Mark Thomas's Blog - Posts Tagged "the-lottery"
The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality.”
What a marvelous first sentence. In a way, it seems a playful justification for the frivolous ghost story that follows: it’s a healthy diversion, an antidote for a stressful life. But the wording is awkward rather than inspirational and “absolute reality” sounds like some sort of dangerous limiting factor like “absolute zero.” The phrase “live organism” is suspiciously broad, too. In fact, the sentence doesn’t just refer to people who need a break, “even larks and Katydids” must dream, and dreaming is a matter of survival. Reality is a malevolent force that inevitably crushes sanity.
As the novel progresses, we see that the category “live organism” includes things like the spirits inhabiting Hill House, and even the physical structure itself.
There is a lot of paranormal busywork going on within Hill House, as if those strange organisms were desperately trying to shake off an oppressive “reality.” It doesn’t work, however; the beings can’t rest in peace. The house is “not sane,” and that’s a remarkable descriptor for a building.
Imagine a real estate ad for the property: “Beautiful rural setting. Whimsical circular room layout. Ornate Victorian furnishings. Interesting history. House not quite sane.”
The ghosts (or poltergeists) in Hill House drive Eleanor Vance mad, but life circumstances certainly softened her up before she even set foot in the building. Eleanor nurses her miserable dying mother for eleven years, then further sublimates her own personality by moving in with a grudging sister and brother-in-law. The two sisters share a car but when Eleanor wants to drive the vehicle to Hill House, it isn’t allowed. “I don’t think we can see clear to letting you borrow my car,” the sister says. When Eleanor insists “It’s half my car,” the fact of her ownership is completely ignored. “I’d never forgive myself, Eleanor, if I lent you the car and something happened.” In Carrie’s home, Eleanor has already become a ghost.
Eleanor sneaks into the garage and takes the car anyway. It’s an act of rebellion that is both healthy and destructive. She feels good about finally asserting herself but also has spasms of paranoia and delusion that seem pathological. Her behavior reminds me of schizophrenics: wondering if other people are secretly talking about her, hearing voices that no one else hears, fits of giggling at private jokes, constructing complex lies about herself. Eleanor frequently adopts a slightly amused expression when she interacts with others, as if she is observing a completely different species.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, like much of Shirley Jackson’s work, is about the dangers of introversion. Great stories like “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” “The Possibility of Evil,” and “The Lottery” all feature characters who become fatally untethered from their communities. True, the communities in those stories are largely at fault because they are violent and judgmental but hiding in one’s room or castle isn’t a healthy defense strategy. When every character is solely concerned with their own individual well-being, they aren’t an “aggregate” (to use construction terminology) rather a collection of pebbles.
One of the creepiest incidents in literature occurs when little Davy Hutchinson is given a handful of rocks to help stone his mother to death in “The Lottery.” In THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, that imagery is echoed in a paranormal event where a storm of pebbles inexplicably rains down on Eleanor’s house. (That’s why Dr. Montague invites her to Hill House in the first place, she is presumably receptive to psychic phenomena.) Eleanor’s mother inexplicably blames the bizarre event on neighbors, as if they had all gathered, Lottery-style, outside the house.
The literary rock throwing probably comes from a Hajj tradition, tossing pebbles at three enormous pillars. I think that’s supposed to represent stoning the devil, since Iblis was “pelted” from heaven in The Chapter of S (my favorite part of the Koran). It also recalls the Christian text: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Well . . . characters in Jackson’s stories are certainly eager to “throw stones,” and their preferred targets are females. They don’t see any downside to being punitive and judgmental; they are introverted rather than introspective.
Since THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE was published in 1959, there have been a lot of popular ghost stories and movies, so some of its plot events feel overly familiar. There is a patch of inexplicable cold at the threshold of a nursery, mysterious knocking on doors, messages scrawled on walls and blood poured on clothing. There is communication with spirits through a “planchette,” or Ouija board. The house is maze-like and suffocating, there are creepy servants who move like automatons. The group meets in Hill House expressly to study the paranormal but get much more than they expect . . .
It’s not “The Ghost and Mister Chicken” or “Thirteen Ghosts,” however. Jackson is a master at creating character groups who are supremely disaffected and fragmented. People in her stories WANT to be sociable but are incapable of meaningful connection, even if ghosts were to be removed from the equation. There is playful banter and sociable drinks when the sun crawls over the yardarm, but everyone knows that the group will separate when the assignment at Hill House is over. Romance, even homoerotic romance, lurks, but it never reaches the status of a casual summer fling. The characters can’t even work themselves up to that level of interconnection.
In its disaffection, THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE reminds me of science fiction more than other ghost stories. It’s like Phil Dick’s “Explorers We” where Martians desperately want to be human but keep screwing up because they are elementally different. It’s like Stanislaw Lem’s SOLARIS where the human astronauts come to prefer ghostlike simulacra drawn from their own thoughts to actual people.
Jackson pretends there is an exterior villain: “Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills holding darkness within.” But the real problem is a psychological tendency for characters to get lost within themselves. In fact, the most important word in the novel is the last one: “whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Alone.
What a marvelous first sentence. In a way, it seems a playful justification for the frivolous ghost story that follows: it’s a healthy diversion, an antidote for a stressful life. But the wording is awkward rather than inspirational and “absolute reality” sounds like some sort of dangerous limiting factor like “absolute zero.” The phrase “live organism” is suspiciously broad, too. In fact, the sentence doesn’t just refer to people who need a break, “even larks and Katydids” must dream, and dreaming is a matter of survival. Reality is a malevolent force that inevitably crushes sanity.
As the novel progresses, we see that the category “live organism” includes things like the spirits inhabiting Hill House, and even the physical structure itself.
There is a lot of paranormal busywork going on within Hill House, as if those strange organisms were desperately trying to shake off an oppressive “reality.” It doesn’t work, however; the beings can’t rest in peace. The house is “not sane,” and that’s a remarkable descriptor for a building.
Imagine a real estate ad for the property: “Beautiful rural setting. Whimsical circular room layout. Ornate Victorian furnishings. Interesting history. House not quite sane.”
The ghosts (or poltergeists) in Hill House drive Eleanor Vance mad, but life circumstances certainly softened her up before she even set foot in the building. Eleanor nurses her miserable dying mother for eleven years, then further sublimates her own personality by moving in with a grudging sister and brother-in-law. The two sisters share a car but when Eleanor wants to drive the vehicle to Hill House, it isn’t allowed. “I don’t think we can see clear to letting you borrow my car,” the sister says. When Eleanor insists “It’s half my car,” the fact of her ownership is completely ignored. “I’d never forgive myself, Eleanor, if I lent you the car and something happened.” In Carrie’s home, Eleanor has already become a ghost.
Eleanor sneaks into the garage and takes the car anyway. It’s an act of rebellion that is both healthy and destructive. She feels good about finally asserting herself but also has spasms of paranoia and delusion that seem pathological. Her behavior reminds me of schizophrenics: wondering if other people are secretly talking about her, hearing voices that no one else hears, fits of giggling at private jokes, constructing complex lies about herself. Eleanor frequently adopts a slightly amused expression when she interacts with others, as if she is observing a completely different species.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, like much of Shirley Jackson’s work, is about the dangers of introversion. Great stories like “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” “The Possibility of Evil,” and “The Lottery” all feature characters who become fatally untethered from their communities. True, the communities in those stories are largely at fault because they are violent and judgmental but hiding in one’s room or castle isn’t a healthy defense strategy. When every character is solely concerned with their own individual well-being, they aren’t an “aggregate” (to use construction terminology) rather a collection of pebbles.
One of the creepiest incidents in literature occurs when little Davy Hutchinson is given a handful of rocks to help stone his mother to death in “The Lottery.” In THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, that imagery is echoed in a paranormal event where a storm of pebbles inexplicably rains down on Eleanor’s house. (That’s why Dr. Montague invites her to Hill House in the first place, she is presumably receptive to psychic phenomena.) Eleanor’s mother inexplicably blames the bizarre event on neighbors, as if they had all gathered, Lottery-style, outside the house.
The literary rock throwing probably comes from a Hajj tradition, tossing pebbles at three enormous pillars. I think that’s supposed to represent stoning the devil, since Iblis was “pelted” from heaven in The Chapter of S (my favorite part of the Koran). It also recalls the Christian text: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
Well . . . characters in Jackson’s stories are certainly eager to “throw stones,” and their preferred targets are females. They don’t see any downside to being punitive and judgmental; they are introverted rather than introspective.
Since THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE was published in 1959, there have been a lot of popular ghost stories and movies, so some of its plot events feel overly familiar. There is a patch of inexplicable cold at the threshold of a nursery, mysterious knocking on doors, messages scrawled on walls and blood poured on clothing. There is communication with spirits through a “planchette,” or Ouija board. The house is maze-like and suffocating, there are creepy servants who move like automatons. The group meets in Hill House expressly to study the paranormal but get much more than they expect . . .
It’s not “The Ghost and Mister Chicken” or “Thirteen Ghosts,” however. Jackson is a master at creating character groups who are supremely disaffected and fragmented. People in her stories WANT to be sociable but are incapable of meaningful connection, even if ghosts were to be removed from the equation. There is playful banter and sociable drinks when the sun crawls over the yardarm, but everyone knows that the group will separate when the assignment at Hill House is over. Romance, even homoerotic romance, lurks, but it never reaches the status of a casual summer fling. The characters can’t even work themselves up to that level of interconnection.
In its disaffection, THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE reminds me of science fiction more than other ghost stories. It’s like Phil Dick’s “Explorers We” where Martians desperately want to be human but keep screwing up because they are elementally different. It’s like Stanislaw Lem’s SOLARIS where the human astronauts come to prefer ghostlike simulacra drawn from their own thoughts to actual people.
Jackson pretends there is an exterior villain: “Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills holding darkness within.” But the real problem is a psychological tendency for characters to get lost within themselves. In fact, the most important word in the novel is the last one: “whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Alone.
