Shirley Jackson's The Haunting Of Hill House

The tradition of the haunted, isolated structure is a well-established hallmark of gothic literary canon. Shirley Jackson’s classic novel, The Haunting of Hill House is definitely no exception, yet the novel roots its terrors within the perceptions of its audience and characters, rather than through explicit depictions of the supernatural. With that in mind, any attempt at a “definitive” film adaptation should adhere as strictly to this concept as possible. The evil of Hill House should be subtle and internal rather than showy and overt. The supernatural elements of Jackson’s novel are shrouded in ambiguity, and it is through careful control of human perception that this effect is achieved.
The initial chapter of Jackson’s novel establishes the manner in which the narrative manipulates the reader’s perception of Hill House. The audience is given a distorted view of the house as both a literal structure, and as a living being: “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within” (1). Jackson’s narration clearly personifies Hill …show more content…
The reader is constantly kept off-kilter as to what is real and what is imagined. At the heart of this uncertainty is the ambiguity supplied by the perception of the detached narrator and the mind of the book’s protagonist, Eleanor. The Haunting of Hill House, unlike a work like Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otronto, is never explicitly about the influence of ghosts or spirits, but relies rather on the implication of spectral influence. To faithfully represent this important distinction, aspiring filmmakers must use the perception of the narrative voice as well as that of the tortured Eleanor, if any claims of sincerity to the text are to be used in a filmed