Symbolism In The Haunting Of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House is a ghost novel, which is written by Shirley Jackson and printed in 1959. In it, four researchers, Dr. Montague, Eleanor Vance, Theodora, and Luke Sanderson spent their summer time in a haunted house, called Hill House, to find out the cause and effects of psychic disturbances. In that place, after a series of supernatural and horrible things: door being pound harshly, the red paint in Theo’s room, the messages from the Ouija-like planchette, v.v… Eleanor, whose the weakest and the most sensitive mind out of four, had her conscious surrender Hill House and tried to go “home”, which is her mother’s womb by suicide. Through the novel, Eleanor Vance had shown her only true desire and lack of is her mother’s love. First of all, is that Eleanor’s true wish is having a family with her new friends or being engulfed in her mom’s love? Not until nearly at the end of the book, she still had not made it clear yet. However, while driving across the oleander square, on the way to Hill House, the Queen – symbol of mother – played an important role in her daydream:

She wanted to come home. Deep down in her soul, even if she knew her mom is a peremptory, egotistic and self-absorption woman, it still took Eleanor eleven years for looking after her mom, trying her best to win mom’s tenderness. Breaking the oleanders spell is the way she chose to satisfy the hollow in her soul since the truth, which is her mother had already died, is ineluctable. Unfortunately, her first and also last journey was leading to Hill House, the vile and diseased house, which can see through anybody, including their unconscious. For example, when Mrs. Montague used The Planchette for communication with spirits from