The Haunting of Hill House

The visitors to Hill House in Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House are locked in childhood states of being, thinking, and acting which make them vulnerable to the house in terms of the house's exploitation of their fears. A child reacts irrationally and emotionally, reactions which tend to intensify those fears and lead to great vulnerability to exploitation, and so on, in a vicious cycle. Children seek security and certainty, and the unpredictable unknowns of the house prevent the visitors, in their childhood state, from finding any security and certainty.

One important child-like state which the house is able to exploit is the characters' desire to convince himself or herself that he is not afraid when he is, and the desire to not be the one who acts afraid. For example, we read that "It had become Eleanor's habit to hesitate in the doorway of her room, glancing around quickly before she went inside; she told herself that this was because the room was so exceedingly blue and always took a moment to get used to" (153). By trying to hide from herself the fact that she is afraid, she only gives her fear more power. If she could acknowledge her fear, talk about it, perhaps even laugh about it, she would defuse some of it.

Eleanor is at least able to express to herself her fear of being the one who finally is broken by the house, but that self-acknowledgement does not free her emotionally or psychologically. All it does is make her all the more a prisoner of he

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