Summary Of Haunting Of The Hill House By Shirley Jackson

In the story the Haunting of the Hill House Shirley Jackson sets a trap for both the readers and the protagonist, although the Hill House has a history of supernatural existence, but the events that unfold during the story suggest that some of the happenings at the house were not entirely supernatural but can be linked to the psychology of the characters.
Eleanor Vance the main protagonist in the story is a socially repressed woman who spent eleven years of her life taking care of her ill mother, sacrificing much of her youth and personal happiness and now lives a life of confinement with her sister. The invitation to Hill House provides a perfect chance for Eleanor to escape to freedom and a life of her own. All this background information
helps readers to understand the state of Eleanor’s mind and can be linked to the events at Hill House. The character of Theodora is also of our interests as being a modern woman she immediately connects with Eleanor and this bond of friendship between these two women is later witnessed to be the root of complexity surrounding Hill House.
Things become more complicated, however when a love triangle develops between Theo, Eleanor and Luke from this point onwards the story takes a new turn and hints at Theo’s sexual preference being towards females.
When Eleanor declares her love for Theo, she is shocked at this revelation and draws herself closer to Luke. Eleanor’s jealously builds up and at one point she is suspected of causing frightening phenomena in the house. It seems as if the Hill House is waging a psychological warfare on Eleanor and Theo, growing enmity between the two. The confusion arises whether it is Eleanor or Hill House that is truly responsible for the increasingly threatening manifestations. Eleanor has become so attached to the house that she believes this is the place where she truly belongs and it seems as the house has grip over her. She and the house are indispensable she felt so lonely and the only thing she could associate herself was with the house. Since she felt isolated she was drawn closer to the house and no longer had the fear of the supernatural for insistence she was brave enough to climb a high broken down staircase in the library. This shows what really was going through Eleanor’s mind and she was not really normal in that
house.
Towards the end true character of Eleanor starts to unfold in front of everyone and she turns out to be a very vulnerable and fragile person as a result Dr. Montague insist her to leave the house
But Eleanor had become so immersed in the house that she could not accept the idea of leaving the house and her newfound freedom. This dilemma results in Eleanor committing suicide
Although it seems as if the supernatural powers were behind her suicide but in reality it was the cognitive and mental disability of her that compelled her to crash her car into the tree, the evidence that all these circumstances were psychological is that moments before crashing her car Eleanor had second thoughts as to what was she doing but it was too late to realize the consequence of her action.
In this story author Shirley Jackson cleverly uses the ghost as psychological phenomena to highlight the fact that sometimes it’s the ghost inside every individual that make us do things that we normally won’t think of doing more like a split personality, which is portrayed in this story through the character of Eleanor.