Transcript
Speaker: just a heads up to our listeners we will be spoiling this book which includes a character committing suicide so take care if that's something you don't want to hear about maybe don't listen to this episode
Speaker: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. Even larks and katydids are supposed by some to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within. It had stood so for 80 years and might stand for 80 more.
Speaker: Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut. Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there walked alone. That is the opening of Hill House, and here is the ending.
Speaker: Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills holding darkness within. It had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut. Silence lay steadily against the wooden stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
Speaker: Welcome to Book Club Podcast. Today we are discussing the Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I'm Caroline. I had never read Haunting of Hill House before this.
Speaker: And I absolutely loved this. To me, it was the perfect horror story because it left me seeing the horror within regular life in things like loneliness and alienation. I could really feel or maybe just recognize the horror that was possible or already latent, who knows, in my own life. And that's really the sort of experience I look for in a horror novel or haunted house book.
Speaker: I'm Carly, and I also hadn't read this book before, but I'd seen a couple of movie and TV adaptions, and I think they kind of influenced my experience, but it was still just a delightful surprise. Every single chapter was so enjoyable. All right, let's get to that summary.
Speaker: So the book opens with a chapter somewhat from the point of view of Dr. of Philosophy, John Montagu, who seeks to apply the scientific method to understand the quote, psychic disturbances in haunted houses.
Speaker: He learned the history of Hill House through his investigations and got permission from the owner, who doesn't live there, to invite a few people to spend a summer at Hill House and record the phenomena. The people who agree to participate are Eleanor Vance and Theodora. And then the property owner insists that her nephew, Luke Sanderson, also participate. So it's the four of them. Eleanor Vance.
Speaker: is our main point of view character after the first chapter. She is 31 years old and has spent the past 11 years of her life caring for her sick mother exclusively. The mother died three months before Eleanor was invited to Hill House. The second sentence about Eleanor, so our introduction to Eleanor says, the only person in the world she genuinely hated now that her mother was dead was her sister. She disliked her brother -in -law and her five -year -old niece and she had no friends.
Speaker: So that's our introduction to her. On her drive out, she passes houses and scenery that inspire her to various fantasies of imagining a different life for herself.
Speaker: The four visitors have an immediate rapport. They have similar reactions to the ugliness of the house and the strange ways of the caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, who insist on leaving the property before sundown. The doors shut behind them, even though they are constantly propping them open. They struggle to navigate the maze of rooms. On the first evening, Dr. Montague tells them the history of the house. It was built by Hugh Crane, who deliberately built the walls at odd angles to make it confusing.
Speaker: He had a wife and two daughters. His first wife was killed in an accident as the family was moving into the house. Hugh Crane left his daughters in the house while he traveled the world with his second and third wives. It is described as a lonely childhood. His oldest daughter never married and died at Hill House. She left the house to her companion, an ancestor of Luke Sanderson.
Speaker: Hugh's younger daughter married and had children, but she fought with her sister and then the companion over the ownership of the house. It got so contentious that the companion hanged herself in the library. The next day Dr. Montague takes them on a tour of the house. They find a cold spot outside the nursery. Theodora paints Eleanor's toenails red and she freaks out.
Speaker: Then on the second night, Eleanor and Theodora are woken by the sound of loud banging. Eleanor goes into their shared bathroom to Theodora's room, and they huddle together while the knocking continues up and down the hallway. The banging seems to focus on Theodora's door,
Speaker: and Eleanor yells at it to go away. It rattles the door trying to get in. They feel enormous cold and hear what seems like laughter. Suddenly they hear Luke and Dr. Montague call out and the cold and the knocking dissipate. Luke and the doctor didn't hear the knocking at all. They saw a dog or what seemed to be a dog in the house and they chased it outside until they heard the women. Dr. Montague says, we shouldn't let it, the house, try to separate us. The next morning, all four of them are giddy.
Speaker: filled with a sort of odd exaltation, like teenagers coming out of a horror movie. They're energetic, despite the interrupted sleep. After breakfast, they find, help Eleanor come home, written on the wall in chalk. Eleanor is very upset that the house knows her name. Theodora accuses Eleanor of writing it herself, which angers Eleanor. The men think that Theodora was teasing Eleanor on purpose to get rid of Eleanor's fear, but Eleanor doesn't agree, although she pretends that everything is okay.
Speaker: The next day, Theodora finds her room covered in blood along with all her clothes. On the wall are the words, help Elinor come home, Elinor. With some glee, Elinor tells Luke and Dr. Montague that Theodora is hysterical. They decide that Theodora will share Elinor's room and clothes.
Speaker: Eleanor's anger erupts when she has to clean the blood off of Theodora. That evening, when describing her lack of fear, she starts to ramble about surrendering and then can't remember what she said. Dr. Montague is very disturbed by Eleanor's reaction. That night, Eleanor and Theodora hold hands as the room gets cold and dark. Eleanor tries to talk, but she can't. She hears laughter, then a child crying, then a voice yelling, go away. Eleanor gathers herself up and yells at it to go away and suddenly light and warmth her in the room.
Speaker: and Eleanor realizes it wasn't Theodore's hand she was holding. The next day, Eleanor is talking with Luke and notices that it's the first time she has been alone with a man and she is deeply bored. Luke says he never had a mother and that Eleanor was lucky to be so close to hers.
Speaker: That same day, Luke finds a book in the library that Hugh Crane, the original builder and owner of the house, made for his daughter. It contains a lot of sermons, for lack of a better word, and it's decorated with disturbing pictures he cut from other books. The instructions and lessons include things such as, honor thy father and thy mother. Daughter, hold apart from this world that its lusts and ingratitude corrupt thee not. Daughter, preserve thyself. He signed the book in his blood.
Speaker: Later that day, Theodora teases Eleanor about having a crush on Luke. The two girls are walking outside in the dark arguing about Luke, and they find what seems to be sort of a fairy circle, a daytime scene of a family picnic. Eleanor is enchanted until Theodora yells and breaks the spell. They run back to the house. Mrs. Montague, the doctor's wife, arrives with a friend, Arthur, and they do nothing but annoy the four original guests.
Speaker: Mrs. Montague has her own system for exploring haunted places and won't listen to anything anyone else tells her. She insists on spending the night in the most haunted room, the nursery, and uses a planchette, which is like a Ouija board, to communicate with the spirits. The planchette reveals a series of words, mother, child, home, lost, directed at Eleanor, according to Mrs. Montague.
Speaker: However, the house seems to mostly ignore Mrs. Montague, and she never experiences any of the disturbances. Mrs. Montague and her friend Arthur's efforts and contributions are not taken seriously by the others.
Speaker: That night, the doctor has Luke, Eleanor, and Theodora join him in a room so that they spend the night together. He thinks his wife's presence will upset the house. The room gets very cold and they hear knocking down the hall again. It stops at their door. Dr. Montague holds the door closed. Eleanor feels like the knocking is inside her head. They hear the crashing of paintings in the house shaking and laughing.
Speaker: Eleanor says to the house, I'll come, described as a surrender to the house and the house quiets. Mrs. Montague and Arthur heard nothing all night. Eleanor tells Theodora that she's going home with her. Theodora is clear that she doesn't want Eleanor following her home. They walk with Luke to the creek on the grounds and Theodora and Luke stay behind flirting while Eleanor watches invisible footprints on the grass.
Speaker: She runs back and asks why Theodore and Luke didn't stay with her. Later that day, she eavesdrops on Theodore and Luke flirting. She wonders, when are they going to talk about her? Eleanor continues eavesdropping on everyone in the house. Arthur and Dr. Montague in one room, Mrs. Dudley and Mrs. Montague in the kitchen. Eleanor can hear everything happening in the house. In the parlor that evening, she hears someone walking along the room and singing. No one else is aware of this presence. Eleanor is happy she's the only one who knows it's there.
Speaker: That night, Eleanor wanders through the house when everyone else is sleeping. She knocks on bedroom doors and slips away when they search for her. She laughs like she's playing a game. She finds herself in a library and thinks to herself that she's home. She climbs the iron stairway, which is dangerous and rickety.
Speaker: The others find her and Luke carefully climbs up the stairs to bring her down safely. Once at the bottom, she snaps out of it. The next morning, she's surprised that no one is angry with her, but they do insist that she leave the house. She insists that she can't leave. She says, I don't want to go away from here. I'm happy here. Mrs. Montague explores Theodora's room and finds no traces of the blood. So Theodora can return to wearing her own clothes.
Speaker: Eleanor reveals that she doesn't have a home or apartment of her own to return to. She made it up. But the others pack up Eleanor and put her in her car and tell her she must leave. Dr. Montague says that she must leave by herself to break the attachment she has to the house and that she must forget the house.
Speaker: As she's driving away from the house down the tree line driveway, she tells herself that they can't make her leave. So she slams on the accelerator and kills herself by crashing into a tree. There's a final chapter describing how everyone quickly leaves the house and ending with the quote I read originally saying that whatever walks there walks alone.
Speaker: So this leads directly into my opening question. To me, the central theme of this book was about loneliness. And so my question is, is Hill House lonely? And what, if anything, would resolve that loneliness? I asked this question because of
Speaker: the opening and closing lines, which emphasize walking alone, as well as the emphasis on the loneliness of the inhabitants, the two little girls who had a lonely childhood, the grown older sister who lives there alone before finding a companion, the companion who lives there alone after the older sister's death, and then also Eleanor's loneliness, which is just palpable and overwhelming. There's also language describing the house as a creature, an entity. So if that's true, can it feel loneliness? Is Hill House lonely?
Speaker: I think it's really interesting that we get the house is a live creature that's an insane live creature and whatever walks there walks alone. So when I think about what is a living creature, a living creature has a motive to survive and procreate. I don't see anything in this book that would point to the house procreating, but it does seem to preserve
Speaker: It's a lonely state, right? It perpetuates and preserves being alone, which makes me wonder if the loneliness itself is the creature. Yes, I think it might be. And just to be clear, the way it perpetuates this is by scaring away anyone who ever tries to live there. Even on a small level, if someone tries to open a door, the house shuts it, right? The house continually reverts itself to how it wants to be. And that's with the doors all shut.
Speaker: empty alone. Okay, so you're saying, okay, the house likes to be alone. That's the opposite of loneliness. But on the other hand, it seems to, and granted this is filtered through what Eleanor thinks, it seems to call to Eleanor and she perceives it as demanding a surrender. And then after she has surrendered, there is a sort of
Speaker: union between her and the house, such that now she can hear everything that's happening in the house everywhere, no matter where she is. So is the house less alone after Eleanor's transition, after Eleanor's surrender?
Speaker: No, see I thought of it as the house can perceive Elinor's loneliness and that makes Elinor a target for the house that there's a subsuming of Elinor and she's susceptible to it because she already has this loneliness in common. I think that's right because at the end she refuses to leave.
Speaker: She drives her car into the tree, but there's no suggestion that Eleanor, for example, becomes a ghost that haunts the house, which in other types of haunted house books would be pretty standard. Instead, she is just extinguished and gone. After her death, the house continues as it was before, and it continues alone.
Speaker: Yeah, which I kind of want to backtrack a bit because the door is shutting, which you mentioned, but that's described as sensible, like the doors being closed is sensible. And that's juxtaposed with the house being insane. That is an interesting contrast. So if the house is insane, then you would expect it to not successfully do what living things do, which is perpetuate and procreate. Well, it survives, right? It survives, survives and procreates.
Speaker: I thought we agreed it didn't procreate. It doesn't procreate, which would be expected if the living organism is insane, right? It's insane and therefore cannot successfully do what living things do, except that the first line also says that no live organism can exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality. I mean, that says to me every organism is insane to some extent.
Speaker: Okay, so it is an attribute of living organisms to be insane. And then I'm adding this my interpretation of a live organism. It is also an attribute of a live organism to survive and to procreate. I gotta be honest, I'm not really following you on that.
Speaker: Well, I'm trying to understand why does she point out that it's a live organism? I don't know that that's something that is explicit throughout the story. It's, you know, we're introduced to the house as a live organism. And so it seems like the rest of the story is up to us to interpret. What does that mean that it's a live organism? I mean, is it simply that the house has a will and acts upon people? There are a couple references to Hill House as a creature. But this first sentence that I read, which talks about no live organism,
Speaker: It doesn't say that Hill House is a live organism, right? It says that all organisms are insane. And then it says that Hill House is also
Speaker: insane. But that's not necessarily the same as saying it is an organism reacting against conditions of reality. Okay, okay. I think it's more of a concept. I mean, I agree it is personified and incorporate realize to some extent, but I'm not sure that the creature metaphors the primary one here.
Speaker: I say that I don't really have anything to replace it. So I'm not sure how helpful a statement that is. No, that is helpful. Because so no live organism can continue. Now I'm wondering if that's supposed to refer more to Eleanor than to the house. Yeah. Because the next part of that sentence is even Larks and Catedids are supposed by some to dream. And we know that Eleanor dreams. She daydreams and creates fantasies. I will also say that the absolute reality of Eleanor's life is bitter, sad. You know, she has spent
Speaker: her youth caring for her mother for 11 years. The book specifically says that was unpleasant, filled with limitations and small guilts and sort of low level of misery. Maybe that is what the reality that Eleanor is reacting against and becoming insane, which is allied with dreaming. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense. So is Hill House a place of absolute reality? I don't think so. I think the outside world is that place.
Speaker: There's just too much that's weird about it. You know, to the extent absolute reality is opposed to sanity, the house seems more on the insane side, as it's directly said. So Hill House is also not sane? Yes. And the person who comes to it, Eleanor, is
Speaker: already arrives this way or becomes insane in reaction to the conditions of her real life outside the house. So there's a meeting of spirits, a meeting of - Insanities, kind of. Yeah, but journeys end in lovers meeting. Eleanor's insane, lonely spirit meets the lonely and insane spirit of the house, and there's a journeys end. I think we should explain that phrase. So journeys end in lovers meeting.
Speaker: is a phrase that Eleanor has stuck in her head.
Speaker: throughout the book, both as she is journeying to the house and then repeatedly throughout. And it seems to refer to a number of things. But I think based on what you just said, the lover may be the house, that there is some sort of connection, let us say, between Eleanor and the house. Right. I mean, I think journeys end in lovers meaning is repeated so often in so many different contexts, referencing many different characters. So I don't want to say that's definitively the explanation for that phrase in the book. I agree.
Speaker: Yeah, but I don't know that it's because, again, her first impression of the house is like it's vile and rotten and we shouldn't be here. But there's a symmetry there. There's a recognition maybe between Eleanor and the house. Yes.
Speaker: on their first meeting? Well, no. I wouldn't say it's immediate. Like so many things in this story, like the book overall, there's repetition and there's like a circular quality of people liking each other and then there's resentment and then there, you know, like there's this, it's anything but linear. It's just not linear at all.
Speaker: Well, okay, let's take it back to that phrase, which I agree applies so many places. It's hard to say exactly what it means. It has a lot of inflections depending on the chapter. But just by itself, journeys end in lover's meeting. It is such a hopeful phrase, full of such simple and maybe even naive expectation that you will just journey forth from your starting place
Speaker: And that journey will end up in happiness, right? There's a sort of fairy tale quality to that phrase. And that seems very true to Eleanor's character. Yeah, like you journey out to find something that is missing in yourself. And so when lovers meet, whatever that missing piece was has been found when lovers meet. And so there's no need to continue out searching. And that's why she refuses to leave at the end. She has found something that she wanted.
Speaker: She thinks she found something that she wanted. Well, is that true? I mean, we say that because it seems awful to want a haunted house and to end your life through deliberate car wreck because you refuse to leave it. But do we know that she didn't actually find what she wanted? She only thought she did. I mean, was she mad enough that maybe this is what she actually wanted and was appropriate for her? That sounds incredibly harsh, but how do we know otherwise?
Speaker: Yeah, no, I think Dr. Montague gives us a clue. He's like, the house has you. You've been influenced. I don't remember if he uses the word warped, but it's somewhat implied, right? The house has warped you.
Speaker: And he sees it early on when she talks about surrender, and she says that multiple times. She wants to surrender, she gives in. She thinks the house wants her, and so she accepts that. I think that's the haunting. It's that it got into her head, you know, even to the point where she hears the knocking inside her head and can predict when the knocking is gonna shift focus. I think that's the haunting.
Speaker: Yes. And I think what is also haunting for me as the reader was to realize that this haunted house may actually be a better life than what she had right before this. And that's part of why she falls in love with it. I mean, before this, she had no friends. She never spent any pleasant time with her mother who seemed to be a miserable person. She said one of the descriptions of her is that she blinks in strong sunlight because she has spent so little time outside.
Speaker: And she comes to this house, which granted is a haunted house, but it's a beautiful stately home in the hills. I mean, the greenery around the house is described in great detail. There's a creek, there's wildflowers, there's a little bunny. And yes, it's all overlaid with this creepy atmosphere. But what if even despite that, this is in some ways actually better than either Eleanor's life before this or her prospects after that?
Speaker: And that's, to me, a really horrifying thought. Right. But I feel like that's all part of the lie that the house is infusing in Eleanor's mind. The idea that she has nowhere to go or that she's incapable of building the life for herself that she daydreams about on her way to the house instead of like the trap
Speaker: And I feel like this is a trap of depression as well, that you can't achieve anything better for yourself. You can't get to that peaceful little house where you belong and you're surrounded by beautiful things. That's a lie that depression tells you. Yes, when it is stemming from that. But also, how do we know it's a lie?
Speaker: Well, it's interesting because journeys and in lovers meeting is so hopeful, like you talked about. And it's like, how do you know that the journey has ended, right? Like Eleanor, get out of the house and continue your journey because you have not yet found what you need. You need to keep journeying.
Speaker: That's also part of the horrifying part of it is that she couldn't try. She didn't see this as a jumping off point of, I have met new people and they liked me. And so it is possible for me to go meet new people and have them like me. She didn't take that lesson from this experience. She said, this is it. This is the only thing that is good. And this is the only possibility for a good independent life. And so I have to stay here. I do think it's good that you point out that
Speaker: These other people seem to like her. She's funny. You know, a lot of the dialogue is very whimsical and amusing. So, yes, there are glimmers of what Eleanor could be like, or the good parts of Eleanor could. I agree with that, but I guess, to me, this idea that, well, you're, you know, it's just wrong and a mistake to think that opportunities are foreclosed, or that things are going to be hard and difficult. I mean, that's just true some of the time, and may have been true for her.
Speaker: I can't believe that the story would be telling us that, right? Because it's about a haunting. It's about the elimination of a person. Like, I don't know. I just can't accept that Eleanor's ending is a happy ending. Yes, I agreed. I also think that the very last line about the house walks alone. I think it's particularly beautiful or particularly brutal, not beautiful, because Eleanor has just killed herself in order to remain
Speaker: at or with the house. Such a rejection of what she thought she was doing. Right. So yes, that is all true. But I guess I just don't want it to be as simple as, you know, the house got in her head, drove her mad,
Speaker: And she misunderstood some basic facts about the world. She's actually a lovely human being with lots of opportunities. I don't think it's quite that simple, right? I don't think it's that simple either. She's a hateful person. Yes. And we see that throughout her time there. But even before she gets to the house, we see indications of that.
Speaker: We see indications of that before the house has really started haunting her. She thinks mean thoughts about everyone else. She assumes the worst about people. She thinks that they are denigrating her or trying to take advantage of her. And she very much alters from that and the hopeful whimsical, pleasant Illinois.
Speaker: Both of those are in her and I think would have been in her without the house. Yes, I think those were within or without the house, but I think it also is what made the house dangerous for her. And I think Dr. Montague says that at some point, or at least that was my impression of his concern.
Speaker: Now, as far as her being a hateful person, I wonder what that has to do with anger and Eleanor's anger because when they find her name written in chalk, Theodora accuses Eleanor of writing it herself and Eleanor is so angry. And then Luke and Dr. Montague act as if Theodora said that to snap Eleanor out of it. And now I was like, no, that is not what Theodora was doing.
Speaker: And so that, and she's angry. She's angry that her fear and then her understanding of the situation has been dismissed. But she doesn't express that. She plays nice. She pretends like everything's okay. And the phrase I have it here, it's something along the lines of she tried not to express her anger because she didn't want to be ineffectual. Oh, interesting.
Speaker: And then that anger and loathing comes out again when she's cleaning Theodora up. And it just made me think she's been a caretaker to her mom all these years and just repressed her own wants and needs to take care of her mother. And now she's in a position of caretaker again with Theodora washing her blood, washing the blood off of her.
Speaker: and she loathed Theodore. She's never loathed anyone so strongly in her life as she loathed Theodore in that moment. And I think it's a reaction too. She's had to repress herself to be a caretaker. And when that has to happen again, that anger comes through again and she never expresses it.
Speaker: Yes, I mean, I think you nailed the reason for that anger. I also, you know, cards on the table, I think that anger is part of being lonely, of certain really deep types of loneliness, where you are
Speaker: So lonely and so desperate for human connection, but you are also angry that you are so needy, and that it has gotten to this point where you do need it this badly, and other people seem to have it easily and, and, you know, don't experience the deep hunger that you feel.
Speaker: at least the first time I read this book, maybe I'll change my mind after we discuss it. But to me, this book is about the corrosive effects of loneliness that paradoxically and cruelly, it can turn you into someone who pushes other people away just as you're trying to get close to them. And I think we see that with the house. We certainly see that in her relationships with the other people, but with the house, she tries, it offers her a place to be and she tries to grab it, but at the same time,
Speaker: the manner in which she does it throws away everything else, literally her life, because she's just so desperate to have a place to belong.
Speaker: And I think loneliness is like that. The desperation itself can be off -putting to other people. And that is terrible, right? The one thing you need is other people. And something about the way you're reaching out is pushing them away. Yeah. So when Eleanor and Theodora, the first couple days when they're together, Eleanor has like little mean thoughts of like, oh, I wonder if it would be annoying to be around someone so perceptive as Theodora.
Speaker: you know, or at that point, I was wondering, you know, Eleanor lies about her life. And I wonder if that's like a self protective thing where she lies about having a little apartment and a cup full of stars. And she wants to hide the truth of her existence because it is so miserable. And then so having Theodore who's perceptive or psychic, as she's described, is invading that ability to lie about who she is. It's also painful in a way, right? Because
Speaker: I think another thing that comes with loneliness is the shame of feeling loneliness. You don't want someone to be able to perceive that. Nobody wants to say, yeah, someone perceived my loneliness, right? We want to be seen in some ways, but not that way.
Speaker: and yeah i think maybe that's i think you nailed it that might be the source of some of her anger with theodora but there's also this feeling of here's a woman who is warm and welcoming and says we're we're cousins the you know within minutes of meeting we're cousins we're gonna have a
Speaker: family picnic here. And it's like, oh, here's the first time she has a sister and a mother, neither of them have shown her this amount of warmth. So it's like, oh, I better accept this, right? Like, this is what I want. She has to accept it from Theodora, even though maybe once they get to know each other better, maybe they don't need to have that sisterly relationship, right? Like, you could just be friends. You don't have to like,
Speaker: move in with the first person you like, right? And then spend, like, you don't have to commit. That's an immature approach to a romantic relationship. You're going to be with your high school sweetheart for the rest of your lives because it's true love, right? Yeah. And I think later we'll get into the details about whether their relationship is sisterly or friendly or romantic. But I think, I think it's all of that. And the essential point remains is that Eleanor takes that relationship
Speaker: to mean far too much and turns it into such an intense thing so quickly. At the end of the book, you've learned that they were actually only there a week and it's shocking.
Speaker: because you have seen all of this from inside Eleanor's head. So much happened to her, but she also feels so deeply connected to these people. And you realize, wow, that's a little much to feel that degree of connection and commitment after only a week. I don't know that she's the only one who does. I was surprised because there are moments where all four of them are just so
Speaker: thrilled to be with each other and to be in a haunted house. And I think that was part of the haunting too is this like a drug like they're intoxicated with having experienced a haunted house and they're together and they do feel like they talk about all four of them together being a family. So it's not just Eleanor. That's true. I do think she escalates it
Speaker: and takes it to a greater level of intensity the rest of them. But you're correct. She is not manufacturing the baseline level of connection. They all seem to feel that. I do think the section where Eleanor really even tells Theodora that she, Eleanor, is going to come live with Theodora after this. I think that section is pretty funny, really, because that's ridiculous, right? You're not going to move in together. You've known each other three or four days, and you seem to be friends.
Speaker: And I think, and Theodora very gently walks her down from that and says something like, well, you have your house to go to, because Eleanor has lied that she does even, that she does actually have a place to go to. So even within that group, it's clear that Eleanor at times takes it further. I think Theodora was, I remember her being more firm about like, no, you're not, like that's not happening at some point too.
Speaker: Oh, I think she was both firm and gracious. It was actually kind of a model, honestly, of handling a weird request from someone you've only known a couple days. That felt very familiar to me. I don't know if I have some memories of being at like camp or something as a kid or a teenager and just like seeing these interactions between women, especially like Theodora feels very familiar to me as like a friendly, warm,
Speaker: extroverted woman who just like, Hey, we're best friends now. We've just met and we're best friends. But then it's, it's just the way that they have of interacting with people. And then someone like Eleanor, who, who doesn't have experience with social interactions, mistaking that, uh, forgive me if this is off topic, but that like, I remember hearing about.
Speaker: Different how different cultures interact and there was someone from a Nordic country on an airplane next to an American business person and the American was super friendly and Sharing pictures of grandkids and the Nordic person was like, this is my new best friend Didn't realize that it's a very American
Speaker: thing to be so Talkative, you know, and so then when they arrived in the US The Nordic person was like, oh you're gonna find a hotel room for me and give me tours of the city and that the American was like what no Like it was just like there's the cultural misunderstanding and Eleanor has is in that position too of though This is social way of being there's not it's not a promise. I
Speaker: Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. And I have frankly, more times than I would like to admit, I have been in Eleanor's position where I guess there was a baseline level of loneliness. And I assumed that because someone was friendly to me in a certain way or
Speaker: We shared an experience that seemed serious, that that would be like an ongoing, serious relationship. And I think I really scared a bunch of people off by just coming on way too strong. This is actually a really embarrassing example, but I think it's dead on. So one time years ago, I went out for a drink with someone that we're both involved in improv with. Like we went and got wine at a coffee shop or something very casual.
Speaker: And I had essentially already decided in my head that we were friends and it made sense for us to be really good friends.
Speaker: And at that meeting, I mentioned repeatedly the next time we hung out and named what we could do together then, like just threw out ideas. And I never heard back from that person afterward. I realized on reflection, it just seemed like I was giving this person a to -do list or sort of imprisoning them in my expectations. So I've done this, you know? Yeah. That feels familiar to me too. I know I've done it too.
Speaker: What I want to do with Eleanor, I want to put her in therapy and tell her like, look, just because it didn't work with Theodora, it's just that she's just not the person to respond to that kind of friendship. But there are other people out there who will connect with you at your level. It's great that you have a friend at Theodora, but that's going to be a casual friendship. That's an acquaintance. You know, maybe you send a Christmas card every year, but you never go on vacation together, right? Right.
Speaker: In some ways it's such an introvert versus extrovert thing. Yeah. Like I have done the, as an introvert, done the introvert thing of just glomming on to the extrovert friend at parties or otherwise. And like you have come to the realization that the things that I only do with people I really, really like, other people just do casually, including, you know, certain types of conversation or gestures of affection.
Speaker: And I used to joke, and this is a little harsh, so I do not mean it, but that you can't really trust an extrovert because they're just nice to everyone. It doesn't mean anything. But if the misanthrope or an introvert is nice to you, that means something. So a little bit of that feeling is clearly going on here.
Speaker: It sounds like you've heard the identify. Oh, definitely. And I've actually played extrovert a couple times where I'm like, no, I can totally commit to like hanging out with this person and then and then not. I just feel like no, actually, I should have trusted my introvert instincts of like going slow. Yeah, I take it seriously. I understand why this would be uncomfortable for some people. But generally, my assumption is if we were close once, we have the opportunity to be close forever. When you say it out loud.
Speaker: But that's, I mean, that's Eleanor for sure. Right. And so I sympathized with her. She's finally with people she doesn't hate. Yeah. And she was funny. There was a bunch of very witty exchanges. I enjoyed it. You know, I felt like one of the group and I was happy to be there. And they do take care of her too. I wonder if that's the first time she's experienced that too. Almost certainly. I mean, based on how her past was described, it seems like it.
Speaker: Yeah, I just want her to have some therapy. But I think that about every single character in every single TV show or book because there's no story without conflict. I tend to be a little more skeptical about those solutions. Not I didn't actually mean therapy in general, but often you read a book and you're like, man, if they would just communicate or if she just was aware of her own desires. But I tend to think that sometimes
Speaker: even the awareness of the communication which feel kind of like therapy skills maybe it wouldn't have helped. I mean maybe right maybe she has had some doors closed permanently by the fact that she spent 11 years caring for her mother.
Speaker: You know, maybe it's not always just, what's the phrase, like springtime in America. You know, that's funny. In the book, Dr. Montague is sometimes just referred to as the doctor. And almost every single time I'm like, there's a doctor there, a doctor who can help Eleanor deal with her issues. But no, he's a doctor of philosophy. But in this case, I think he actually had the answer, which was Eleanor get away from the house and get out of the influence of the house.
Speaker: And I think it's so fascinating that a doctor of philosophy who has a degree in what architecture? Something like that, yeah. Yeah. But he's interested in haunted houses. It makes me wonder, does the application of a philosophical review of haunted houses, what does that get you? I mean, more bluntly, I was like, what is this guy's job?
Speaker: We know he's a professor, but we call him doctor. It's philosophy, but he's got the architecture, but he's also writing a scientific article about haunted houses. Like who is paying? And he mentions, I think that he has a university job, you know, during the school year and anthropology, you know, the fifties and sixties, you could just have people who are paid to be intellectuals in some capacity. What does he do? Like, how is someone paying him to exist? Um, but they were apparently.
Speaker: It makes me think of his wife too, because I would expect the wife of this man to be completely rock solid, realistic, pragmatic. But then she comes in and she's like, we're going to use the planchette. And in a way, she's dogmatic. And that makes sense. But it also, it was just a complete surprise. Like it was, Mrs. Montague was nothing what I expected. She's kind of a comic character, right? She's a true believer in
Speaker: psychic phenomena. She is well versed in it, well researched, although the feeling of everyone including the book's author seems to be that she doesn't really know what she's talking about. But she has tried and she just sort of blunders in and she's just too over the top, does things too strenuously. And she ends up never registering any psychic phenomena other than what happens with the planchette, where she just gets a couple words.
Speaker: And then when they all find Eleanor in the library, Mrs. Montague's like, this girl has ruined any chance of supernatural phenomena. And it's like, you're looking at the supernatural phenomena. Like, this is it. This is what's happening. Yeah. I feel like I should explain what a planchette is because I had to look it up. It can refer to a couple of things.
Speaker: essentially is a device you use for so -called spirit writing as when you use a Ouija board and you let the spirit move that little triangular device to cover up letters or numbers. From what I read, that device itself can be called a planchette or it can also refer to some contraption, I couldn't find a picture of this, where you have a writing utensil hanging from a string on paper and it supposedly moves in such a way that the spirits are moving it and leaving a message.
Speaker: So she came in with this piece of technology and she was going to use that to understand this haunted house.
Speaker: And poor Dr. Montague, in the beginning of the book, I had no expectation that he was married. And then once it was revealed he had a wife, I was like, this is someone who has to take care of him because his head is in the clouds, in the supernatural. And then she was like, worse. Worse. You want your spouse to support your career. And in the fact that she's a true believer, OK, that's kind of supportive. That's kind of nice that you can marry someone who actually believes
Speaker: I thought that, yeah. But then she comes at it the wrong way. It's so complicated. I mean, this is why this book is brilliant, because it's so complicated and twisted. And yeah, he says this is her one vice. She's a good wife, but her approach to the supernatural is her one vice. And it's like, isn't this your career's pursuit? And you're married to a woman whose one vice is getting involved with your career in this way. Yeah.
Speaker: And then one mystery I have not found the answer to I've tried. He mentions that Mrs. Montague does yoga. And I was like, what does it mean for a white woman in the 50s to do yoga? Like I felt like that was put in there to tell me something about her character, but I don't know what it's supposed to be telling me. So I actually do know the answer to this. Awesome. The 50s yoga in America in the 50s and 60s that was long before it became the sort of
Speaker: Americanized version of yoga that focuses a lot on fitness. And I think at that time, it was much more associated with, quote unquote, esoteric spiritual traditions from the East. So you still have a bit of the, you know, white woman co -opting practices from other cultures. But I think here, what would say about her is less
Speaker: wellness and more she's into spirituality in sort of a hodgepodge way. I mean, obviously those practices themselves, I'm not saying they're hodgepodge, but when you are a white woman in America picking and choosing and, you know, taking a little bit of yoga and some planchette and whatever else she was into, I think it means you are a seeker after spiritual things. Generally, I wouldn't even say enlightenment, maybe just excitement. I don't think it's necessarily meant as a compliment.
Speaker: Right. Which is actually how it would probably be used today, right? Right. In a slightly different way. You had a question about names in this book, right? Yes, because it seemed very clear that Eleanor wants to belong. And then I think it's after the first night when they hear the knocking and she's in the room with Theodore. I think it's after that Theodore gives her nickname Nell or Nellie. That's right. Nellie first, which reminds me of the phrase nervous Nellie. So I don't know that that was a compliment.
Speaker: They all call her Nell from then on. And the idea of coming into a family, and they're all described as childlike at different points, being very childlike or childish, but being a new person into a family and then given a new name, I thought meant something. I'm not sure what that means something.
Speaker: Well, the house has a name. And early on, Theodora keeps using the formal name of the house. She keeps calling it Hill House. And Eleanor doesn't like that. She feels it's just invoking the house or calling its attention. Calling its attention, yes. And then again, it's only Eleanor's name that the house ever manifests. Right. And she says, it knows my name. She doesn't like that, right? Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know exactly what to do with that. I mean, names have power. Living things have names. True. Concepts also have names to some extent. So I think we said earlier that we would return to talking about the relationship between Eleanor and Theodora and how it seems to contain a number of things. They are directly called cousins and sisters and friends, but there's also a suggestion that maybe they are lovers.
Speaker: several suggestions maybe. So the strongest things to me that suggested that was that at the very beginning when Eleanor meets Theodora, or shortly thereafter, I don't think it's actually the first meeting, Theodora is describing her home.
Speaker: Away wherever that is and she talks about how we live and we decorated it this way we did this we and but she doesn't name a gender of who we is and we don't get a name of who her partner is and Eleanor asks her she says oh you married and it results in an awkward moment as though Eleanor is committed a faux pas moment of silence and
Speaker: and it just moves on. There's never any answer. So that first got me to wonder, does Theodora have a female partner? Maybe if Eleanor were a little more worldly, she would have picked up on those signs and not asked a direct question that seemed like a faux pas. So there's that. And then towards the end of the book, when Eleanor and Theodora go walking at night and they find that
Speaker: daytime picnic that's happening. The essence of that, it's about the conflict between them. And they are also referred to as sisters in that passage. But it also has this quote, which says, nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken. There was only the barest margin of safety left them.
Speaker: Each of them moving delicately around the outskirts of an open question and once spoken such a question as do you love me could never be answered or forgotten. And then a sentence later, each knew almost within a breath what the other was thinking and wanting to say. Each of them almost wept.
Speaker: the other. Yeah I mean that's I didn't pick up on it when I was reading it but that seems to point to at least Theodora being attracted to Elinor. I don't know about Elinor. I feel like Elinor is not in touch with sexuality at all to be even capable of saying there's a sexual attraction there. I mean right before this they started arguing because
Speaker: Theodora was teasing Eleanor about Eleanor having a crush on Luke. And now I wonder, because Theodora says, he shouldn't be allowed to do that. He's making a fool of you. This is very confusing to me, as I was reading it. And now I wonder, is that jealousy? And is it, like, Eleanor keeps identifying a jealousy in that Theodora wants to be the center of attention. But now I'm wondering, is that jealousy? Because she doesn't want Eleanor paying that kind of attention to Luke. And then Theodora and Luke flirt.
Speaker: before and after this. Yeah, it is openly described as that. It's confusing. I mean, some other things that kind of support that is that phrase journeys end in lovers meeting. The first person that Eleanor meets, she meets the house first, but then the first person she meets is Theodora. Maybe they are the lovers they're meeting. But Eleanor also thinks that phrase to herself when she meets Luke for the first time. I mean, it may be that Eleanor's loneliness
Speaker: is just so intense that it's like a tidal wave of longing for connection and the specific details of how that gets worked out may not even be the point. Once a friend, a lover, a mother, a father, a sister, she wants it all. There is that passage where Luke and Eleonora are finally alone and Eleonora realizes she's just bored.
Speaker: Yeah. And Luke keeps saying, oh, you're so lucky you need your mother. And it's like, but Eleanor hated her mother. She hated her mother. And so I don't know, again, Eleanor, just because Luke isn't the love of your life, the first man you've ever spoken to alone, doesn't mean that there aren't other men out in the world. I mean, I don't know. I don't think Eleanor even knows. She doesn't know what romance or lust are. I feel like she's searching.
Speaker: trying it on in these different situations. Yes, I agree. If this is true that there's sort of latent or maybe even close to the surface romantic connection between Eleanor and Theodora, I do think that actually works with what you were saying about the importance of naming.
Speaker: Because at that time, these relationships existed and people knew it. Perhaps the younger sister or the older sister and her companion were another such relationship, but they were never given the straightforward name. So to name it, to say, this woman is my lover as a woman was, I mean, first of all, it's dangerous, but it also didn't happen. So there was skirting around names and
Speaker: perhaps even fear associated with names. And they certainly had power, which we see in some of the other parts of the book. I mean, that would explain why the companion was so attached to the house. Right. Or like why the sister left it to her in the first place. I mean, on the other hand, there seems to be a trend of looking at older movies and books and things and queer coding them and
Speaker: I think that's definitely justified in a lot of cases, but on the other hand, I also like the idea that there can just be friendship. In a friendship, you can express affection and love for a friend without it being sexual. So, I mean, I think a longing for a friendship can be just as deep and painful as longing for romance.
Speaker: Yes, agree. In some ways more so, because we talk about romantic attraction, sexual attraction as being sort of intoxicating. There's this idea you're not in your right mind when you do it. But if someone chooses you as a friend, they do that stone cold sober, right? That's a really good point. Yeah. Although you so intoxication, again, I just think the house is intoxicating, not just to Eleanor. I mean, she has she seems to have the strongest reaction, but it seems to intoxicate all of them.
Speaker: The four, the four, not Mrs. Montague or Arthur. Again, lovers meeting. Who are the lovers? It changes throughout the story. Yes. I will also mention, so Mrs. Montague shows up with this random guy named Arthur in tow, her friend. It's her lover, right?
Speaker: was wondering. I mean they traveled here together and they also mentioned there was reference to other weekends they spent together and it just seemed like that was Mrs. Montague's lover and everybody was fine with that. But it was unnamed. I also just like the idea that he's such a weird like he's in charge of a school for boys. He was a weird character yeah he was very abrasive
Speaker: kind of ignorant and proud of it, it seemed. He was not, he was a believer in the psychic phenomena, but he went about it in the way like a hunter going after some big dumb animal or something. Literally carrying a gun. Like what is a gun going to do? Yes. He controls, you know, just real masculine vigor in action. Right. And he very explicitly says how he enforces his ideal masculinity with the boys he teaches.
Speaker: Yeah, how was that again? What did he say he does? He doesn't let them cry. Right. He says something about poetry isn't what my boys learned, something like that.
Speaker: I hesitate to say that anything means anything concrete with this book. That's one of the things I like about it, but it seems very cleverly woven and ambiguous. But with Arthur and his idea of masculinity, there's also a closed offness to Arthur and Mrs. Montague. The four others, they're just, they're open to the experience of the haunting and Arthur and Mrs. Montague are not open.
Speaker: Well, in some way they're almost more scientific about it in that it seems to be a completely externalized phenomenon that they do not personally anticipate experiencing in a deep way.
Speaker: Whereas the other four are there to experience it, what they assume that it will manifest sort of inside them and outside them as well. Which gets to, it's so personal with Eleanor, like the knocking. She wakes up and she thinks it's her mother knocking. And then she reveals that the night her mother died, she didn't hear the knocking to give her mother medicine. And then her mother died. Like that's just thrown away as if it's not like a huge trauma, you know?
Speaker: or crying for mother and Eleanor come home like those are things that Eleanor it's deeply personal to her yeah and i think it has to get under your skin in that way for haunting the for hill house to haunt you it gets
Speaker: into those personal cracks and seeps in. Well, that's why I like the haunted house genre because it's fundamentally about families, I think, or the attempt to have a family and whatever that means. Everyone has some experience with that. I'm certainly not saying everyone has a nuclear family that they grew up with, but everyone has at least the sense of that expectation that you will have or find a family for yourself.
Speaker: and then what happens between the two of you, between the two or three or four of you.
Speaker: I don't know. We have all these expectations and there's so much meaning wrapped up and whether someone will love us like that. Yeah. So expectations. So I think that ties into the loneliness piece too, because when you fit into a family unit, you fill a role in a way like daughter role or mother, you know, like you fill a role and then there are these expectations on you and Eleanor throughout the book is like, they expect me to voice these things that they're afraid to say and like,
Speaker: i was like where did that come from or like they are mocking me or they think i'm a fool they're making a fool of me like all of these like they i don't know how much of it is projection i think sometimes it's projection sometimes it's an accurate reading of the situation but she helped she has this like they theme going on in her head and i think that's part of the loneliness is like once you're around people
Speaker: Now they have an idea of you and you can't control what that idea is. You can't shape it. They have an idea of you. They exist separately from you in a way that you just, it's uncomfortable I think for someone who has been alone for so long and been, it's in control of her environment and her interactions. Like now suddenly they can define her. I think that is all.
Speaker: So true and a big part of why houses in particular can be the site of so much of that emotional package because you kind of idea of a house or home is you carve out this little space for you for you or maybe you and your family that's separate and Maybe safe in some ways or loving right where the good things are but then if something bad happens with those expectations and those people within the house, it's
Speaker: even more hurtful and dangerous and haunting and horrifying because this was supposed to be the home, the separate place that's safe. And to be clear, I think the idea of a home as a separate safe space is actually a historically unique aberration. I do not think that expectation of my home is my castle, even though it uses the word castle, I do not think that is actually a very old idea. Right. Do you want to talk about haunted houses in general and what genre themes we saw here?
Speaker: Yeah, well, you know, my pop culture interpretation of the 50s, like that's when suburban home nuclear family was idealized, right? Yes. Yeah. And once you have that, it's sort of a pressure cooker or a cauldron. Now that you have set aside
Speaker: this special area of the home and laid all these expectations and intentions on it and then shoved the people who are going to live in there together. They spend all their time together or most of it and they have all these expectations and let's see what unfolds. I mean,
Speaker: It's a perfect recipe for a haunted house, right? Right. Although what's different about this story is that we don't have the homeowner. Technically, Luke is the homeowner, the future homeowner, but he's not tied to the house. For example, our other book, Nine -Nine -Fear Street, the parents put all of their savings into this house and now they can't leave. That is not attention in this book because Luke has the means to just own the house and never live there. Yes, that's true.
Speaker: trapped and in fact three of the four of them come and go through freely. Which I mean you said earlier this is what about the story was like the haunted or the horror aspect of it and for me this book did not feel like a horror to me. It's purely just like my emotional reaction to this story is like does this feel like horror or not and when I've felt that horrified feeling it's a feeling of being trapped and it's a feeling of not being able to control being surrounded by supernatural unexplainable
Speaker: phenomena and that very instinctual sense of feeling trapped and so this book did not evoke that in me although it was like creepy and but I didn't feel horrified. I do agree it did not have that haunted house feeling of being trapped somewhere separate where terrible things are happening.
Speaker: I did find it horrifying because it was like you're trapped by your desires or by your loneliness. That doesn't necessarily have anything to do with houses or homes or whatever you want to call it. So I can see how this didn't feel like a haunted house story in some ways. It was chilling to me. I mean, just this idea, which I've already said that your own loneliness can create worse loneliness for yourself because you push people away is frightening. We talked about the house as being a creature.
Speaker: I think loneliness can kind of be a creature. You grab it or it grabs you and it just can drag you along to some terrible places. Kind of get that feeling from this book. Yeah, I mean that, now I'm horrifying, like your own. It's inside the house. It's inside your own head. Where it's supposed to be safe. Right. Okay, wait. Now I want to go back and talk about absolute reality again. Because if you're inside your own house isn't safe,
Speaker: or inside your own head isn't safe. My idea is like, oh, what is real? Can you go to what is real? But no, because it's the reality that drives you insane. Like what's real in this book? Oh, that's another interesting thing. There are no skeptics in this book. Although it does open with the idea of a scientific investigation.
Speaker: And Dr. Montague does reference proving haunted houses to skeptics, but you're right, there's no character. But I'm beginning to see maybe a connection here between that and reality. I'm struggling to put it together, but you're right, this book is so subjective, but it is, the haunting is true. We are not actually wasting any time debating what is real or what is not. And yet the premise of the book
Speaker: is a scientific expedition to debate whether or not haunted houses are real. Yes, it makes me wonder if these two things are in like scientific inquiry and the reality, the absolute reality of experiencing a haunted house are incompatible in a way. Yes, but I'm hesitant to say that because I'm not sure the house represents or has absolute
Speaker: reality in it or around it i mean i'm not sure exactly how to talk about it it kind of and this is a view that i would happily endorse it mentions scientifically proving something but that just seems to be sort of a social way of talking about things it does not seem to pick up the gauntlet
Speaker: that you get in other haunted house books about proving something is real. Dr. Montague wants to write a paper on this that his colleagues accept. The book isn't engaging about proving anything. That's like his personal hobby horse. And Mrs. Montague's personal hobby horse is letting the spirits know that she loves them. I mean, she does say that at some point, right? No, she does to Eleanor too. I don't think this is about a battle between types of reality or degrees or objectivity, subjectivity.
Speaker: which is interesting because the very first line mentions absolute reality, but then it kind of like takes it and crumbs it up and tosses it away. And then we're just dealing with people experiencing things. That moment, or I guess it's a scene where Eleanor, she becomes the hunter. Like she's listening to the people and knocking on the doors. Yeah. And running around and laughing.
Speaker: I don't know what to say except that was great. There wasn't really feeling of childish joy in that section, wasn't there? Yeah. And like she can hear everyone but they don't know she's there. Oh my gosh, that's like the delight of being alone, right? Like that's not loneliness. That's solitude or yeah, the good kind of being alone, not loneliness.
Speaker: Because loneliness is always double -sided. I sometimes feel like if I could just get away from other people, then I would be happy, right? Meaning both just physically away, but also shedding these expectations. But then when she's listening to Luke and Theodore, she's like, when are they going to talk about me? There's this ego involved. But that's enticing. And I can't tell if that's a healthy desire or if it's all part of the intoxication of the house.
Speaker: I don't know. I also don't know if there are bad types of seeking solitude. I mean, if it is just an escape from other people, that also seems problematic. Right now, do you want to talk about genre themes in this book? We kind of. Oh, sure. Yes. So genre themes, we have caretakers, a man and a woman, in this case, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley. Who are kind of angry and hostile. I feel like they're protected. They're protecting themselves.
Speaker: the house. Mrs. Dudley, they make fun of her very strict schedule, but she's also a really great cook, which I feel like isn't that usually attributed to a moral goodness being a good cook? Well, and it was here because she didn't have to make them such nice meals. I mean, they say that. She really did well by them in that regard. So there's that, there's names written
Speaker: on the walls in blood or blood appearing in various places such as on Theodora's clothes. We didn't talk about the book signed in blood by Hugh Crane. It was weird. I guess I didn't have a strong takeaway about its influence on the book, did you?
Speaker: No, I am curious. It doesn't say whether that book, it's written to Sophia, but we don't know if Sophia is the older daughter or the younger daughter. And with the conversation about the older sister and her companion, I kind of thought it was for the older sister that she took it to heart because it's talking about keeping away from the world, keeping herself pure from the world. And the older sister did. She stayed in the house and was kind of separate from the world.
Speaker: But the book and then the weird design of the house, those are the two main things you know about Ukraine. I did think it was interesting that the origin story of this house, as far as it go, is pretty mild. I mean, in terms of haunted houses, right? There was no massacre. There was no mass scene of torture, anything like that. You know, a couple people died here. There were rumors of hauntings.
Speaker: This man wrote this creepy book, but it's all relatively mild, isn't it? Yeah, I agree. In some ways, I think that makes it worse. So other haunted houses that we've read or that I know about something extraordinary took took place at that location to sort of work the house. But this suggests those haunted houses might be a lot closer to ordinary life.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. It makes me think that's what makes it more seductive of like, can't be that bad. Many people have left alive from this house. Yes. Another genre theme is that the townspeople know the history of the house and are hostile, which is a little bit more mysterious here because like you said, there isn't initiating event, a huge, horrible event. Yeah. It seems that this reputation just sort of develops over time. Mm -hmm.
Speaker: Another genre theme is the attempt at scientific investigation. Although, as we said, the book does not seem to rise and fall on that attempt at all. It mentions it. It's maybe the framing story. I wouldn't say that's a driver of what this book is about.
Speaker: Right. So other haunted house stories, people bring recorders like video cameras. They want to try to capture the phenomena. Yes, which did happen to some extent here. It just didn't feel like that was the main story at all. And as you said, there were no skeptics. I mean, it wasn't even a theme between characters because there was no skeptic. And then of course, there's the house driving someone to madness and then suicide. Yes, but
Speaker: I wonder as we continue reading these haunted house stories, cause now I'm questioning my own expectation. I expect the character who dies to then become a ghost in the house. I do too. Yeah. Okay. So we'll see as we read more stories that happened in the last book, didn't happen here, but in a way she did become the ghost before she died. That was what made it puzzling that at the end the house walked alone. Right? Yeah.
Speaker: So I agree. Final thoughts? Oh man. How about you go first? Cause let me think about it. So you said something earlier about how ambiguous this story is and it is ambiguous, but I suspect there is a clear core meaning that I have yet to figure out because everything just seems so intentional in the writing style and how things wove together, the repetition of themes, certain phrases.
Speaker: And that's maybe part of why I'm a little sympathetic to the reading that maybe this is about queer lives and relationships. And I didn't understand all the coding. And if I did, it would explain it. That being said, I do think maybe loneliness is also a factor. I don't know. This book sort of leaves me with the feeling that there is a definite
Speaker: if not an explanation, then a meaning behind all of this that I just can't quite crack. Yes. I have that sense too, but also I really enjoyed the ride, right? I just enjoyed reading the story, just the very different ways that the house was haunting. Like the fact that it happened, that there was outside, there was that picnic scene. Well, we didn't talk too much about the tower. Like what the tower has this,
Speaker: presence, psychic and physical presence around the house. Like all of those things just is a tapestry of mystery and I don't know, but yeah, like these unknown things, maybe they're unknowable.
Speaker: Listeners, what did you think of The Haunting of Hill House? Have you read any other books by Shirley Jackson? What do you think about the relationship between Eleanor and Theo? Let us know by recording a voice memo and emailing it to openingquestionatgmail .com. You can also complete the feedback form on our website at bookclubpod .com.
Speaker: Send your responses before November 13th so that we can include them in our feedback episode at the end of the season. Our next book discussion will be on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Read with us. You can get your copy of Turn of the Screw by using the affiliate link in our show notes. We'll release that episode next week.
Speaker: The Book Club Podcast is produced by Carly Jackson and Caroline Horman, music and audio editing by Alex Marcus. Thanks for listening.
