Haunted House Analysis

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson, is the story of four people, Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and Dr. Montague, discovering the horrors that lie in the town’s haunted mansion commonly known as Hill House. Jackson exposes the psychological journey this house forces the four to go on while also embracing the eerie haunted house genre. In relation to The Haunting of Hill House, “Haunted Houses”, an article by Sylvia Grider, explains the haunted house genre and why and how it exists in American culture. This article by Sylvia Grider argues that the haunted house has stayed relatively the same throughout history; there is evidence of this through books like The Haunting of Hill House, which is a prime example of a story in the haunted house

Any place can be haunted, which means that a haunted house can look as new as a hospital or as old as a cabin. “Oral tradition (especially stories told by adults) encompasses many other types of haunted houses—ranging from suburban, split-level ranch houses to fraternity houses to businesses and so on. This variety of setting is appropriate because oral tradition holds that any structure in which a ghost appears is thereby haunted.” (Grider 147). In the Haunting of Hill House, every character has a different perspective on Hill House. For example, Dr. Montague sees the house as a simple run-down family home, in the name of science he is trying to prove that the house has no real phenomena happening inside of it. However, Eleanor sees the house as a typical haunted house because she wants to believe in the mystery of the house. “The house was vile. She shivered and thought, the words coming freely into her mind, Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once” (Jackson 23). In contrast, Dr. Montague’s view tells something different of the house “No, the menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense” (Jackson 102). Dr. Montague’s perspective gives the reader clues that

Mass marketing in the form of Halloween themes has transformed images of traditionally haunted stories such as that of the haunted house. “The enormously successful Goosebumps children’s books owe a tremendous debt to this general acceptance of the supernatural by American children, especially their fondness for haunted houses.” (Grider 165). The stereotypical American Halloween exploits haunted houses and makes them into a more popular thrill, for example a ghost jumping out at the patrons of the house “As a result of this flood of marketing, the haunted house of current popular culture has lost most of the ominous and numinous quality associated with the literary haunted house and has become instead a benign, stereotyped cartoon” (Grider 164). The Haunting of Hill House sticks with the more tradition elements of the haunted house which are passed down orally; this book shows a less commercialized version of a haunted house, making it a better example of the cultural values expressed in the article. “’It looks like paint,’ she said hesitantly. ‘Except’ -realizing- ‘except the smell is awful.’ ‘It’s blood,’ Theodora said with finality. She clung to the door, swaying as the door moved” (Jackson 113). Although this small excerpt is quite chilling, the language proves it to have more