In Jackson's novels, houses aren't haunted by ghosts but by the psyches of their broken inhabitants
Published : 16 Feb 2023, 06:45 PM
"Deep in the forest, I'm living in my little house and no one can ever find me."Mrs. Halloran in 'The Sundial'
It's always the house. And the people who live there. And the people who die there. Huge mansions, old towers, and a heavy gloom. Sometimes the house becomes a home. You live there isolated and protected from the rest of the world. You trust the house and sometimes its inhabitants. Anything outside is the other and the others exist in a completely different world. Unfriendly, hostile, and on the verge of the apocalypse you saw in your dreams. It's a world you don't want to step into.
Shirley Jackson, however, understood that the true horror isn't that you'll scream out at night in your isolated home with no one there to hear you. She did not write about white, shadowy apparitions in the corners of dark rooms or bent-neck ladies. Some of her works, like her famous 1948 short story The Lottery, deal with "external" fear. The fear of being persecuted by other people, lots of other people. A mass. A crowd. A hoard you can't run from.
Perhaps the more insidious horror is in one's mind and home. Themes of isolation and the slow jolting horror of one's mind growing unhinged recur in the pages of her last novels - We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Sundial and The Haunting of Hill House.
Throughout these three novels, our protagonists experience complex feelings about themselves, a tingling reminder in the back of their minds that something must not be right, and a constant sense of not fitting in. There is also a house. There is always a house.
Critic Lin Carter described these three novels as "closed worlds". Jackson's protagonists erect a barrier to shield themselves against unforeseen dangers. The shields, however, can be built up by brick or carefully woven suspicions formed through years of their lives.
1.
Merricat hates washing herself, dogs, and noise. She loves her elder sister Constance, who never, ever leaves the house, and deadly mushrooms like death caps. She performs witchcraft with her cat Jonas and regrets not being born as a werewolf. Constance stays home all day, cooking and storing food in the cellar. Their uncle Julian thinks Merricat died on that day six years ago when their whole family died of arsenic-sprinkled blackberries. Merricat and Constance are, however, very much alive. And they live blissfully in their house, isolated from the rest of the village, where everyone thinks of them as murderers. The villagers say dreadful things behind their backs. The children make nasty rhymes about them. Merricat hates them all. And she is willing to do anything to preserve the peace and stability inside the grounds of their very own castle.
2.
Aunt Fanny lives in the house that her father built. A house with a sundial that her father ordered years ago. One day, she appears in front of the rest of the family and announces that the world will end soon. The outside world will burn to ash to erase the ever-increasing sins of humanity. Her father, who has been dead for years, tells her their family can survive this apocalypse if they stay inside the house he built.
The family is just coping with the loss of a son, and Mrs Halloran is planning to make drastic changes in the family. Now they are stuck inside a mathematically perfectly built house that stands apart from the rest of the village. They must prepare for the new world that awaits them, but before that, they need to survive the rather unpleasant company of the members of the Halloran family, who fate brings to this special house. No one in the house trusts anyone, but they cling to this dream of a new sinless world devoid of mean people.
3.
Eleanor hasn't had much of a life. For years she spent all day taking care of her sick mother. Now she is an unwanted guest living with her sister's family. One day, she takes a brave step and accepts an offer to stay at a manor called Hill House as part of a paranormal experiment. She meets Theodora, Luke, and Doctor Montague, and they make a perfect little group as they live in a house where no one can stay for more than a few days before running away. What scares people away from the house? Eleanor reassures herself whenever something frightening happens, "You're finally doing something for yourself ".
She wonders if she truly deserves to be in Hill House, making friends and talking to people. "You belong here," she tells herself. The design of the house is strange, like one of those haunted mansions at carnivals and amusement parks. She tries to find herself here. Discover who she is as a person. Her room is blue, from the walls to the bed, to the curtains. Among these old walls and doors that seem to shut themselves, Eleanor dreams of a normal adult life. She looks at Theodora, who stays in the green room and paints her toenails red, and Luke, who stays in the pink room and will inherit the house one day. She thinks, and she dreams. And, over time, she starts feeling as if the house likes her and she may not be able to leave.
In all three stories, the houses aren't mere bundles of brick slapped together. They are entities with their own particular tone and atmosphere. They have souls, lingering echoes of the people who lived there and whose memories have settled into the rooms, corridors, and attics. Merricat, Aunt Fanny, and Eleanor are bound inextricably to the house.
These are not just physical spaces that provide shelter and comfort. They reflect the guilt, the anxiety, the fear, the love, and the hope of their inhabitants. Even when everything falls apart, the house will exist, an escape from the outside world and the terror of 'the other'.
This article is part of Stripe, bdnews24.com's special publication focusing on culture and society from a youth perspective.