The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

Shirley Jackson seems to be enjoying a moment of revived popularity right now. Her major novels, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle both got a screen adaptation in the past few years. There is a sort-of-biographical-but-not-really movie made starring Elisabeth Moss. 

While I am in general very sensitive to horror stories and movies, reading "The Haunting of Hill House" was not a particularly terrifying experience, even though I did it mostly at night in the dark. It helps that there is no blood and gore, no hacked-up corpses, no severed limps or gouged eyes anywhere in the book.

The novel is written in a very subtle style, which rapidly shifting perspectives, abundant hints and inferences, and omissions that are as meaningful as words on the page. For example, in one scene involving three characters, we see only two conversing, and the silence of the third is where the drama lies. Deceptively simple but technically sophisticated, the novel was recognized as a masterpiece and a finalist for the National Book award. 

There are a number of components in the novel, including an pervert Victorian-era father who probably abused his daughter in a chilling but very brief segment in Chapter 6. Lesbianism is also hovering significantly in the background, not only in the character Theodora but also the bond between Theo and Eleanor, the main character. However, at the heart of the novel is undoubtedly Mother. 

I looked up a few reviews of the novel. That Hill House represents a mother figure is widely accepted: the soft bed, plush chairs, excellent meals cooked by Mrs. Dudley, enclosed rooms (suggestive of the womb). It mothers all four characters who gathered there to investigate it: Professor Montague, future owner of the house Luke Sanderson, and two women with supernatural talents, Eleanor and Theodora. However, Eleanor is the center of the story and the most susceptible among them to this mothering. It took me a while to be convinced that none of the other characters would feature prominently in the relationship with Hill House, which somewhat hampered my appreciation for the novel in the first half. (Actually, I was waiting for some of the side characters to be killed by the House.) 

The roots of Eleanor's susceptibility are vaguely suggested through her history of having spent almost her entire youth, from 21 to 32 years of age, caring for her ailing mother, with no social or personal life outside of the confinement and obligations. All this took place before the opening of the novel, and we only see glimpses of her resentment and desire to escape into independence. What kind of a mother was Mrs. Vance in her illness? There is only a mention of "small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair." In a word, inadequate. The roles of mother and daughter were reversed, and Eleanor had to mother her mother for 11 years. Thus, the House seems much more welcoming and fits into her desire for a mother. 

(If you do not wish to be spoiled, stop reading here.)

Some reviewers have put forth a theory that postulates that most or all of the haunting in the novel, such as strange noises and writings on the wall, are in fact generated by Eleanor instead of the House, as she has telekinetic abilities. I am in the camp against the theory. I think the House exists as an independent being that sometimes but not always responds to Eleanor's unspoken wishes and desires, which is in fact what most mothers do (respond to and fulfill the wishes of their babies without verbal/linguistic communication). 

While some reviews consider Eleanor's mental evolution throughout the novel as a disintegration or descent into madness, I don't agree. Her mind is increasingly merged with the House (her new mother figure) over time, and her wish to "come home" is then written on the wall. It is indeed Eleanor's wish, which is why Theo the telepath asked "Did you do this?" to Eleanor's rage. 

Among the residents in the House, Eleanor is obviously the closest to Theo, who at first represents an alternative life to Eleanor's, an inspiration and aspiration for her future life. Over time, however, Eleanor turned on her. Although the author somewhat obscured the heart of their quarrels, I am reasonably certain that it is caused by Eleanor's effort to turn Theo into a mother figure and Theo's refusal. This is made clear only in the penultimate chapter:

Theo said carefully, "She wants me to take her home with me after we leave Hill House, and I won't do it."

Luke laughed. "Poor silly Nell," he said. "Journeys end in lovers meeting."

The response from Luke is significant because the quote "journey's end in lovers meeting" is repeated throughout the novel. However, romantic or sexual attraction is sorely lacking between Eleanor and other characters, either male or female. This love is therefore not sexual but rather parental and primitive. Theo's rejection to be Eleanor's request to be the latter's mother is the trigger that pushes Eleanor into the arms of Hill House. 

While we have all heard of Oedipus Complex and its effect on our mating habits -- at least for heterosexual persons, women's relationship with other women is often heavily influenced by their relationship with their mother, especially if the original relationship is unsatisfactory. What Eleanor seeks, with despair, in other women is a new, better mother to replace her inadequate one. Hill House is the only one willing to give it to her.

The male characters sort of fade into the background. There is a brief segment in which Luke flirts with Eleanor and floats the possibility of a romantic relationship. Is this a suggestion that Eleanor is not a lesbian or has a crush on Luke? No. Reading the text closely, it is apparent that Eleanor is merely contemplating a potential escape from her family and old life through marriage. Luke is trying to seduce her by whining that he had no mother and "No one ever loved me," hinting that he too is seeking a mother. This could work with women who want to mother others, but Eleanor is the opposite. That is why she reacted violently:

No, she thought, you are not going to catch me so cheaply. I do not understand words and will not accept them in trade for my feelings; this man is a parrot. ... that maudlin self-pity does not move directly at my heart. 

A baby cannot be a mother, especially after she had already played a mother for 11 years. Her rage and her despair lie in the condition that no one would mother her and give her the satiated infant experience. 

Late in the novel, Mrs. Montague and her male "friend" made an exasperating appearance. Although their function in the novel is unclear, Mrs. Montague is a hilarious character who constantly shushes her husband, the benevolent father/authority figure in most of the previous chapters, rendering him completely impotent. This odd threesome marriage may be an echo of Shirley Jackson's own marriage, in which her husband Stanley Hyman, a college professor, constantly flaunted his affairs with his students. One of them even lived in their house for a while. Perhaps she serves as another argument for the impossibility of escape through marriage, perhaps it is just comic relief. 

The extraordinary opening of the novel lays out the central premise: 

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. 

The absolute reality that drives Eleanor insane is that she cannot have a mother. This is a true human condition, as all mothers are more or less inadequate to a human infant's need. Mothers are human too and all humans have limitations, especially in the insufficient capacity of telepathy and empathy. Infants wish for an omnipotent mother who can read their mind, but this mother does not exist. For some who have had less mothering than most, their hunger is bigger, more urgent, and more desperate, and therefore they are even less soothed by the lukewarm relationships with other people. For them, the absolute reality that they eventually face is a world in which no one comes when you cry, and this is what Eleanor gradually realizes in the final chapters. She cannot escape her absolute reality through "normal" relationships, with either men or women. Her only path is to return to the womb, and it comes true in the end: the warm, dark, silent, absolutely safe confine in which one never moves.

eXistenZ (1999)

 

Not only is this David Cronenberg movie is often compared with "The Matrix" from the same year, it also reminds me of Christopher Nolan's "Inception." It lacks the exuberance of The Matrix, but far outdoes Inception in its handling of multiple layers of game/dream. Perhaps more important, it is funny. It is playful with a wink and a chuckle, something that is not in Nolan's dictionary. 

To apply the psychoanalytical premise that fiction serves the same function as dream, games --- or movies, for that matter --- are the same. Cronenberg's dream is obviously more imaginative, more gross, and perhaps less inhibited than most people's, but I had a feeling of recognition with the organic game world in eXistenZ, even when I heard about it in 1999 but never watched the movie at the time. There are shared-dream elements in it, as bizarre as they are. It's not just the bone gun. There are creatures/objects in this world that are somewhere between machine and organism, or between dead and alive. Humans tend to regard other living species as either stupid enough to be no different from machine or smart enough to anthropomorphize. Are the "machines" or game pods living organisms or dead tools? Anyway, this is not necessarily a central concern of the movie, but the idea is lurking somewhere beneath the commentary about game/dream/fantasy. 

In 1999, people were not yet walking around with a smartphone permanently attached to their hands. Twenty-four years later, we are all sinking deeper and deeper into a mental existence further detached from our bodily existence. Perhaps there has always been a bodily desire to escape reality that has been discovered, exploited, and monetized only in the past decades. Perhaps this insidious but sweeping change to human existence is largely environmental. In terms of prescience, eXistenZ remains far more relevant than Inception and, to a lesser extent, The Matrix. 

The Talented Mrs. Sacret

The 1948 movie "So Evil My Love" tickled my brain when I happened on it on Criterion channel. There was so much plot, and the relationship between the lead characters (played by Ann Todd and Ray Milland) was both fascinating and fragmented. One couldn't help feeling that there was a lot more to the story. While the movie takes largely Milland's point of view, I couldn't help but conjure up Todd's perspective the whole time, which seemed far more interesting. The predictable moralizing common in Hays Code-era movies is kept to a minimum, delivering a tense and unusual noir. 

And it turned out to be based on a crime novel, published only a year before (1947), written by Marjory Bowen under the male pseudonym Joseph Shearing and originally entitled "For Her to See." Surprisingly (not!), the novel is almost entirely told from the point of view of the female character Mrs. Sacret (changed to Mrs. Harwood in the movie), while the movie not only shifted it to the male character, a painter who calls himself Mark Bellis, but also made him much more sympathetic than he was in the novel. It was obvious that the filmmakers (the screenwriters and director were all male) needed a male anchor to this story or they wouldn't know how to handle it. 

In many ways, the novel reminded me of "The Talented Mr. Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith, published just 8 years later. I wouldn't be surprised if Highsmith took inspiration from For Her to See. A key difference between these two novels --- and the element that makes this novel extremely original --- is that the main character is not a hero, not even an antihero, but rather a loser. This choice is so daring and difficult to pull off that very few writers have even attempted it. It is so much easier and more appealing for both the author and the reader to identify with a master criminal and imagine oneself to be the smartest guy in the room. It is much more difficult to enter the mind of a not-too-smart character without making it drab and boring. No part of Mrs. Sacret's limited understanding of the world around her is boring, even if I, as the reader, often know more about what's going on than her. As an unreliable narrator with poor insight into other people's motives, it is a darkly comical pleasure to see the world through the very distorted lens of her eyes and introduces a modernist uncertainty rarely seen in this genre. 

In real life, the vast majority of criminals are not nearly as intelligent as the movies and thrillers want us to believe. Mrs. Sacret's motives and calculations are so petty and common that most authors have no interest in exploring them. The central similarity between her and Mr. Ripley is their resentment and envy toward their rich friends. In other words, money. Their conviction for taking money from their friends by any means necessary push the theme of class struggle very near the surface, which might be a source of discomfort for other writers. Mrs. Sacret especially is driven by a sense of grievance and entitlement that is possibly the most prevalent motivation among criminals of our time. We are startled in our recognition of this pervasive sentiment. "I deserve more. I don't have it because those people cheated me. I am wronged. I have cause to take revenge on all of you." 

The psychological insight throughout the novel is refreshing because it is more astute than most thrillers and, let's not kid ourselves, literary fiction about the lives of college English professors. All of the characters are ambiguous and test the limit of our sympathy. This comes with the unreliable lens of Mrs. Sacret and makes the reading experience delightful (especially for a cynic). 

Unlike the movie that centers around the male seducer/mastermind, the novel keeps him in the shadows, drawing a most chilling and irresistible psychopath rarely seen in other works but resonates with reality. The ending is really stunning in its lack of complete resolution. Even after decades of reading mysteries and crime novels, I am hard pressed to name a villain as well written as "the painter." 

What I like the most about this novel, however, is how aggressive and pungent the language is. In a novel by a woman (an English one no less!), about a woman's crime, told in the woman's voice, and filled with female characters, the pages are unapologetically filled with words like "power" and "stupid" and "hate." No euphemisms, no circumlocution, no fluff. Perhaps that was why Bowen chose to publish it under one of her male pseudonyms?