Day 15

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and a similar adage might apply to Mrs. Montague. (Harry Potter fans may also be reminded of Professor Trelawney, the overly dramatic Divinations professor who once in a while manages to make an accurate prophecy.) Jackson amps up the chill factor of the scene in which Mrs. Montague and Arthur read the dialogue directed to Eleanor by having them remain stubbornly oblivious to its significance. The house is so determined to get its message across that it manages to get even these two into its service.

Or is the message coming from Eleanor, picked up by Mrs. Montague and Arthur through some kind of psychic reverberations? HELP ELEANOR COME HOME. We don’t know that the others see the same things she sees in the writing on the wall, just as we don’t know if Eleanor and Theodora see the same thing out there in the woods. The others may not see her name there at all. Is it the house that chooses Eleanor or Eleanor who chooses the house?

Interesting that Mrs. Montague’s planchette has a “control”—a spirit who speaks through it, I guess?—named “Merrigot.” The protagonist of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Jackson’s next (and last completed) novel, would be named Merricat.

The message is so poignant, even if Arthur and Mrs. Montague don’t notice that aspect. Home… home… home… home. “Like a word, and use it over and over, just for the sound of it,” Arthur explains unhelpfully. Lost. Lost. Lost. We know Eleanor is lost, longing for a home where she belongs, a family that will love her and accept her. In an early version of the novel, the spirit voice that the protagonist hears whispers to her to go away. But at some point in the writing process, Jackson realized that staying in Hill House was more frightening than leaving it. Like an abusive relationship—or an ineluctably entangled marriage of more than twenty years—the house is both impossible to remain in and impossible to escape.

Whatever happens that night, all four of them hear it. “Am I doing it?” Eleanor wonders of the babbling noise, which she anticipates. “Is that me?” Are the sounds coming from inside Eleanor’s head or from the house itself? Is there still any meaningful separation between the two?