Day 4

“It is fear itself, fear of self, that I am writing about, fear and guilt and their destruction of identity… I have always loved to use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work… I delight in what I fear,” Jackson once wrote.

Hill House is a story about fear, and about what the things we fear tell us about the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves.

Notice the ways Jackson shows us that her characters are afraid. Here, in part 1, Luke and Theodora and Eleanor are “silent for a minute, wanting to move closer together.” So subtle, but we feel it. Keep an eye out for more—many more!—of these.

Eleanor, Theodora, Dr. Montague, and Luke “get acquainted” over martinis, but all we really learn about them is how little of themselves they wish to share. Poor Eleanor, who has waited all her life for something to happen, and now finds herself with an instant group of friends—how vulnerable she is. All she wants is to belong somewhere, even just as “the fourth person in this room.”

We’re reminded of Theodora’s special powers of perception, as she tunes in to something Luke has said, or hasn’t said. Eleanor, watching her, thinks that “it might sometimes be oppressive to be for long around one so immediately in tune.” Indeed—and what must it be like to be Theodora, with antennae unwaveringly sensitive to her companions’ emotions? How oppressive for her as well.

We may not learn much about the characters, but we do learn a bit about the house—at least its layout, which is confusing. Here’s a map Jackson drew of it, from her archives:

I’m trying to figure out if Dr. Montague’s directions to the dining room (“go through the door here, down the passage, into the front hall, and across the hall and through the billiard room”) actually work. Where are the characters starting from? The parlor? The boudoir? The drawing room? Maybe we’re supposed to be confused.

One of my favorite details: Mrs. Dudley, for all her faults, is an excellent cook.