Haunted “Usher”: Moving toward Absolute Reality in The Haunting of Hill House

Abstract

When critics turn their attention to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, they usually focus on its treatment of larger feminist or psychological questions. Tricia Lootens, for example, argues that Jackson’s novel explores the destructive power of family life. According to Lootens, Hill House stands for the kinds of oppression that lead women like Eleanor toward destruction. Most importantly, Lootens implies that Jackson has the family in mind when she wrote that “no live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality” (3). As Lootens puts it, “what Hill House reveals to its guests is a brutal, inexorable vision of the ‘absolute reality’ of nuclear families that kill where they are supposed to nurture” (167). Although we agree with much that Lootens asserts, we believe that her argument only captures a small part of Jackson’s overall purpose. This is particularly true when Lootens suggests that Jackson’s take on the family “touches on the terror of her entire culture” (167).KeywordsConcentric CircleCommonsense NotionAbsolute RealityFree Indirect DiscourseDream WorldThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.