror a mind trained to obey.

We dig into the “cup of stars” as a compact on self-determination that Eleanor cannot keep, and we follow the charged orbit between Eleanor and Theodora—flirtation, kinship, jealousy, and a nearly spoken truth that could have changed everything. Along the way we examine Hugh Crane’s patriarchal blueprint, the sinister children’s book, and the phrase “Eleanor, come home” as both spectral beckoning and social command. Is Hill House a predator, or does it simply offer what the world withholds: belonging, even if it destroys you?

Expect a deep read on unreliable narration, gothic atmosphere, gender roles, queerness, and the grief of a found family that looks away when it matters most. We also compare book to screen and share why many adaptations miss the novel’s quiet dread in favor of louder scares. By the end, we return to Jackson’s chilling final lines to ask what endures: bricks, rules, or the loneliness that keeps them standing.

If this conversation lit a spark, subscribe, share the show with a friend who loves gothic fiction, and leave a review with your verdict: haunting, madness, or both?

Transcript

Welcome To Lit On Fire

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Lit on Fire, the podcast where literature meets controversy, where banned books, silenced voices, and dangerous ideas refuse to stay quiet. From classrooms to courtrooms, novels to news cycles, we explore how stories challenge power, expose injustice, and ignite social change.

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Our logo, a woman bound top of Burningstack boat, isn't just an image. It's a warning and a promise. A warning about what happens when voices are raised, and a promise that stories once lit are impossible to without.

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So if you're ready to question, to argue, to feel uncomfortable, and to think deeper, you're in the right place.

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I'm Peter Wetzel.

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And I'm Elizabeth Hahn.

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And this is Lit on Fire.

Why Hill House Still Disturbs

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Welcome back. Today we're stepping into one of the most unsettling houses ever built in fiction. Hill House. Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House isn't just a ghost story. It's a novel about isolation, gender roles, psychological fragility, and the terrifying pull of belonging somewhere, even if that place might destroy you. Jackson gives us a house that may be haunted or may simply reveal the cracks already inside the people who enter it. At the center is Eleanor Vance, a woman who has spent her life trapped by family obligation and loneliness. When she arrives at Hill House, she experiences something intoxicating freedom, friendship, and maybe even purpose. But Hill House has its own agenda. And Jackson leaves us with a question that readers have been arguing about for decades. Is Hill House truly supernatural? Or is the real horror the slow unraveling of a woman who has never been allowed to build a life of her own? Tonight we're debating madness versus haunting, the politics of loneliness, the dangers of belonging, and whether Eleanor is a victim or a collaborator in her own destruction. So lock the doors, keep the lights on, and remember, Hill House, not sane, stood by itself. Let's step inside. So, Peter, you know I know this book and love it. What's your opinion?

Read The Book, Skip The Adaptations

SPEAKER_01 2:11

This is one of those kinds of books. The more I think about it and ponder what I read, the more it grows on me. Initially, when I read it, after everybody telling me this is a masterpiece and you have to read this book, I was not prepared to wrap my mind around what I read. So my initial reaction was like, Did I enjoy that? I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. And I was like, well, so why is Hill House get so much praise? But the more I thought about it, the more I'm like, okay, yeah, this actually has a lot to say on so many different levels. I'm still sure, however, since you teach this on a regular basis, I am going to be a student at your feet for this discussion, and I'm okay with that. But yeah, it's something that's really worth thinking about and reading.

Plot Setup And Players

SPEAKER_00 2:55

That's what I would like to say to our listeners today, is that if you have had the misfortune maybe of watching some of the uh film versions and TV versions of The Haunting of Hill House, there's some good stuff out there. I, for one, am a huge fan of the Netflix miniseries, but not because it represents the book. It does not. It loosely pulls names from the book and ideas from the book, but it does not represent the book. I love that, but it's not the book. I would advise you to listen to some of what we have to say today and some of the discussion, and then give the book its own chance to kind of challenge your mind and prompt you to think about things on a deeper level with these characters, because what Shirley Jackson has really created with The Haunting of Hill House is a narrative about repression, a narrative about a psychological trauma and a true horror that can be seen in society through the metaphor of this terrifying house that is a character within itself. So really give us a chance to explore this a little bit. And maybe it doesn't hurt in this case, if you haven't read the book, to listen to us talk all the way through about this, even giving you spoilers, because you've seen or you're familiar with the concept of Hill House, because then maybe that helps you go back and read the book and glean more from it the first time you actually read through the text. Or maybe you just want to read it blind after our spoiler-free section and then come back and listen to the rest. But it is worth absorbing. So on that note, why don't you give us a brief synopsis of what you know on the surface of the book itself, and then we'll dive a little deeper.

What Films Get Wrong

SPEAKER_01 4:36

So the basic premise of the book is that this anthropologist, Dr. Montague, is a psychic phenomenon hobbyist, basically. And he has found this supposedly haunted house called Hill House. He's read about it, and he decides that he wants to use this as an opportunity to basically break into the field. So he goes to Hill House to study the psychic phenomenon, and in doing so, he decides to invite these two women. Our main character, Eleanor Vance, who had a supernatural experience as a child. After her father's passing, her emotional state became so upset that rocks fell from the sky and pummeled the house, which is very never explained and very weird. And then also this other woman, Theodora, who claims to have had psychic experiences as well. So he draws these women to the house, inviting them to see if they respond in some way to the house or the house responds to them. So Eleanor, who's kind of lived a sheltered life taking care of her oppressive mother, decides to take this opportunity to escape and have an adventure. And so she goes to the house and meets Dr. Montague, meets Theodora, and also another gentleman, Luke, who is the nephew of the house's current owners, the Sanderson family. And these four individuals decide to stay at the house and see what happens and weird stuff happens.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Right. And if you've seen the Liam Neeson movie, a lot of that should sound familiar to you because they kind of set up that scenario and actually do a really good job of showing the beginning part of Eleanor escaping from her family and getting to the house and this idea of developing the study of what happens in Hill House. That should all be relatively familiar for those that have seen that. So that's a good setup. And then we go from there kind of in some different directions.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

And with all these movie adaptations after that setup, it's very clear that the writers and directors have no faith in the psychological horror of this book.

Characters As Mirrors Of Eleanor

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Right. And then they go some completely different direction with a lot of the things they do. They take elements and then need to make it so much more glamorous, you know, in some ways, and not trust the terribly disturbing psychological journey that Shirley Jackson actually takes us on. So, and I wish they would. So let's dive into the cop-ile method that we go through and talk about that. So the first thing is characters. Where are you at on the characters?

SPEAKER_01 7:03

Eleanor is a fully fleshed out, very interesting character. And we know the most about her, and the book is really just about her. In my opinion, every other character that surrounds her are sort of flat and stereotypical, and we don't really get a lot of personality from them except for their singular effect on Eleanor as she's going through the psychological journey. That's how I kind of see the characters in this book.

Atmosphere As A Living House

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Yeah, and I think we talked about a little bit when we were kind of prepping for this. The one character that I might elevate a little bit would be Theodora, in that I think she's directly a foil for Eleanor. Almost the flip side of Eleanor's personality connected to her with some similarities and then showing kind of the opposite side of her in some ways. So I would agree with you. I think most of the other characters are designed to bounce off of Eleanor's developing character and then bounce off of Hill House. And the relationship, the most important relationship, is probably the character development that takes place between Eleanor and the house. Those are the two characters that have the greatest effect on one another because the house is developed as its own distinct character with its own agenda, with its own ideas, if you will. So what about atmosphere? The house is the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

I think this book is atmosphere. I mean you can't uh talk about this book without talking about the atmosphere that Shirley Jackson is has created, and that is what is so unique about Gothic literature is that it's all about the atmosphere. So I think she does a great job of, like you said, personifying the house and the feeling that it gives just by looking at it, but also the way it behaves, the way it responds to Eleanor and the way Eleanor responds to it. Like you said, it's like they're in this sort of symbiotic relationship and just all the different weird stuff that happens. I mean, I I she really pictures it, I really picture it in my head, all these doors everywhere, and they all are slamming on their own. Everybody feels just a little bit dizzy and off because none of the angles are straight. There's just some weird things going on with this house, and Shirley Jackson describes it beautifully.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Yes, and I think you have to realize when you're reading it that you're not just inside the house with the atmosphere of the house, you are inside Eleanor's brain and her psychology, if you will. So those doors opening and slamming and nothing quite being straight is also representative to me of what's going on in her mind. The atmosphere is being created by her psychological state and the state of the house, and the two merge together, and this terribly disturbing and discordant atmosphere is created as a result. It's beautiful gothic horror at its best.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

You go for the writing style because I want to hear your expertise.

Voice, Style, And Unreliability

SPEAKER_00 9:45

So the writing style is really interesting because, again, it is so much of Eleanor's voice. Even though we are talking in a third person, we are talking with an omniscience from Eleanor's perspective. And we get a lot of seamlessly blended inner dialogue with Eleanor when she is talking to other characters, when she is sitting in a room with them, and conversations are going on around her, and she is listening, and then suddenly she's thinking, I would like to bash their head in. We are hearing her voice come in seamlessly as other conversations are going on around her. And then we hear this beautiful description: images of nature, images of the house, images of light and dark. Nature suddenly twisting into something dark and maniacal, and then coming back in as something pure and then dark, and then the house sucking you back in again. So there's kind of this seamless drive to the narrative that shifts and you're taken on this journey with it. But it's all in Eleanor's mind. Not that it's not happening, but it is the journey of Eleanor's mind. So I feel like the narrative shifts from sane to insane as Eleanor goes through this journey.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

And reality to fantasy.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

And reality to fantasy. So you have to follow the narrative because it's following the state of Eleanor. And that's where it becomes kind of confusing at different points to read. I don't think you lose track of what's going on. I think you know what's going on, but you're seeing it through the eyes of someone that is not grounded at certain points in the text. So you really have to follow her state of mind. And we will read a couple points or point to a couple quotes where this is really the case when we get to the spoiler section. Would you call her a reliable narrator? No, no, no, no, no, no. This is definitely a case where we very much have an unreliable narrator, and I'm here for it.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Intrigue, this is whole of intrigue. I mean, what's going on with Eleanor, what's going on between Eleanor and the house, why the house seems to prey specifically on women? That's a question too. And there's just a lot of things to answer.

Intrigue And The Source Of Evil

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, and the intrigue is tried directly in with the plot so that we're driven constantly to try to figure out who's the bad guy here. Is it as easy as penning that on the house? The house is haunted and it's out to destroy people. Where is the real motivation? Where is the agenda? They talk about Hugh Crane, who is the ominous builder of the house, whose wives have died, and these children who lived in the house. They give you all this backstory and you're trying to figure out is he haunting the house? Is he out to get women?

SPEAKER_01 12:27

They find that book, that crazy book full of Goya paintings and of horribly graphic biblical imagery for children. That he wrote for his daughters to make them more pious. Yeah. Right. So really weird stuff.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

It's creepy, and you're trying, you're getting vibes of, okay, was this father sexually abusive, physically abusive? Is that really what's going on? And again, I think that's where some movies have picked up on some stuff, but none of that is articulated. You really do stop and you're trying to figure out, okay, where is the evil? Where is the evil in this? What is Shirley Jackson wanting me to pick up on? I tell my literature students, there are loose strings in a text, and you have to find the right one to pull on to start to unravel and find that theme and find where the central message of that author is, or more than one central message of the author. And that's what Shirley Jackson gives us a lot of loose strings to pull on, potentially some red herrings. And then we have to figure out where she's really leading us along the way. So logic, is there logic of someone who is just struggling with where they are? I don't know. But I think there's logic in this text.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah, there's logic when you pull on those psychological and those societal loose strings that you're talking about. There is a kind of logic to the narrative. As far as Eleanor goes, like we've already said, she is an unreliable narrator. She does not think logically, she thinks emotionally. Right. She responds emotionally.

Logic, Emotion, And Reader Empathy

SPEAKER_00 13:49

And we'll talk about this, but there's so many parts where there are moments to save Eleanor. And there are moments of very clear comprehension and clarity on her part. And those are the moments where you want to reach in as a reader and grab her hand and kind of hold on to her. And it is actually a very emotional read because you get very attached to Eleanor and her plight in this book as you're trying to watch her navigate this horrible situation that she's in. Enjoyment. I do enjoy this book. It is an emotional read for me. It is very emotional because of what Eleanor has gone through, what she's going through, the failure that other characters offer her instead of the hand that they should be offering her. There's a lot of emotional moments in this book, but the enjoyment is there, and I have read it several times, and I think I really grabbed something new from it every time I read it.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

It's difficult to put that word into perspective when it comes to a book that gives you this kind of feeling. But I will say this that the clue that I did enjoy it is when it came to an end, I was like, that was perfect. That made sense. Right. And if I had not enjoyed it, I might have been angry at the end of the book. But I really did. I thought it was a fascinating journey.

Spoiler Gate Opens

Madness Versus Haunting

SPEAKER_00 15:07

I agree. Okay, so we're gonna get into the spoiler section now. Again, stay with us if you would like to hear some of those things before you read, if that would enhance your read. Otherwise, turn this off, come back later after you've given this a chance, and then listen to where we go from here. So our first statement to debate is Hill House is not haunted. The events of the novel are the result of Eleanor's psychological breakdown. How do you want to tackle this one?

SPEAKER_01 15:33

So I think the book makes it very clear that supernatural things are happening. Because the people in the house are sharing to a degree supernatural experiences. The question mean is what is the source of that supernatural experience? Is it the house directly or indirectly? Is it the house's effect on Eleanor's mental state? And is Eleanor some kind of carry, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Yeah, a conduit for the house's evil, the house's possession.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yes, and I I think it's likely to be the latter.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Because Eleanor is a very traumatized human being. She's grown up with this emotional trauma from the loss of her father, the oppression of her mother, and then ultimately when her mother passes away, the oppression of her sister and her sister's husband. She's just never had a life, and I think that she views the house in some way or another her chance. And a turning point. Could be a turning point for good, or this could be her last chance. And so I think she comes in very emotionally invested in the experience that she's going to have, and that makes her prime for being manipulated and ultimately disappointed.

Road To Hill House Symbols

SPEAKER_00 16:46

I agree with you. I think that we get some very clear signs on the road to Hill House of where Eleanor is and how she's kind of prepared to fall prey to the house. There are little things that Shirley Jackson drops us all along the way. There's some obvious things, like just the fact that Eleanor is fixated on death. She's constantly fantasizing about different things happening to her, lapsing into imaginative states, and then she often makes the statement when I die, and then her brain kind of wanders off to whatever. At one point, she fixates on oleanders that are on the side of the road, which leads you down that lane of thinking about death and the connections of oleanders. She also sees the remnants of a fair, and the only words she sees left on the signs are words like dare and evil. She knows in her mind that you used to spell Daredevil for like the motorcycles racing, but she still fixates on those separate words. She also goes to this cafe, and in one of my favorite moments, she has a very lucid mentor moment with this little girl who's there with her family. And the little girl is eating and she has a favorite cup that is hers. And at the bottom of the cup is a cluster of stars, and she wants her cup of stars to drink from. And her parents are trying to deny her the cup of stars. You don't need your cup of stars. You can just drink from this cup. You don't need that. And Eleanor's watching this play out, and at one point she says to the little girl, always insist on your cup of stars. Don't let them take it away from you because once they take away that choice, you don't get it back. So you get this moment with this little girl where this cup of stars represents choice that Eleanor gave away too early. Self-determination. Self-determination. And she no longer has that. She knows she lost it a long time ago, and she sees this little girl and she wants to protect it for this little girl that is there with her parents. Eleanor is from this very fractured background, and she might never have really had that self-determination, or she gave it away at a very young age. So as she's going all along this road, we hear her inner dialogue with all of these musings and all of these thoughts, and we know she's preparing herself for this ultimate arrival. She even comments at one point, I don't want to rush too fast. I don't want to get to Hill House too soon. And I feel like she knows she's driving to her end.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

And I took that also to mean that she'd rather live in the fantasy than face the reality. Face the reality. Because she spends the entire time fantasizing about how this is going to be the turning point for her. This is her moment to experience freedom. And she does something that's very relatable for somebody who hasn't lived a very interesting life, doesn't really feel like their true self or the person that they've been is a very interesting person. She determines to be a completely different person with these new people that do not know her. Right. So she's gonna come there with a clean slate and she's gonna be this outgoing, interesting human being, which she really is not. She's fantasizing about that possibility, which sets her up, in my opinion, for disappointment.

“Cup Of Stars” And Choice

Crossing The Threshold

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Absolute failure because you can't be something you're not. And she tries way too hard. So I want to read this part where she arrives at Hill House. First of all, she hears a voice in her head that says, get away, turn away, and she thinks I should have turned around at the gate. But then she gets out of the car and she eventually goes up to the porch of Hill House. It was an act of moral strength to lift her foot and set it on the bottom step. And she thought that her deep unwillingness to touch Hill House for the first time came directly from the vivid feeling that it was waiting for her, evil but patient. Journeys end in lovers meeting, she thought, remembering her song at last, and laughed, standing on the steps of Hill House. Journeys end in lovers meeting, and she put her feet down firmly and went up to the veranda and the door. Hill House came around her in a rush. She was in shadowed, and the sound of her feet on the wood of the veranda was an outrage in the utter silence, as though it had been a very long time since feet stamped across the boards of Hill House. She brought her hand up to the heavy iron knocker that had a child's face, determined to make more noise and yet more, so that Hill House might be very sure she was there. And I feel like that is the fateful moment. That's like the point of no return. You cross that threshold. It's like the moment Jonathan Harker walks into Dracula's castle. You know, she literally crosses that threshold and that's it. And the house has her. Right. And that's the fateful moment. Like you needed to turn around to the gate, but oh, you didn't. And now you've walked over into the door. Okay, the next two I'd like to blend together. The first one is Eleanor is not simply a victim of Hill House. She actively chooses the house and participates in her own downfall. And I have some conflicting feelings about that because I'm gonna sandwich it with this one. The haunting of Hill House is fundamentally a critique on how society isolates and suppresses women. So I don't think it's as simple as to say Eleanor actively participates. In our own downfall. Clearly, she just made a choice to walk into the house. Clearly, we know she's in an unstable state. But I feel like the house as a character has its agenda. And then I feel like all the characters in this novel, as we get into it, represent society and the suppression of women. And the house represents that. And so I think everything comes together to cause Eleanor's downfall. So it is the supernatural oppression of the house, which Eleanor may be a conduit for. But then it's also the failure of all the people that could be intervening in that process who do not. What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 22:38

No, I completely agree. I think she makes a conscious choice to choose the house at the end. But I think up until that moment, she is seeking a lifeline that she never really gets, something to drag her out of this inevitable end that she is facing. I feel like the house represents what will determine who she is for the rest of her life. Whether or not she can escape this confining life that she has lived up to this point. And the house represents that. Everywhere she goes, within the house, it's like she's a prisoner. Doors are shut, and anytime you try to leave one open, it slams behind you. And she only really feels free when she leaves the house and she can breathe fresh air again. So I do think the house is doing something to her psychologically.

Agency, Oppression, And Blame

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Right. And just in that moment when she steps on the veranda, the house suddenly rushes around her, as it says, and then in shadows her. The house does capture her. And so that freedom is denied her, that agency, that self-determination is denied her in that moment. So I think this is an important part when we talk about the suppression of women and that isolation that takes place in the house. This is an important part to talk about Theodora and Eleanor and the nature of the relationship that goes on with them. They are the two that are deliberately brought in because they have these psychic experiences or supernatural experiences prior to coming to the house. One of the themes that runs underneath the surface of Jackson's novel is definitely this feeling that there is an otherness to these two characters. And that otherness really takes form in a queerness that exists between these two. You see that in the way they respond to one another at different points, and the way that Eleanor clearly feels connected to Theodora, and Theodora feels connected to Eleanor. Theodora is much more independent and extroverted and kind of willing to throw herself out there. Eleanor feels very suppressed and wicked when she tries to emotionally or sexually express herself. And there are several moments that are very important between the two of them. So they are rooming together, and Theodora tries to bring Eleanor out of her shell. Little moments like painting her nails, and Eleanor says, No, I can't. That's wicked. My mama always said that was wicked. Theodore is like, No, you need you need to do this. This is pretty. You know, you can you can paint your nails. Let me paint your nails. And so she does. And Eleanor's giggling because she likes the pretty nails, but then she goes, It's wicked, it's wicked, it's wicked, and she has a complete freak out about it.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Which is a suppression of her femininity and her sexuality.

Theodora As Foil And Mirror

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Right, in both moments. And then she both loves and hates Theodora as Theodora is so openly sexual on one level and clearly has a connection to her, but also seems to flirt and be connected with the male occupant, the nephew of the owners of the house, Luke, who seems to flirt back and forth with Theodora, and there's this intense jealousy that Eleanor feels toward Theodora in that moment. And there's almost this love triangle that takes place. The pivotal moment is really when they go out on the walk in the woods, they escape the house, and there is a moment when Theodora and Eleanor are alone and they are talking and they come close to asking each other the question, do you love me? And in the text, it explicitly says that. It talks about nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was the barest margin of safety left them as they're contemplating asking this question of one another. Suddenly the road in front of them turns dark, and they have this moment of seeing this family that used to live there and the children and having this really creepy experience. And Theodora screams and they run, like they feel like something is behind them, and they run back into Hill House and it encapsulates them once again. And right after that experience, Eleanor gives up and allows Hill House to completely take her over, as if that were the last chance for her and Theodora to connect and to actually be honest about who they are and what they want. Instead, Theodora runs back to Luke and Eleanor runs back to Hill House.

Queerness, Jealousy, And Denial

SPEAKER_01 27:02

Yeah, there is definitely a lot of sexual tension between Eleanor and Theodora. There's also a single white female vibe. There is. I thought it was interesting when they first meet, they have this sort of false connection that they kind of make up between each other. It's very showy and Theodora asks Eleanor a bunch of questions about her family. She's like, Did you have an aunt so-and-so? And Eleanor is like, I had an aunt this. Did she used to wear this? Well, she wore that. And it's completely not matching up at all. She goes, I knew we're cousins. We're destined to be sisters. Just like this, really, like, okay, are you really connecting? Are you even listening to one another? It's very clear that Theodora is in her own universe. It's all about me space. Um and I think that in a way, just as Eleanor is jealous and envious of Theodora and who she is, Theodora makes it very clear that she grew up in this sort of posh-privileged family that really didn't pay her any attention whatsoever. She was sort of left to her own devices, and I think she's a very lonely person. So I think on that level, when Eleanor talks about all of her family's influence on her and oppression and complains, Theodora resents that because she wishes that she had the attention of a family like Eleanor. She doesn't get it. She doesn't have any empathy for Eleanor's situation because she's like, You're just being dramatic, you're just being selfish, you should be so lucky. There's this constant reaction to Eleanor and everything that is her trauma and her pain, where it's like, oh, you should be so lucky. Even when she goes out to talk with Luke, and Luke talks about the fact that he never had a mother, and he says, You're so lucky to have had a mother, and Eleanor immediately hates them for saying that because she resents her mother so thoroughly. So it's like no one really gets her at all in any kind of interaction that they have. And she's very isolated still.

SPEAKER_00 28:47

Right. They don't understand any of her trauma, which is how they fail her so horrifically. And they're both so used to being independent. They have had self-determination, and it's not a great thing to be isolated from your family or abandoned by your family, but they have had that opportunity to make decisions for themselves. Eleanor has not. And they keep just putting her off. Dr. Montague clearly treats her like a child and condescends to her all the time.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Which reminds her of her mother.

Woods Vision And A Lost Lifeline

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Right. And then Luke and Theodora kind of do the same thing. Oh, you silly girl, you had parents. You had this, you had that, you have family that cares. Why are you complaining? They do not understand the trauma that she has existed under. They do not understand what it's like that she doesn't know how to define herself. She doesn't know how to make a decision for herself, that she's looking for a way to find that definition, to not be isolated anymore. She constantly asks and suggests that maybe when they leave Hill House, she and Theodora can room together. They can live together in an apartment. And she bases that on this false connection that Theodora set up in the beginning, this overly enthusiastic, oh, we'll be sisters. Eleanor takes that to heart and she kind of runs with it. Like, we can we can be together after this is all over. And Theodora's like, Who are you? And what are you talking about, crazy child? And Eleanor doesn't get that. Then she starts to get it later as she feels the push away, and Theodora refuses to really make the real connection with her, and she's rejected once again by Theodora and Luke in a painful way. Then she feels that complete and total otherness. And she knows that Theodora, when she runs away in the woods, I feel like that's really the moment when Theodora says, I'm going to keep pretending. I'm not going to acknowledge my queerness. I'm running back to Luke. I'm not going to acknowledge you. I'm not going to see the reality of things. I'm running. You're staying here, and this is not happening. And then Eleanor really feels alone in her otherness. And now Hill House will accept me. In all its strange angles and its doors that won't quite close the right way. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Eleanor is desperate for somebody to want her.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

And Hill House does.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

And Hill House does. And one by one, each one of these human beings that she encounters affirm Eleanor's worst fears about herself.

SPEAKER_00 31:22

They do, over and over. And I think Hill House affirms her worst feelings, but at least validates who she is and says, You can come and you can live here and you can walk here.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

What do you think about that interesting phrase that just keeps showing up in red or blood or whatever it may be or paint? Eleanor, come home. Eleanor, come home. What do you think about that?

“Eleanor, Come Home” Readings

SPEAKER_00 31:41

I think that in the end, Hill House is saying to Eleanor, stop trying to go find something else. Stop trying to find yourself somewhere else. Come back into the home structure. Live here. Be a parent to the children in this house. Be a mother in this house. Exist as a woman in this house, like the other women who have died in this house. Don't leave the house. So, in a way, to me, it is a return to a type of patriarchal construct. And this house was built by the ultimate patriarchal monster, which was Hugh Crane, with that horrible rule book that he had created. And that rule book just, I don't even know where to go with that rule book right now. But I feel like that Eleanor come home is conform once again to the rules. And these may be different dysfunctional rules that Hill House has created, but conform once again to this. Accept this. Drink the house Kool-Aid at the very least, and you will fit in here because no place else is going to accept you.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

I agree. And it, you know, she literally runs away from home to come to this house. She steals her sister and her brother-in-law's car, and she runs away and she feels like she cannot go back to that home. Right. Whenever she goes from here, she has burned that bridge and cannot go back to that home. So when everybody rejects her and tells her to go back. Tells her to go home, that's when she breaks and is desperate. She's desperate. She has no place but to go forward and answer the house's call.

Found Family That Failed

The Final Drive And Choice

SPEAKER_00 33:16

And so the last statement said the real horror of the novel is repression, not the supernatural. And it is the repression of Eleanor, the lack of acceptance, the lack of help that she really needed, the lack of found family, because this group could have been a found family for her that helped her recognize her true identity. That's what a found family does. But instead, they labeled her and othered her just like everyone else. And then in the end, they offer her nothing except this house has been bad for you. You are nuts. You need to leave and get your head straight again. But they don't seem to care that she has no place to go. They just say, Oh, you have a family. Go home to that family. She knows she can't. Go home to your family. She knows she can't. And all they keep telling her is, you've got to get away from this house. We're going to stay in the house. And in her mind, she's like, Oh, you're going to take my house away? You're going to make me leave? This is your hill house? No, it's not. Hell no. It's my hill house. And they're making her drive away from it. They put her in a car, even though they know she is in a completely unstable place. And they say, Drive home, little chicky. And they send her down the road. Ultimately, what does she do? She still hears the call of Hill House. She sees the great giant tree in the Hill House yard and she says, Well, I'll show all of you I can finally make a decision for myself. And in the ultimate F you to her sister with her sister's car and to all of them standing on the Hill House porch, she presses on the accelerator and she barrels into that tree and kills herself so she can stay in Hill House. And that is her choice, her final choice. But even as she's doing that, she says this in the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree. She thought clearly, why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me? Again, looking for anyone to throw her a lifeline that gives her another choice besides this one. Otherwise, she's making this choice.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

And a way I think that represents the way society reacts to any woman in her emotional and mental state as chalking instead of helping, chalking it up to female hysteria.

Repression As Real Horror

SPEAKER_00 35:35

And not wanting to actually deal with the problem at hand, not wanting to recognize, not wanting to help. It's such an inconvenience, isn't it? Emotion, helping someone connect, getting that otherness and accepting it and trying to work through it. It is such an inconvenience. Eleanor is an inconvenience. She's an embarrassment. They need to recognize her and they don't want to because she makes them uncomfortable. She definitely makes Theodora uncomfortable because she's too much of a sign of what Theodora is trying to forget. And so they all turn their backs. And there she goes into that tree. And then at the very end, we get Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within. It had stood so for 80 years and might stand for 80 more. Within its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. And Eleanor is walking there, still alone. The doors sensibly shut. She has been enveloped back into a structure with nowhere to go. And she stays there. So again, so much to this book, and we haven't even scratched half of the things that are in here, particularly dealing with Hugh Crane, dealing with some of the rooms they go into, the playroom, dealing with the book they find and the descriptions of the sins inside and how those sins are communicated to children and how that resonates with Eleanor as far as how her mother communicated what was sinful and what was not, and the strict code that she was held to. So much more to read, but see that leaves some stones uncovered so that you can uncover them yourself. Okay, Peter, what are we reading next time?

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Okay, next time I'm gonna be back in my own element a little bit more. We're gonna go with a fantasy book. We're also gonna go with an independent author, Anderson W. Frost, and his novel Thorns, Feathers, and Bones.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

And I'm working my way through this one, and it is really interesting. Lots of storylines going on, kind of parallel to one another, and I'm enjoying it. If you are enjoying our podcast and feel moved to support us in some small way, you can find a support link on our Buzz Sprout account and in the link tree on our social media.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

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SPEAKER_00 38:00

And as always, keep reading, keep thinking, and we'll see you next time.