When Lovers Meet

No living entity can continue to exist sanely under the roof of Hill House. Its history isn't anomalous, though there was once an outbreak of pneumonia, a suicide, and a sufficient amount of family bickering over the good china. Dr. Montague penned a flurry of letters in hopes of confirming the presence of the supernatural, with Hill House serving as the ideal location for his experiments. There were three replies, one of which fell in the hands of Eleanor (Nell) Vance. As Nell's attachment to the house strengthens, the reader is left to wonder what is causing the paranormal activities occurring in the house. When Shirley Jackson sat to write this book, she argued that you can not lose yourself to others in the struggle of making the best out of life.

Eleanor’s decision to leave the confined comfort of her home wasn’t a difficult one. Nell’s arduous life at home led to her increased dependency on others. As a child, she never really made memories significant enough to recall due to her capricious and cruel mother. Her sister was always apathetic, even after they grew older. Ever since her first memory, “Eleanor had been waiting for something like Hill House,” (page 5), somewhere she could fit in with a group of others and truly feel at ease. Yet as an adult, she stayed in her childhood home with her ill mom, supplying her pills, filling, and refilling her feeding tube despite being wronged all those years prior. Nell stuck at home because her entire existence so far was predicated on her mother’s. But one night, with the assistance of the “aching memories of her early childhood,” (page 11), she ignores her mother’s cries for medication and consequently wakes up the next morning orphaned. Journeys end in lovers meeting, she tells herself. And she gets up to pack. After her mom’s passing, there was “no one to love,” (page 4), hence she felt as if there was no one else in town to stay for. This is important because it justifies why she left — in search of a greater sense of affinity, to the only place she sought to find it: Hill House. Maybe there she’d meet someone nice enough to make up for her fragmented family. “I am home,” she thought when she arrived. And she “stopped in wonder” (page 219) at the thought. She felt at home because for once, she was expected. And she was here.

However, the house exploits her deprivation of maternal love by enveloping her in its environment. Nell sees herself a ‘child’ and what she wants is ‘Home’ and ‘Mother,’ but that “both are ‘Lost. Lost. Lost. Lost.’” (page 203). In an effort to clear her mind from her life at home, Nell starts to lose herself to the open interior of the house. The first night, “the house steadied and located them, above them the hills slept watchfully,” (page 41). Jackson uses personification here to let the reader know that the house is more than just a structure, especially considering Nell has always been forced to look after herself. The narration of the house creates a sense of welcoming. It seems to care and watch for her as a mother should, and so she feels like it is her destiny to live alongside it. But this proves to be problematic as her behavior fluctuates over the course of a few days.

Early in the novel, Nell starts to envision her future at Hill House. “No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road,” (page 16) she thinks. This foreshadows her ultimate fate to sink into solitude and reside with the house forever. Because she references oleanders specifically, you begin to see the effect the house has on Nell. Since oleanders are poisonous, it shows that her lust for a better life is causing her to let go of her self-identity. Once longing for the best in life, the house has redirected her ambitions to lure her in, slowly digesting Eleanor by exploiting her worst insecurities. Journeys end in lovers meeting, she says.

Another example of Nell’s crippling sanity shows up later in the book, where she asks her friend, Luke, “Why do people want to talk to each other? I mean, what are the things people always want to find out about other people?” (page 121). When everyone first met, Eleanor stated that she and everyone else loved to answer questions about themselves, as if it were embedded in humanity entirely. But suddenly, Nell questions why. You could argue that this doesn’t show anything other than Nell wandering about in her thoughts, but because of that reason, you could contend that she is becoming disenchanted with not only her friends, but her own body, in the process of achieving greater happiness. Journeys end in lovers meeting, Luke reminds her. And with this information, readers begin to question; Is Nell the victim of Hill House or of herself?

As Eleanor’s story comes to an end, the house’s leverage over her becomes increasingly evident. The floor begins to shake, the walls scream, “COME HOME ELEANOR,” while blood pools from the ceiling. “The menace of the supernatural is that it attacks where modern minds are weakest, where we have abandoned our protective armor of superstition and have no substitute defense,” Dr. Montague explains on page 102. This could be the most vital line in the novel regarding Nell’s hankering for inclusion. As she settles in with Luke and pseudo-sister Theo, she sheds that ‘protective armor’ and allows herself to belong. She depends on the two to accept her back, and based on their reactions, her view on herself alters. On one of her last nights at the house, she found herself on top of the rickety staircase in the library. Looking down at Theo, Luke, and the doctor worried sick, “For a minute she could not remember who they were (...) and she hesitated, clinging to the railing. They were so small, so ineffectual,” (page 219). This is noteworthy because at this moment, the party decides it’s time for Nell to return home. Visibly, she is no longer herself, rather a puppet of the house and its sick desires to lock her in for perpetuity. “They can’t turn me out or shut me out or laugh at me or hide from me; I won’t go, and Hill House belongs to me,” (page 232) is all she can say, exposing her fear of being rejected and shunned.

Eventually, she was saying her goodbyes to everyone, eyeing the great oak tree that stood sturdily by the gate, and loading her luggage into the car, when she had an epiphany. The entire time, she wanted acceptance and “[somewhere] to go,” (page 87). And Hill House was the only place she’d ever felt approved. She watched as the friends she’d made masked their sorrow with grins that wobbled ever so slightly on its edges. She got in the car with a genuine smile and stepped hard on the accelerator. “In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?” Shirley writes on page 232. “Why don’t they stop me?” Suddenly, the reader realizes that Eleanor has chosen to fuse with the house for eternity, freeing herself from the risk of estrangement outside. Her journey ended with lovers meeting, the ‘lovers’ being Nell and the house. When she finally met the house and understood how much it had consumed her rationality, it was too late. Because she could not envisage herself associated with anything other than her friends and the house, she ultimately lost her sense of self. Right before her car hit the tree, it became clear that her unhealthy approach to making a better life for herself had its repercussions.

No one could explain why Nell decided to do it. Dr. Montague never ended up concluding the experiment with either Luke or Theo, and the three kept the gates locked when they left. Because of Nell’s inherent desire to fit in, the destructive happiness she found within the house, and sadly, her dismal fate, we can infer that on stormy nights in 1959, The Haunting of Hill House was written to teach readers that you can not sacrifice your identity for an attempt at a better life.