Recently I've been obsessing about this paragraph; I think it's completely brilliant. I've read this thing ten or fifteen times, and I still get chills:
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; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. -- the first paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
I think the chills usually come at "not sane" and "walked alone." The idea of a house being insane is....I am unable to pick an adjective. There's just something about it that is deeply unsettling, yet makes perfect sense. We all feel the energy of a place, whether it's good, bad, calming, exciting, or frightening. If places have these various feelings about them, they seem to be almost alive. I think what Shirley Jackson has done in her novel (which is amazing and you should read it if you haven't yet done so) is take that energy that a place can have and treat it as a living entity, one that is never seen but is constantly felt.
Anyway, that's my mini literary analysis. I've taken a break from finishing a gigantic essay for my literature course (not, unfortunately, on The Haunting of Hill House) and I was apparently unable to turn it off.
I've been thinking a lot about this paragraph too. I think another thing Jackson manages to do is establish that, no matter how normal Hill House may seem, it is a deviant. It deviates from the norm of sanity by being so REAL. Hill House isn't full of phantasmagoria or specters floating through the halls. We personify our homes and put a lot of power in them. Home is where the heart is. Our homes are safe, warm, and protective entities. They give us a place to lay are heads to rest and dream. Hill House shatters those illusions of safety and reveals the harsh realities of the world for all to see.
ReplyDeleteFor those of you who have read the book, poor Elenore could never survive outside of the world she had built around herself.