Ms. Hen reviews The Haunting of Hill House

 

The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson

The Viking Press

1959

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she knew it was a ghost story, and she thought it would be a good book for Halloween. She watched the Netflix show a couple of years ago by the same name, and thought the story would be identical, but instead of a family going to the haunted house like in the show, a group of strangers go to the house. Another Netflix show appeared this year called THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR, which Ms. Hen learned was loosely based on THE TURN OF THE SCREW. Ms. Hen watched this show concurrently as she was reading THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE. All these stories are related ghost stories about haunted houses, but are all different.

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE is not as scary as Ms. Hen thought it would be. She thinks it's more sad than scary. It's about a woman named Eleanor who goes to stay at Hill House at the invitation of Dr. Montague, who is researching the phenomenon of the house. A young woman named Theodora, and the young man, Luke, who is going to inherit Hill House, are staying there as well. 

Eleanor took care of her mother when she was sick, and consequently, she never had a life of her own. She is thirty-four years old. She latches on to Theodora because she wants and needs a friend. Strange things happen in the house, writing appears on the wall with Eleanor's name, and blood appears on Theo's clothes. Eleanor becomes interested in Luke, only to discover he is dull.

The house is a character in the novel as well. Hill House does not make any sense architecturally. The rooms do not connect in the right way, and the people staying there tend to get lost on their way to the dining room or any room in the house. Ms. Hen was scared, but she wasn't too scared.

This novel was published in 1959, when the world was a different place for women. People had to grow up fast, and if a woman was thirty-four and she was not married, she was an anomaly. These days, this book could be a different story, so it seems old-fashioned to Ms. Hen. 

This novel reminds Ms. Hen slightly of THE BELL JAR by Sylvia Plath in the way that it is about a woman who is lonely, and how she suffers in the world. Life can be cruel if a person doesn't fit in with everyone else. This book is like THE BELL JAR and any ghost story combined together.

Even though Ms. Hen thinks this book is more sad than scary, she liked it. She thinks that being lonely can also be scary at times, and the haunted house element with the people who do not understand Eleanor makes the book unsettling and tragic. Ms. Hen says Happy Halloween season to you, and don't be too scared of the monsters lurking around. They are not stronger than you, because you have the power to get rid of them using your spells and your charms.