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Autonomy In Shirley Jackson's The Haunting Of Hill House

2098 Words9 Pages

In the late 1950’s, Americans across the nation began to question the ideas of the nuclear family and a woman’s role in society. The concept that a woman could obtain her own autonomy without the help of a man and the effect it has on the family began to appear more as a common discourse in literature and it lead to a debate that even now, has not had an end. Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is a novel that brings into question the consequences of a woman searching for her own autonomy but more importantly, it illustrates the conflict, anxiety, and repression a woman during this time period experienced while attempting to make their own way and how it can affect her. Eleanor, the main protagonist, reflects a variety of issues that …show more content…

The trauma caused by these conflicts is displaced from Eleanor onto the house through the unhomely occurrences and the free indirect discourse narrative and the result is the presence of Eleanor’s disturbed psyche most notably through the events that slowly mold her and the house into one (i.e. the hauntings and her unexpected suicide). Ultimately, this points out that the conflict between choosing family or autonomy in that context leads to a severe projection of the mental illness and due to the repression of her true desires, this illness is intensified and she does herself more harm than …show more content…

The normality of the hauntings for her indicates that she is slowly getting used to the house: “it’s too silly..I’ve been standing here looking at it and just wondering why. I mean, it’s like a joke that didn’t come off..it’s too horrible to be real” (Jackson 115) The shift in her mood can be associated with her need for autonomy since she was a recluse all her life and this is where she has freedom to even decide if she should be scared. Her autonomy makes her feel at home in Hill House and since she is not really alone in the house, she wants to stay there. However, she hears the voices of little children a few times too which projects the other option of a family that she also wants to have: “I can’t stand it, Eleanor thought concretely. This is monstrous, this is cruel, they have been hurting a child I won’t let anyone hurt a child, and the babbling went on, low and steady, on and on and on, the voice rising a little and falling a little, going on and on.” (Jackson 120) Her internal conflict on wanting a family of her own and the previous childhood trauma she experienced causes her to hear a repetition of the distress of a child which can be based on her own inability to deal with her own family abuse. The free indirect discourse shows her distress at not being able to protect

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