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Shirley Jackson's ghost story is romantic and corrosive, a psychological novel of guilt and paranoia that will stay with readers long after they leave Hill House. Is the house haunted, or are the people within it?

Eleanor Vance is an adult but yet she has hardly lived - her thought processes are often immature and laced in fantasies of another life, frequently of a life lived alone in isolation. She jumps at the chance to run from her remaining family and her sad life, and runs straight into the arms of Hill House, despite the tingling awareness in the back of her mind that she should run in the opposite direction and leave immediately. Her thoughts upon seeing Hill House for the first time sum this up

“Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once.��

But one could argue that humans are attracted to tragedy, or at the very least, attracted to like minds. Eleanor and Hill House are kindred spirits; perhaps they are both haunted –�� Eleanor by her mother and social ineptitude and Hill House by the tragedies that have occurred there. And thus, Eleanor ignores her internal warnings and enters Hill House. From the beginning we are lulled into a false sense of security that it is simply the house that is haunted, but over time we begin to realize that Eleanor may be the one doing the haunting. Is it her guilt and repressed rage terrorizing Hill House �� are we simply reading the delusions of a woman in the throes of psychosis –�� or is Hill House alive, sentient, and breaking Eleanor?

The most haunting thing about Hill House is not the ghosts, or even the house, it is the isolation, the loneliness, the inability to find acceptance of oneself, the losing of ones identity, ones mind. Throughout the novel, Shirley weaves her haunting through Eleanor’s exploration of identity and her relationships with others. I thought that Shirley executed this brilliantly, I loved that we start the novel as an outside observer, watching innocently as the plot progresses. But as Eleanors mental state begins to disintegrate, we begin to read the novel from inside Eleanor’s mind. Watching as Eleanor’s mental state spirals to madness is more terrifying for me than reading about a straightforward haunted house. Hill house appears to personify sickness of the mind and of the heart, and is a monster all its own, ruling the night with cruelty and abject fear.

It’s the home I’ve always dreamed of,�� Theodora said. “A little hideaway where I can be alone with my thoughts. Particularly if my thoughts happen to be about murder or suicide or––��

Conclusion

After reading Hill House I turned to others reviews to see what the general consensus was and I was surprised to find that the ending is not popular. Some say it was too abrupt, too unsatisfying, or even confusing. Personally, I found the ending satisfying and thought that it was fitting that the story was cyclic –ending with the same passage we began with, and one of my favorite quotes from the novel.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, 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.��

The cyclic nature of the plot mirrored Eleanor’s mental illness, and even the House’s cycle of haunting. Do I think it was abrupt? Yes, but can you imagine how frustrating it would have been if they had ignored all the signs of Hill Houses growing possession of Eleanor and allowed her to stay on? Eleanors midnight dance was the climax, the crescendo to a performance that Hill House was waiting patiently for. It would have been cheap to continue the story as if Eleanors actions did not have consequences.

In the end, it seems that the House was the only one that ever really wanted Eleanor, and there’s something poetic in knowing that Eleanor ended up where she was finally wanted.

Journey’s end in lovers meeting - William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Themes

Identity (Eleanors fragility vs Theodora’s stability)
Family (Eleanors fractured nuclear family compared with the family they form in the house)
Horror as a vehicle to explore Mental Illness, Psychosis, Trauma, Suicide, Paranoia, death & loss
Death and loss
Psychological haunting
Romantic Relationships, Sexuality and repression (lots of lesbian undertones and from Theodora & Eleanor)
Fantasy vs Reality
Sanity vs Insanity
Friendship/Sisterhood (Theo & Eleanor)
Coming of age/finding oneself -- losing oneself
Guilt
Fear... The psychology of fear
Science vs Supernatural/Spiritual
Vulnerability

Literary References
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded: In a Series of Letters from a Beautiful Young Damsel to Her Parents ... to Which Are Prefixed, Extracts from Several Curious Letter Written to the Editor on the Subject - Samuel Richardson
Clarissa: History Of A Young Lady, Vol. 1 (of 5) - Samuel Richardson
The Canterville Ghost - Oscar Wilde 103
William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night

Further Reading:
We have always lived in the castle- Shirley Jackson
The Lottery- Shirley Jackson
The Turn of the Screw-Henry James