Day 6

More about Eleanor: she plays bridge, she likes apple pie, she can swim. Is she telling the truth now? It sounds like it, at least in contrast to the description she gives Theodora of her apartment, which we know is fantasy. Speaking of queer subtext: note Theodora’s laugh after Eleanor asks if she’s married.

Again we notice how important the trappings of home are: “We found an old place and fixed it up ourselves,” Theodora says, inviting Eleanor (and the reader) to picture the happy domestic scene. Eleanor picks up her previous fantasy of the house with the white cat and stone lions and runs with it, down to the cup of stars. What does that magical cup suggest now—abundance? Beauty? Something else altogether?

One of Jackson’s most clever touches here is that Hill House, in its own way, is inviting, or at least Eleanor finds it so: “the soft bed, the pleasant lawn, the good fire.” And for just a moment we get a glimpse of the world outside the house—Mrs. Dudley, back in Hillsdale; Luke’s aunt, hundreds of miles away—as if to reassure us that it’s still there.