UNIVERSIDAD DE JAÉN Centro de Estudios de Postgrado

Master’s Dissertation/ Trabajo Fin de Máster

FINDING THE GOTHIC HEROINE.

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE: A PORTRAIT OF ELEANOR VANCE

Student: Fernández Mondéjar, Miriam

Tutor: Dr. Julio Ángel Olivares Merino Dpt.: English Philology

Centro de Estudios de Postgrado de Estudios de Centro

English in Master Online Studies

January, 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 3

3. METHODOLOGY ...... 4

4. STATE OF THE ART ...... 5

4.1. Gothic Fiction ...... 5

4.2. The Female Gothic: Gothic heroines ...... 6

4.3. Shirley Jackson ...... 14

4.4. The Haunting of Hill House: a Portrait of Eleanor Vance ...... 17

5. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY ...... 31

6. LINES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ...... 31

7. CONCLUSION ...... 32

8. REFERENCES ...... 33

1. INTRODUCTION

The main purpose of this Master’s Dissertation is to examine and determine whether the protagonist of Shirley Jackson’s most acclaimed novel, The Haunting of Hill House (1959) could be considered to fall under the category of the female Gothic heroine, a prototype of character that is crucial for the development of the plot of Gothic narratives, and specially, for narrations that belong to this literary trend.

As it has been just mentioned, the relevance of this figure within the context of Female Gothic literature, that is to say, Gothic literature written by women and which depicts the suffering and struggles they undergo, is crucial for the understanding of the Gothic genre, for as McDonald argues “since its literary beginnings, the Gothic has featured distinctive female characters who engage with, and are often central to, the uncanny narratives characteristic of the genre” (1). Female Gothic fiction has traits that are very particular to the genre, hence to its plot, and, more concretely -among many other specific aspects-, it includes a protagonist with distinguished features that will be addressed throughout this study.

Michelle Jager coincides with McDonald with regards to the role of the protagonist of Female Gothic fiction: “the Gothic heroine, shares a long and fraught relationship with the genre. One of the key tenets of the mode, her role is often cited as the defining element” (5). Thus, the particular features encountered in the female Gothic heroine are certainly relevant, not only for the development of the character in the story, but also for the launching of the plot. That is to say, we encounter a protagonist with personality qualities such as having a childish attitude, the fact that they are seen as victims of an outer threat, or that they frequently dwell in isolated houses or “labyrinthine castles” (Jager 5), aspects which contribute to the development of the plot of the story in a particular way and triggers determinate actions. At the same time, the course of the action forces the protagonist to take decisions that shape the identity, as a whole, of female Gothic heroines. All in all, Female Gothic fiction needs both so as to be successful: the plot, which leads to the conception of a heroine with determinate characteristics, and also, a protagonists with some specific traumas in her life that help launching the plot. To clarify, McDonald holds that not only is the role of the protagonist “limited to these narrative functions” (1) but moreover, it could be said that “the Gothic can be defined by its portrayal of the heroine” (1), acknowledging the essential function of the character for Gothic and Female Gothic fiction.

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Taking everything into consideration, the main objective of this Dissertation is the following:

i. To determine whether Eleanor Vance, the protagonist of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House could be regarded as a female Gothic heroine.

In order to achieve the aforementioned goal, there are secondary objectives that need to be fulfilled so as to contribute to the attainment of the principal one:

ii. To determine the genesis of Female Gothic literature. iii. To point out the characteristics intrinsic to this literary genre. iv. To identify and to explain what the main traits of a female Gothic heroine are. v. To establish the parameters for analysis that will be looked into to determine whether Eleanor Vance can be regarded as a female Gothic heroine. vi. To carry out a close reading of The Haunting of Hill House so as to analyze the previous parameters. vii. To conclude whether Eleanor Vance qualifies as a female Gothic heroine.

As it has just been mentioned, in order to be able to discern whether the protagonist of such Gothic novel could qualify as a female Gothic heroine there are certain parameters to which we should pay attention since by analyzing these criteria we could determine if they display the characteristics detailed in section 4.2. The parameters established for examination are the following:

- The protagonist’s personal background before the time of the narration so as to determine how her past has shaped her present self. - The most relevant characteristics of her personality and how these affect her relationships to other people, especially her relationship with family members and new people in her life. - The relationship of the protagonist with the supernatural. - The interaction with the world that surrounds her, particularly regarding locations that could be labeled as Gothic. - The prospects that she holds for the future as regards to independence, family and friend relationships.

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- The way she copes with and faces situations when these are unfavorable to her will and self-determination.

I have considered it necessary to divide this study in the following sections: section one is concerned with Gothic fiction overviewed from a general perspective in order to survey the origins of the genre and its main characteristics. At the same time, this survey allows us to observe how, according to the approach taken when writing Gothic fiction, it has been classified into Male and Female Gothic Fiction. Since our analysis is concerned with Female Gothic fiction as we have focused on the production of Shirley Jackson, the next section deals with how Female Gothic fiction originated, its evolution and development until modern times, surveying how it has echoed the difficulties and troubles women have faced along time. As well, it addresses the characteristics of female Gothic heroines so as to see the traits that define such characters.

The next sections are concerned with the author and her work. Hence, the third part of this essay is devoted to the figure of Shirley Jackson so as to provide a brief insight on the life of the writer, for as we know, understanding certain circumstances of the life of the author may give us the opportunity of a better comprehension of the events that take place in the fictional work. To conclude, section four, the most relevant section of this study, is devoted to the analysis of her work, The Haunting of Hill House ,paying attention to how its protagonist, Eleanor Vance, embodies the characteristics of female Gothic heroines. Furthermore, throughout this analysis we have also minded Jackson’s last work, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962), and its protagonist, Merricat Blackwood, so as to establish the connection between both protagonists and observe the characteristics of the female Gothic heroine that are constant in Jackson’s production.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

Female Gothic literature has been an issue previously addressed by scholars devoted to the study of Gothic literature from a gender perspective, starting with Ellen Moers in 1976, continuing with the work of critics such as Claire Kahane, Roberta Rubenstein, Angela Wright, Avril Horner, or Sue Zlosnik, until the latest contributions such as the essay “The Female Gothic: Then and Now”, written by Andrew Smith and Diana Wallace. Apart from providing a theoretical background on the characteristics of Female Gothic fiction, critics have also focused their attention on the analysis of some of the greatest production from the

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nineteenth century from the Female Gothic perspective, as it is the case of Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) in Kahane’s “The Gothic Mirror”, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (1803), and the renowned Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) in “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother” by Moers.

Regarding this study, its objective has been to continue this path of analysis focusing on twentieth-century production, specifically, on the work of the American writer Shirley Jackson, an author whose oeuvre is devoted to horror and mystery fiction, and whose characteristics allow us to place it into the literary trend of Female Gothic fiction too. Specifically, this essay is focused on the protagonist of one of her last novels, The Haunting of Hill House, so as to demonstrate that she should be regarded as a female Gothic heroine, a character that certainly embodies most of the characteristics of the female protagonist of works of Gothic fiction.

3. METHODOLOGY

The most important text that has been used for this study has been the novel The Haunting of Hill House so as to observe if and how the protagonist of the 1959’s novel embodies the characteristics of female Gothic heroines; as well, we have paid attention to We Have Always Lived in the Castle with the purpose of highlighting the similarities between both works. In order to accomplish its posterior analysis, I have first carried out a conceptual archeology of the concept so as to be aware of all its characteristic features and possible representations. To guide and base my discussion we have resorted to the essays written by Jerold E. Hogle, Andrew Smith and Diane Wallace, Ellen Ledoux, Claire Kahane, and Angela Wright on the genre of the Female Gothic. To continue the research I have followed Ellen Moers, Andrew Smith, Roberta Rubenstein, Roline Sluis, and Jameela Dallis and their investigations on how the work of Shirley Jackson is connected with the Female Gothic genre, as they provide an exhaustive analysis on how she is a representative of Female Gothic literature and on how the protagonists of her novels, Merricat Blackwood from We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and specially Eleanor Vance, stand out as a stereotypical characters of Female Gothic fiction.

Finally, I would like to point out that this essay has been approached from the point of view of feminist and gender literary criticism since it explores the representation of women in works of literature so as to contribute to a larger discussion of how gender and sexuality are

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constantly shaped by, constructed and developed, especially regarding the production of Gothic literature from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, concentrating specially on the novels by Shirley Jackson.

4. STATE OF THE ART

4.1. Gothic Fiction

Gothic Western Fiction was inaugurated in 1764 with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, a novel which was, in fact, renamed to The Castle of Otranto. A Gothic Story, when reissued in 1965. Walpole’s novel, as first in the tradition, embodies the main characteristics that the latter novels labeled as Gothic or belonging to the Gothic genre would encompass. Following Jerrold E. Hogle in his introduction for the Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, some “parameters by which fictions can be identified as primarily or substantially Gothic” (2) can be identified in these novels or stories.

In this case, one of the first motifs that would define a novel as Gothic is related to the setting where the fiction takes place, which is usually “an antiquated or seemingly antiquated space” (2), normally a large house with many rooms and corridors that offers the characters the opportunity to lose themselves among the numerous spaces in the house. Nonetheless, there are also other spaces we could take into consideration such as mental institutions or even open spaces such a forest or the moors. Secondly, he proposes a second motif connected to the action of the plot: characters would find themselves haunted inside these places due to an unrevealed secret that deeply affects them. Hogle states that “these hauntings can take many forms”, namely, ghosts or specters, that rise to “manifest unresolved crimes or conflicts that can no longer be successfully buried from view” (2). It is here when the realm of the natural and the supernatural blend and the characters of the novel have their first contact with the uncanny, which takes us to the third characteristic of Gothic fiction, the supernatural.

Twenty years after the publication of Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, the first novels that started to incorporate such features into fiction are published, perpetuating thus the Gothic literary tradition. To begin with, we must name William Beckford’s Vathek (1786) a novel that combined the aforementioned motifs with features of oriental tales, and was the precursor of the Oriental Gothic tradition. Just ten years later, The Monk (1796), by Matthew Gregory Lewis, was published, adding to the classic Gothic motifs a more violent plot and unnatural behaviors such as incest.

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However, Gothic fiction was not a category saved only for male writers. Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) was the first Gothic novel ever written from a female angle, which represented a shift of perspective in the topics of Gothic fiction as for the first time a woman was the protagonist of the novel. In fact, according to Hogle, “some historians of the Gothic have made sharp distinctions between works of female Gothic (in the sublimated terror vein of Radcliffe) and Male Gothic (in the graphic horror tradition of “Monk” Lewis” (11) Therefore, although Gothic fiction written by male and female writers share some common features, we can observe that there are noticeable differences regarding the approach taken for the development of the plot. To begin with, and as it has been already pointed out, male writers rely on a more terrifying approach, where the supernatural elements of the story often remain unresolved. Characters, and especially male characters, are more cruel and violent and, hence, violent actions are harshly portrayed.

On the other hand, Female Gothic fiction is not as brutal as Male Gothic fiction. In fact, critics such as Angela Leonardi state that Female Gothic fiction emerges from Radcliffle’s intention of “embellishing the “old-fashioned eighteenth century sentimental novel with genteel terror tactics” such as “unscathed heroines, explained mysteries and behind-the-times Burkean terror”1” (5). Nonetheless, female Gothic fiction, as Gothic fiction itself, has greatly evolved since its first demonstration in the eighteenth century due to the “way it helps us address and disguise some of the most important desires, quandaries, and sources of anxiety, from the most internal and mental to the widely social and cultural, throughout the history of western culture” (Hogle 3). Horror and terror are unquestionably social conventions, and hence, as society progresses, sources of fear have as well, adjusting to new and modern times. Female Gothic fiction has evolved too and since the main concern of this essay is to look into female Gothic heroines, I find it necessary to observe how Female Gothic fiction came to being and what its main characteristics are so as to be able to define the features of the Gothic heroine, as for instance, those related to their behavior towards people, how they deal with certain situations, or what they look for so as to lead a happy life.

4.2. The Female Gothic: Gothic heroines

As we have previously mentioned, Ann Radcliffe was the forerunner of Female Gothic fiction as she represents a departure from the characteristics of Gothic fiction produced by

1 Leonardi quoting from Miles 2009, 78. 6

male writers. However, it was not until two hundred years later that the term “Female Gothic” was employed for the first time when Ellen Moers coined it in a chapter of her book Literary Women (1976). For her, it was clear what the Female Gothic stood for: “the work that women writers have done in the literary mode that, since the 18th century, we have called the Gothic” (Fitzgerald 11) taking The Mysteries of Udolpho as the precursor of the genre.2

Moers’s decision to recover the term was produced due to the rise of feminism and feminist literary criticism that took place in the United States during the late 1960s and 1970s, a period Ellen Ledoux refers to as the “second wave of literary criticism”(1). This movement encouraged the revision of the literary canon so as to pay more attention to works written by women for them to receive more public attention and rescue the “reputation of such women writers as Ann Radcliffe” (Fitzgerald 9) in order to reassess their importance and valuable contributions to the genre and defend their work from the critics who considered them to be “‘childish fantasies’, ‘gently spooky fiction’ and ‘concern for external circumstance’ lacking the ‘deeper implications’ available in the work of such male writers as Mathew Lewis” (9). Therefore, the intention of these critics was to discourage the vision of the Female Gothic as “unsatisfyingly simple” (9) and the fact that its hidden details and motifs are taken for granted due to the female authorship.

Leroux points out that Moers coined the term “to describe how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women novelists employ certain coded expressions to describe anxieties over domestic entrapment and female sexuality” (2), a subject matter that did not receive much attention at the time bearing in mind that not often were women’s insights dealt with in the plot of books nor even spoken of in their day to day, for women’s problems usually remained taboo, and they still do to a certain extent. In her essay “The Female Gothic, Beating Fantasies and the Civilizing Process", Diane Hoeveler highlights the importance of

2 Considering this last statement, it is necessary to make a further clarification. Not only did Moers consider The Mysteries of Udolpho to be the precursor of the genre, but she also considered it to be one of the “two types of female Gothic novel” (Marinovich 190), representing the heroine who needs to escape from the horrors she endures. On the other hand, we find Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which Moers considers to be a “turn of the genre” (190), for it offers “a story without a heroine but very powerfully a ‘birth myth’” (190). Nonetheless, as Angela Wright argues in her essay “The Female Gothic”, the inclusion of “Frankenstein in a tradition of female Gothic writing” (103) is still doubtful, for even though it profoundly deals with one of the greatest sources of anxiety for women –birth and all its derived implications- Wright considers there are still certain aspects that contribute towards not considering Frankenstein within the scope of the Female Gothic such as the questioning of its “sole female authorship” (103) or the fact that it “contains no central female characters” (103). All in all, despite the fact that Frankenstein has been excluded of the canon of Female Gothic literature by some scholars, it cannot be denied that it addresses questions that are central to the mode.

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the consequences that the ideologies implied by the Female Gothic caused in society, especially concerning how it empowered women. She considers that “the female gothic became a coded system whereby women authors covertly communicated to other women - their largely female reading audience- their ambivalent rejection and at the same time outward complicity with the dominant sexual ideologies of their culture” (107). Gothic literature written from a female point of view gave “women for the first time had a chance to express themselves in widely disseminated and cheaply printed novels that became immensely popular with the new reading audience –largely middle-class women enclosed in the newly created and idealized bourgeois home” (109). The Female Gothic provided women with the opportunity to utter their complaints about a system which diminished them and neglected their chance of prosperity. As a result, “female authors ironically inverted the "separate spheres" ideology by valorizing the private female world of the home and fictively destroying the public/juridical masculine world. In other words, the Female Gothic novel reified the "separate spheres" ideology in such a way that women were no longer victimized by it, but fictively took control of it” (107).

Although “Female Gothic” was born as a term to express the dissatisfaction of women with their limited role in society, since its first use in the twentieth century, the notion of Female Gothic has become an “umbrella term” (Smith and Wallace 1) for it encompasses all the sources of concern and distress of women during centuries, beginning from those illustrated in Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, and extending with the motifs that have been incorporated into female Gothic literature until our days as a result of the evolution of the role of women during the past centuries and their sexuality as well, for according to Smith and Wallace, and Asmat Nabi, the Female Gothic now is such a broad term that it even encompasses “lesbian Gothic” (Smith and Wallace 1; Nabi 75).

Therefore, when looking into the term "Female Gothic" one must wonder what the elements that it includes are or what tropes we may encounter. Ellen Moers herself explains the beginning of the literary mode taking as a basis Anne Radcliffe’s plot: “[She] firmly set the Gothic in one of the ways it would go ever after: a novel in which the central figure is a young woman who is simultaneously persecuted victim and courageous heroine.” (3). She defends that it was Radcliffe who opened the possibility for girls to become the protagonists of novels and “enjoy the adventures and alarms that masculine heroes had long experienced, far from home” (3). For Radcliffe, the Gothic “was a device to set maidens on distant and

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exciting journeys [for they] can scuttle miles along corridors, descend into dungeons, and explore secret chambers without a chaperone because the Gothic castle, is an indoor and therefore freely female space” (2-3). Within this space in which the protagonist is free to explore without any supervision, the supernatural arises usually in the form of a secret that she feels strongly necessary to solve, following thus the classical Gothic convention and paving the way for the subjects of posterior plots.

But with the passing of time we may observe that the plot of twentieth-century Female Gothic fiction revolves around a constant idea: to “convey anxiety and anger about the lot of women” (Horner and Zlosnik 1). It tackles subjects distinct to those dealt with in male Gothic fiction, such as desire, loss, entrapment, mental illness, different views and approaches to love, the search for self-identity, or the difficulties of family relationships. Taking into consideration all these tropes, we could comment on the fact that all the horrors experienced by female protagonists can be traced back from a common root: the impositions and expectations that patriarchal society has placed on women.

In words of Anu Kuriakase, “Patriarchal Western Civilization demand that the female ought to be obedient, docile, timid, emotional and passive” (1), which might be the cause for the creation of a literature that identified men as an oppressive figure due to, as I have just mentioned, the constraints placed on women, on how they were expected to be regarding the private and public spheres of their lives. So, for Kuriakase, it is clear that Female Gothic fiction arises so that women could “mark their protest against patriarchy and female emancipation” (3). Writers such as Shirley Jackson echoed these protests and display in their works female characters that do not respond to men’s commands and that are determined to live their lives autonomously and on their own.

It can be observed that in Female Gothic narratives masculine figures tend to be a source of distraught for the female protagonist, be it because they represent a threat or because they awake romantic feelings that are unknown to them, or even confusing. But often, in reality and in fiction, men have expected women to belong to the house and that is the reason why, rather than being trapped in a Gothic castle as the protagonists of Anne Radcliffe’s novels were, current plots develop in houses so that the plot focuses on, as Andrew Smith states, “the horror of domesticity” (155).

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As expressed before, fears, horrors, and anxieties are always derived from the cultural construct of our times; they are never generated overnight. The fact that home life represents a source of apprehension can be traced to the 1950s, according to Roline Sluis, who holds that in that time women were encouraged “to seek fulfillment in their roles as wives and mothers [and as] a result of this ideal their lives were limited to the domestic sphere, leaving no space for the development of an individual identity” (3-4), triggering hence one of the features of the Female Gothic plot, the desperate search for self-identity of the protagonist.

Furthermore, this argument also brings out the idea that “woman has no identity outside of home and the family” (Boylan 21) since their function in society is merely reduced to what they are able to do within this space: housewife, mother, daughter; all limited to their role in the family. Connected to this idea, Female Gothic fiction is as well concerned with the analysis of family relationships, especially, with the relationship between mother and daughter. There is usually a special connection in a relationship between mother and daughter that does not occur with other members of the family, especially because as a daughter, you can actually see the woman that you may grow to be. So as Roberta Rubenstein states in her essay “House Mothers and Haunted Daughters”, we cannot deny the “primitive and powerful emotional bounds that constitute the ambivalent attachment between mothers and daughters in particular” (309).

In fact, plots of Female Gothic fiction come to deal with the relationship between mother and daughter since it “reveals how an inherent Gothic narrative haunts domestic spaces” (Smith 164). This relationship has been revised from different perspectives, starting from the absent mother figure of the eighteenth century, captured in Ann Radcliffe novels, causing the protagonist to be an orphan. Modern positions contemplate the question of the achievement of self-identity due to the protagonist merging with the personality of her mother, as a result of her being expected to become a housewife and a mother someday; or also, because the only life known to the protagonist is with her mother, and she has not been able to cope with life outside the familiar home. As well, they contemplate the struggle of women who fight to gain total independence from the male figure, for the masculine figure tends to want to dominate the life of the female protagonists of the story so as to achieve his interests. Consequently, we encounter women who refuse to comply the orders given by men whose only intention is to oppress them and subdue their will.

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Moreover, another position would be that of the rebellion of the daughter against her parents, and specially her mother, as a result of domestic unease consequence of the powerful present of a too demanding mother which causes the protagonist not to be able to gain independence. As a whole, the relationship between mother and daughter is always one causing stress and anxiety to the protagonist due to feelings of social entrapment, fear of the motherly figure, vulnerability or helplessness.

It must also be mentioned that in Female Gothic fiction the mother figure is usually not physically present in these narratives, that is to say, the mother is often dead. But it does not cause her influence to be weaker; in fact, her ghostly presence is stronger for it is constant on the mind of the protagonist. Needless to say, in this Gothic context, “the mother often appears as a figure of horror” (Sluis 7), and the mother-daughter relationship contributes towards the manifestation of supernatural events.

The relationship with the mother figure is pivotal for the development of the events in Shirley Jackson’s novels for it is such relationship that unleashes the posterior circumstances. For example, in We Have Always Lived in the Castle the fact that the Blackwood parents so overwhelming, according to Merricat, causes their murder since she did not agree with the measures they were taken to punish her. Consequently, their absence leads Merricat and Constance to live on their own and to experience the consequences. On the other hand, having had to look after her ill mother for such a long period of time, Eleanor Vance feels liberated and she decides to leave for Hill House.

Despite all the stress and anxieties suffered by the protagonist of these novels, to add a positive note, it must be mentioned that scholars such as Nabi and Jager defend that Female Gothic plots usually lead to what we could denominate a “happy ending”, for although the journey might be disheartening for the protagonist, they ultimately experience a happy ending “in the form of marriage” (Jager 9), by means of being “reintegrated into community” (Nabi 75) or by fulfilling their quest and achieving their final goal, as it is the case of the protagonists of Shirley Jackson’s fiction.

The aforementioned plot characteristics, which are intrinsic to this particular type of fiction, cause, as a result, the creation of a heroine that is central to Female Gothic and that personifies recognizable traits that contribute towards the development of the plot, causing it to be rounded. Female Gothic fiction needs both of them in order to be regarded as such. As

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Jager puts it, it needs its “moody landscapes, spectral beings, labyrinthine castles, villainous men” as well as “trembling, virtuous women” (5).

To begin with, Rubinstein anticipates that the heroine’s age encompasses a specific time span which fluctuates between late childhood and early womanhood, that is to say, the protagonist would be between 15 to approximately 30 years old (311). One of the characteristics that define these heroines refers to their maturity, for they are often represented as immature females with a childish behavior. This attitude is most certainly derived from the constant presence –physical or spectral- of a motherly figure. In the case the mother has been present, her dominating attitude has not enabled her daughter to grow as a woman for she has lived under the shadow of her mother and outside society, having been neglected the opportunity to socially thrive. On the other hand, if the mother is absent it could cause for the daughter a continuous state of vulnerability and defenselessness more characteristic of little children than adults, what would also cause our protagonists to seek for a stronger character to guard them.

As a recurrent motif of Gothic plots, we often encounter in these novels a threat that hangs over our heroine and that triggers her anxieties and fears not only due to the presence of the menace, but also because they usually do not know how to respond against it. Fitzgerald states that Gothic heroines are usually represented as victims; be it of an evil, exhausting mother, a threatening male figure (a father, brother, cousin), the conventions of society, a supernatural force… “The trope of the victim-heroine remains inextricably linked to the Female Gothic in both fiction and the critical discourse surrounding the subject” (Jager 13) and it contributes towards our perception of the heroine as a fragile being with whom we are sympathetic. However, Fitzgerald also holds that the weakness they display is “staged” (20) and by means of this sham they conceal their real capacity, assuming according to Kyra Kramer “an outward appearance of meekness” (33). Therefore, any other character is able to perceive the real force within the characters and thus, their actions come unexpected.

In the Female Gothic plot, heroines are always represented facing different problems - desire, loss, entrapment, mental illness, different views and approaches to love, the search for self-identity, or the difficulties of family relationships- usually after having being “exposed to a variety of physical and psychological abuses” (Jager 5). Ledoux supports Fitzgerald by stating that these narratives “often portray her [the heroine] as not only suffering, but also exerting agency, displaying physical courage, and gaining empowerment within Gothic

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spaces” (3). So as to escape or face such threats, Sluis holds that Gothic heroines need to take extreme measures for otherwise they would not be able to free themselves from their anxieties (9). Kramer reflects on “the agency on the heroine” (25), and argues that “as cultural expectations and roles for women change, so too do the ways in which the heroine’s agency is manifested, particularly in forms of resistance to the model of the passive women” (25). As a whole, we could summarize that our heroine, though weak in a first instance, will strengthen against the obstacles that she encounters and that, as Kramer puts it “their success and happiness is most often the result of their hard work, strong ethics, emotional courage, and their use of agency. Even when personal agency is limited by adverse cultural, social, and socio-economic circumstances, the female Gothic heroine exerts herself to make the agency available to her as efficacious as possible” (33).

The just mentioned Gothic spaces in which the heroine finds herself carry an important weight in these narrations for they are a fundamental part of the characters. Gothic heroines are usually portrayed as enclosed or imprisoned in domestic spaces, but also, this space, which is usually a house, works for them as a “fortress against a threatening and hostile world” (Rubenstein 315) which they refuse to abandon. Different authors such as Rubenstein (317), Kahane (338), Boylan (21), and Smith (159-160) agree on the fact that houses have a connection with the maternal, for they offer security, comfort and protection and thus, it becomes for them a difficult place to leave behind. However, at the same time that these Gothic Heroines need a place to feel safe and look forward to find a place to belong with “fulfilling companionship” (Dallis 44), they long to be independent since being self-sufficient means casting off the influence of the mother that haunts Gothic heroines and be able to choose the people they wish to be with.

As a whole, the Gothic heroine seems a weak character unable to face the threats that are presented to her –natural and/or supernatural. Nonetheless, she displays a unique source of potential when she takes extreme measures to free herself so as to claim what she wishes for: autonomy, her self-assurance and her own home. According to Kramer, “The female Gothic novel is less about a woman in danger than it is about a woman overcoming danger via her agency. The heroine earns, by struggling against adversity, her safety and happily-ever-after” (34).

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4.3. Shirley Jackson

The Female Gothic tradition cannot be understood without taking into consideration Shirley Jackson's contribution to the genre. Born in 1916, she is one of the greatest contributors to the development of the modern Female Gothic in the twentieth century. Jackson has always been more recognized for her short stories, among which “The Lottery” (1948) stands out. However, her last two novels The Haunting of Hill House (1959) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) received excellent criticism from the press and other writers devoted to horror literature. In fact, in his book Danse Macabre (1981) Stephen King analyses The Haunting of Hill House as one of the example novels regarding horror fiction and especially within “the haunted-house tale” (300). Actually, we can also consider that Shirley Jackson has acquired a growing popularity due to the recent Netflix adaptation of her 1954’s novel, which has aroused a new interest in her work3.

Scholars such as Andrew Smith consider Jackson’s work “often explicitly Gothic or contains a strong interest in the sinister” (152), for as Roline Sluis explains, it explores all these images, central to the Gothic genre in her fiction: enclosure and escape, maddened doubles, anorexia, agoraphobia, claustrophobia; nonetheless, in this case the Gothic castle is often replaced by a haunted house that preserves the same functions (6). In fact, houses are central to Jackson’s narrative for it connects at the same time the most familiar and safest place with the notion of the uncanny. Both Shirley Jackson’s novels mentioned in this Dissertation take place in family houses, a place that could be regarded as secure in the first instance; however, both residences have been the scenarios of incidents that bring the reader closer to the discomfort of the uncanny.

In The Haunting of Hill House, we are based on the premise that, according to Dr Montague, the house is thought to be haunted: “The purpose of their stay, the letters stated clearly, was to observe the various unsavory stories which had been circulated about the house for most of its eighty years of existence” (Jackson, House 5), what causes the house not

3 This adaptation consists of 10 episodes that succeed to portray the terrifying essence of Hill House; nonetheless, it should be considered a free adaptation especially when it comes to the characters, for despite maintaining the names of the characters – Eleanor, Theodora, Luke and Hugh Crain do appear in the adaptation-, the relationship between the characters is different since they are all portrayed as a family who lived in Hill House during their childhood, instead of following the plot line that narrates the gathering of characters as a consequence of Dr. Montague’s interest on the supernatural events taking place in Hill House. All in all, producers have done a marvelous work when it comes to conveying the unsettling atmosphere of the house and have taken a step further depicting how living there would have affected the life of the protagonists.

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to be regarded anymore as a place offering protection to the people staying there. On the other hand, in We Have Always Lived in the Castle we do not find a house hounded by the supernatural, but a place where a crime has been committed: “Afraid to visit here? […] I am astonished. My niece, after all, was acquitted of murder” (Jackson, Castle 30).

These events already depart from the hospitality and overall security and shelter that any house could offer; but what is most unsettling is the fact that the murder has been perpetrated by a member of the family, the youngest daughter. Taking a step further, Jackson uses the family, an entity that we could regard as the immaterial home, and violates the protection that it offers causing a feeling of uneasiness in the rest of characters as well as the reader. As Rubenstein points out, there is a biographical component that we must take into account when referring to houses and the role that they play in Jackson’s fiction. The author “developed agoraphobia several years before her death” and therefore she felt “consumed by her own house” (325), just as it happens to the protagonists of her novels.

By briefly explaining some details of the plot of Jackson’s novels, we can already observe that one of the characteristics of her works is the exploration of the psychology of family relationships as far as it concerns the dynamics of family interactions –nonetheless, when we refer to the concept of family we could also interpret groups of people that function as such. In doing so, dealing with the family home, families and their darker conflicts, her fiction strongly deals with what S.T. Joshi denominates the “horrors of domesticity”, ‘because Shirley Jackson so keenly detected horror in the everyday world’”4. To portray this terror she focused mainly on the relationship between mother and daughter, following the Female Gothic tradition, but as well in the relationship between family members such as sisters, cousins, and also, a sudden appearance of a paternal figure exercising as patriarch imposing his will over the rest of the characters. If mothers are usually absent figures in Gothic fiction and in Shirley Jackson’s, fathers are absent as well for the writer, so the Gothic heroines protagonist of her novels are normally orphans, a characteristic that contributes towards the conception of a character as such.

Moreover, we cannot forget that Jackson’s narrative is as well concerned with horror and the anxieties that derive from domestic situations. To do so, T.S. Joshi argues that ‘the importance of this domestic fiction […] rests in its manipulation of very basic familial or

4 This quotation is taken from Andrew Smith quoting S.T. Joshi. (155) 15

personal scenarios that would be utilized in her weird work in perverted and twisted ways” (188) so as to be able to cause the horror that so well defines Gothic fiction. As for example, in We Have Always Lived in the Castle Jackson uses food as a macabre prop, for the reader would not normally expect that something as basic as aliment is actually the origin of such evil that occurs in Blackwood manor. As a consequence, a feeling of uneasiness and uncanniness is created due to the conversion of something as trivial as food into a murder weapon.

Jackson’s success within the realm of Female Gothic fiction is not arbitrary, for as we have mentioned, there are components of her life that she has translated into her writing and which derive from domestic horrors that she experienced. During her lifetime, Shirley Jackson suffered, as well as her heroines, the anxieties caused by an absorbing mother so there is no surprise that “much of her fiction derives its power from the emotional truth and energy of her lifelong defensive struggle against a consuming mother (not simply Geraldine Jackson but the universally fantasied internal image of "mother"), which may in turn have led to her troubled relationships with her own two daughters” (Rubenstein 325). Her contribution and reworking of Female Gothic is not fictional, it is real and personal and as it can be seen, the emotions it conveys are stronger as they come from within. Thus, for Female Gothic fiction “it is important to examine her critically neglected […] writings about her role as a wife, and above all as a mother” (Sluis 5) and see it as valuable additions to the genre.

As a whole, we could say that “Jackson reshapes Gothic devices to reveal contemporary fears” (Sluis 5) and thus, she brings forward an “underlying criticism of domestic ideology [that] may not be overtly apparent at the outset, ‘but it is almost always present, perhaps most strikingly apparent in that terrible, pervasive sense of indefinable longing and gnawing dissatisfaction that infects many of her female characters’ (Murphy 20).” (Sluis 5)

Regarding Shirley Jackson’s Gothic heroines, as it will be now detailed, they embody most of the characteristics that have been explained in the previous section of this essay: they are young women who have family problems, especially due to the control of a dominating mother (or other female figure) that is usually dead when the action takes place. The paternal figure is absent as well, and we could consider that the dominating attitude of the mother combined with the lack of parental references cause these girls to develop childish attitudes.

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Jackson’s heroines usually struggle to develop a relationship with people outside their family circle mainly due to their lack of contact with any person outside that nucleus. Hence, they do not have the social tools to initiate or continue effective social contact. Secondly, within that nucleus, they are treated as children and therefore, it is not necessary for them to act and behave as mature people, with all the consequences that it brings along in their adult life.

Among the problems that they face, as the aforementioned Gothic heroines, both are in a constant quest for self-identity and self-assurance to encounter the place where they belong in society. Portrayed as victims, they display all their power to achieve what they see necessary to obtain their final goal: independence.

As stated in the introduction, the aim of this essay is to illustrate how Shirley Jackson has successfully contributed to the enrichment of the genre by means of translating and adapting the original Female Gothic plot to female anxieties of the twentieth century and to do it she contributed with two great novels: We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House. Both narratives share common features that allow us to include them in the Gothic tradition, as for example, the setting of the novel which is in both cases a vast house that contributes towards the development of the action as well as any other character of the story.

In order to develop such plots, Jackson created two Gothic heroines that share personality traits, more concretely, those that have been previously linked to female Gothic heroines, and as well, they share life circumstances since both protagonists are orphans; however, they are completely different women. Yet, they both succeed in taking the necessary measures so as to achieve their goal in life.

The objective of this discussion is to illustrate how Eleanor Vance successfully embodies the characteristics of Gothic heroines, essential figures for the development of Female Gothic fiction.

4.4. The Haunting of Hill House: a Portrait of Eleanor Vance

Written in 1959, The Haunting of Hill House presents us a classic horror story located in a ghostly house and whose protagonist is a young woman who experiences the natural phenomena that take place in the manor. For the purpose of this Dissertation, Eleanor Vance, 17

as the main character of a Female Gothic work of fiction, enables us to observe how her figure, according to the parameters for analysis listed in the introduction of this research, embodies the characteristics portrayed by a typical female Gothic heroine and which have been accounted previously in section 4.2.

In this particular case, there are certain characteristics from the ascribed to female Gothic heroines that can be attributed to the character of Eleanor Vance and to which we will pay attention for the purpose of our analysis. To begin with, we will focus on her first contact with the supernatural, as expected from the protagonist of a Gothic novel. To continue, we will concentrate on the personality traits central for the female Gothic heroine, such as their need to be recognized as a singular individual, asserting self-determination, and their attitude, which we label as childish due to its lack of correspondence with the responses that would be expected from an adult person. Then, we will pay attention to her personal expectations and desires, such as the need to be autonomous, as the result of the long time being suppressed by her maternal figure, her wish for happiness, or for finding a true home where she belongs (Dallis 54). Therefore, we will address how Eleanor intends to assert her self-worth and her personal decisions, especially when it comes to creating bonds with the people who surround her.

Moreover, we will also refer to the relationship that female Gothic heroines create with Gothic spaces and with the people that inhabit them as well as how these relationships affect them, since, as the protagonist of the Modern Gothic novel, Eleanor gains control over the Gothic spaces that she occupies. Her turbulent relationship with Hill House will have an effect on her behavior and attitude, and consequently, we will pay attention to the effects that the house has on her personality, lessening her will and depleting her wishes for a life of her own; in addition, we will see how the horrifying supernatural experiences that she lives in Hill House contribute to her relationship with the house, its inhabitants, and her sanity. In the last place, we will address the particular manner female Gothic heroines finally achieve to gain power and control over their own life and Gothic spaces, facing the suffering that Eleanor’s experience at Hill House has brought along.

Furthermore, throughout this analysis we will also pinpoint the similarities that the plot of the novel as well as the characteristics of the protagonist share with Jackson’s final novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle, so as to enrich the analysis and to enhance our

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understanding of the most frequent aspects portrayed by female Gothic heroines in the American writer’s production.

As it has been just remarked, The Haunting of Hill House narrates the story of young Eleanor Vance and her journey to, in, and outside Hill House. At thirty-two years of age, Eleanor has been taking care of her ill mother since she was twenty-one, what has practically caused her to remain isolated from the outer world, without friends, closer family, with a sense of an adult self to be yet developed, but ready to start building her own happy path, for as Eleanor explains at the beginning of Hill House “She could not remember ever being truly happy in her adult life” (Jackson, House 6). This particular family situation is a starting point in the narration that most of Female Gothic heroines share for it paves the way to justify certain personality traits such as their childish attitude. It is also the case of Constance and Merricat Blackwood in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, since, similar to the plot line we observe in Hill House, both protagonists continue their lives with barely a family to rely on. As it happens with most female Gothic heroines, their mother has passed away and even though the mother figure is not physically present, her influence within the household is yet felt for her belongings and her portraits still remain in Blackwood manor, haunting hitherto Merricat’s thoughts.

As Jameela Dallis explains with regards to Hill House “Jackson employs, builds on, and revises the familiar Gothic heroine trope: Eleanor is orphaned and begins a journey of self-discovery” (58). Consequently, it is upon Eleanor mother’s death, that she receives a letter signed by Dr. Montague, who invites her to “spend all or part of a summer at a comfortable country house” (Jackson, House9), which encourages her to leave her old life behind with the purpose of observing and exploring “the various unsavory stories which had been circulated about the house for most of its eighty years of existence” (9). It is Dr. Montague’s intention to “live in Hill House and see what happened there” for his main purpose, as a consequence of “his true vocation, the analysis of supernatural manifestations”, is to inhabit “an honestly haunted house” so as to observe the “causes and effects of psychic disturbances in a house commonly known as ‘haunted’” (4). For this reason, he acknowledges that the assistants that he looks for to collaborate in this investigation must be “people, who had, in one way or another, at one time or another, no matter how briefly or dubiously, been involved in abnormal events” (5). It is the reason why Eleanor is contacted by Dr. Montague and called to attend Hill House since

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When she was twelve years old and her sister was eighteen, and their father had been dead for a not quite a month, showers of stones had fallen on their house, without any warning or any indication of purpose or reason, dropping from the ceilings, rolling loudly down the walls, breaking windows and pattering maddeningly on the roof. The stones continued intermittently for three days (7).

As a Gothic heroine, we could argue that the contact with supernatural phenomena, and/or experiencing eerie and uncanny situations are intrinsic to the nature of the character itself and to the events that will befall during the time of the story. As Hogle argues, one criterion that characterizes Gothic fiction is the fact that the “hauntings” that appall the characters “can take many forms, but they frequently assume the features of ghosts, specters, or monsters […] It is at this level that Gothic fictions generally play with and oscillate between the earthly laws of conventional reality and the possibilities of the supernatural” (2). At the same time, the supernatural prompts reactions on the Gothic heroine that contribute towards the building of the concept itself, as we will later argue when we focus on the relationship of Eleanor with Hill House. Thus, unemployed, having no friends, and with only a sister with whom she does not get along left in her hometown, she gladly departs to the sinister Hill House asserting her “belief that someday something would happen” (Jackson, House7-8) to her which would change her life.

As it has already been mentioned in the previous section, one of the characteristics that define a gothic heroine is their need to assert their individuality and self determination, as a consequence of having been overshadowed by a very oppressive maternal figure or by a dominant male figure, being in this case a dominant mother, who according to Dallis has shaped “the fragility of Eleanor’s personhood as she struggles with the haunting reality of her caregiver past—the burden of domestic labor, her yearning for her own domicile” (50). We could argue that rather than an active control we refer to a passive dominance in the sense that she has governed Eleanor’s life since, during eleven years, Eleanor has seen herself in the obligation of “caring for her mother”, an experience that she disdainfully describes as “lifting a cross old lady from her chair to her bed, setting out endless little trays of soup and oatmeal, steeling herself to the filthy laundry” (Jackson, House7).

Therefore, “ever since her first memory, Eleanor had been waiting for something like Hill House” (7) in order rupture with her mother and live on her own; then, her claim to be recognized as a self-sufficient individual is one of the first characteristics that we can attribute

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to Eleanor Vance as a Gothic heroine for we are able to detect it from the very beginning of the narration, and we can identify it on her throughout its curse. One instance where we can perceive this trait would be a heated discussion with her sister and her brother-in-law, where Eleanor repeatedly insists that the vehicle she wants to use to drive is “half my car” (11) so that she can use it to go to Hill House5.

One of the arguments that her sister uses to deny Eleanor the permission to use the car entails their mother and the control that she had over them. Despite the fact that their mother has already passed away, Carrie –Eleanor’s sister- incarnates her mother’s personality and she attempts to exercise over Eleanor the same control as her mother did: “‘In any case, Eleanor, I am sure that I am doing what Mother would have thought best. Mother had confidence in me and would certainly never have approved my letting you run wild, going off heaven knows where, in my car’” (12). Doubly rebelling, against her mother and against her sister’s dominance, Eleanor takes the family car without her sister’s permission in order to go to Hill House, what causes her to feel fulfilled: “the car belonged entirely to her, a little contained world all her won; I am really going, she thought” (16). For Eleanor, this passage represents a big step into maturity and self-awareness for she is challenging the adults that surround her.

Regarding their attitude and personality, one of the features that is attributed to female Gothic heroines is the manifestation of a childish attitude, usually as the consequence of having lived for a long time with a dominant figure –mostly maternal- which has caused them to be unable to make decisions for themselves, as well as to establish relationships with people, and which according to Laura Miller derives in the creation of a “fantasy life that […] we soon recognize to be one of her6 chief traits”. The situation is identical too for Merricat Blackwood, who became an orphan at the age of twelve and has lived secluded at home due the hatred of the villagers. There, her older sister has, and still does, treated her as if she were a child. Since her family situation has been the same along the years, Merricat has grown older but her personality still resembles more the nature of a child than an adult.

Eleanor acknowledges the repercussions that taking care of her mother for such a long time has had in her and she accepts that “she had spent so long alone, with no one to love, that it was difficult for her to talk, even casually, to another person without self-consciousness and

5Jameela Dallis provides a significant insight into the interpretation of the car as a symbol within the novel and on how it played a role on women’s agency, their freedom and independence. 6Reference to the character of Eleanor Vance. 21

an awkward inability to find words” (Jackson, House 6-7). Gothic heroines sometimes display a naïve attitude as well as their thoughts may be childlike sometimes. In the case of Eleanor Vance it can be seen on her reflections about the Hill House itself and the people who inhabit it, -which we will address soon thereafter on the discussion; but also, we could highlight the following scene that Eleanor lives as one action that underlines the characteristics previously mentioned: her need for self-determination and independence, and her childlike character. During her journey to Hill House, Eleanor stops to have a break and she spots a family with a little boy and a little girl. On this scene, this little girl refuses to drink her milk unless it is poured in her “cup of stars” (21). For any other adult who would pay attention to the scene it might seem irrelevant; however, Eleanor pays attention and she empathizes with this little girl. For her, it is very important that the little girl insists on her demand for it would mean that she would stay true to who she is and again, standing out from the rest:

Don’t do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of starts; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of starts again; don’t do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl. (22)

We could consider that this scene is very important for Eleanor as maybe she would have liked to have this opportunity to stand out for herself and to be individualistic, independent from her mother and her sister from a younger age rather than now. Perhaps, she empathizes with the little girl due to the fact that she has just reinforced her individualism by means of stealing her sister’s car and leaving her home and she has freed herself to become just like that “everyone else” (22) that she refers to as she is going to take part in an unusual journey7.

On her arrival to Hill House, a house she describes as “vile” and “diseased” (33), Eleanor is received by Mrs. Dudley, the housekeeper who will take care of Dr. Montague’s guest during all their stay in the manor. Hill House represents one of the characteristic houses of Gothic novels, full of rooms and corridors and with a dismal story of death and tragedy that impregnates the house, its environment, and even sometimes, the people that there dwells (75). However, despite cheerless the house may seem for Eleanor at the beginning she will

7 Besides this scene, Miller illustrates this point with further reflections Eleanor has on her journey to Hill House. 22

soon come to enjoy her stay there when she meets Theodora and Luke Sanderson, her two companions, besides Dr. Montague, on her experience at Hill House.

Another aspect of Gothic heroines that we are able to detect in Eleanor Vance is her will to be autonomous and thus, to be able to express her self-centered longings, which she has not been able to fulfill during the time that she has been ensnared surrounded by people she dislikes. Now that she has finally abandoned her home and her overprotective family circle, she is able to express what she wants and what she desires, which is a great progress for a Gothic heroine for as we know, women in Gothic narratives could rarely express their actual thoughts and intentions for they lived in constant oppression. After having carefully read The Haunting of Hill House, my perception is that not only does Eleanor strongly desires to be independent, but also, she wants to feel that she belongs somewhere, she wants to love, to be loved, to be accepted and protected. “Journeys end in lovers meeting” (42) is one sentence that she constantly repeats during the course of the narration and that allows us to see that she seeks for somebody to care for and who cares about her, either a lover, family, or friends. Likewise, Dallis reflects on this idea and states that Eleanor, influenced by the love stories that she read to her mother, expects her life to have “the happy endings of fairy tales” and thus, fulfill her “expectations of romantic love” (Dallis 52). As a whole, Dallis declares that as a consequence of the instability that she has experienced throughout her life, Eleanor longs for “a true home, that provides the security, love, and stability” (54) that she has never received.

Theodora is the first person who will be able to let Eleanor express her desire for a deeper connection. Eleanor comes to welcome her as soon as she sets foot in Hill House, and she does not hesitate to urge Theo to take the room next to hers, as she encourages “come on up. Make her give you the room next to mine” (Jackson, House 43). Theodora is an open- minded girl and she immediately connects with Eleanor. In fact, Roline Sluis defends that The Haunting of Hill House is a story of doubles and dopplegängers, Theodora being “Eleanor’s mirror image, or more precisely the projection of Eleanor’s desires” (Sluis 36). Both of them decide to go for a walk inside the house to get to know each other better and in fact, after a trivial and even foolish conversation they reach the conclusion that they “must really be related”, “I’m positive we’re cousins” (Jackson, House 53),Theodora states after their information interchange. Eleanor sees in Theodora the type of connection with a friend or a family member that she has never had before and that she has longed for, and now she is

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delighted to have, and in spite of the fact that she considers herself a self-conscious person with difficulties to strike up a conversation, she recognizes that Theodora has something special, as she realizes that “she was always shy with strangers, awkward and timid, and yet had come in no more than half an hour to think of Theodora as close and vital, someone whose anger would be frightening” (49). However, as I see it, not only does this passage show Eleanor’s desire for a close friend as we know, as the result of the lack of love that she has suffered during her life, but also, I consider it displays her childish personality once again since normally, it is not a common behavior for adults to create such a close of bond with a person who we have just met; on the contrary, from my point of view, it rather resembles the attitude of a child or an adolescent, who do not hesitate to trust somebody they have just got to know. Even though Eleanor “possesses a longing for independence and emancipation” (Sluis 30) and a wish to step into adulthood, it is inevitable for her to show her immature side as she has lived as a child for such a long time, and whose “dilemmas are those of a prepubescent child, not an adult woman” as Miller signals.

Luke Sanderson is the last person Eleanor meets in Hill House. Unlike Theodora and Eleanor herself, Luke has not been invited to Hill House by Dr. Montague due to his experience with supernatural forces, but as a representative of the family who owns the house in order to supervise the research that will take place there. The first impression we get from him is that he is a charming man, for the first words he utters are “‘These being dead’ he said, ‘then dead must I be’. Ladies, if you are the ghostly inhabitants of Hill House, I am here forever” (Jackson, House 57), although at the beginning of the narration he is presented as “a liar [and] also a thief” (9). Eleanor is dazzled by him; in fact, the first thought that comes to her mind when seeing Luke for the first time is “Journeys end in lovers meeting” (56) highlighting once again her wish for love, romantic in this case, not the same feeling that she experienced with Theodora. If Theodora is Eleanor’s projection of her desire for a closer friend, Luke sparks her desire for love. Curiously, we do not come across any romantic reference made by Eleanor with regard to Luke’s persona during the narration, but it is the constant repetition of this thought when thinking about him that leads us to consider this romantic inclination.

Furthermore, I would like to point out the fact that it is very interesting that Shirley Jackson has chosen this quotation to refer to romance in Hill House, for this reference belongs to Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night (II, iii, 44-45) and it anticipates the course of action of

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the play since both the main characters find love during their venture. Nonetheless, it is not in the fate of a female Gothic heroine to find romantic love, or to be able to have a successful amorous relationship for their life is usually directed towards fighting against a threat which endangers their mental and physical well-being. In the case of Eleanor Vance, not only does she have to cope against her ghosts from the past, but also she must also face the challenges that Hill House presents.

Later that night, Eleanor, Theodora, Luke and Dr. Montague spend their first evening together in which they share personal information about themselves so as to become familiar with each other. Moreover, Dr. Montague tells his guests the dreadful story of the family that first inhabited Hill House, a story of tragedy, death and vengeance. Despite the dreadful information, Eleanor goes to bed feeling content; she feels she has found a group of people with whom she feels comfortable and trusted, and it does not matter that she sleeps in the unnerving Hill House.

Odd she thought sleepily, that the house should be so dreadful and yet in many respects so physically comfortable –the soft bed, the pleasant lawn, the good fire, the cooking of Mrs. Dudley. The company too, she thought, and then thought, Now I can think about them; I am all alone. Why is Luke here? But why am I here? Journeys end in lovers meeting. (Jackson, House 91)

She is creating familiar bonds with the people in the house and therefore, the house is becoming for them a place of comfort and security; then, as it often happens in terror narratives, from this moment onwards events will start to take a wrong turn for Eleanor, since the house will offer just the opposite: it will become a source of trauma and anxiety for her. A typical Female Gothic plot begins to unfold as a result of the events that befall in Hill House, involving the Gothic heroine’s loss of identity and power before a very powerful entity which causes her to feel entrapped and mentally unstable. Gothic spaces are of great relevance for its development for the many rooms and many corridors in Hill House will contribute towards creating confusion for the inhabitants with regards to their location in the house, causing them to feel lost and trapped. For Eleanor, not only does it create the sensation of physical confusion, but also it confuses her psychologically as she finds herself absorbed into the negative things that took place in Hill House: “here in Hill House it belonged, gleeful and expectant, awaiting perhaps a slight creature creeping out from the little window onto the slanted roof, reaching up to the spire, knotting a rope…” (113). Hill House is the last

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character of this novel that we need to take into consideration for it is the root of all the menaces suffered by its guests, and especially Eleanor, who will develop a special relationship with the house, which will hasten her downfall.

A theme that is common in Female Gothic narratives is the fact that the protagonist establishes a strong bond with the house. The house represents a place of protection that is well accepted by Eleanor, who comes from a home where she has not lived a happy life, a place to which she does not attach any happy memory. It plays the same role for Merricat Blackwood too, who hardly leaves her house unless it is completely necessary for their survival; on the other hand, her sister Constance is indeed secluded in the house for she is not allowed to leave in order to be protected from the villager’s “way of life” (Sluis 45).Therefore, most of the action of the novel takes places within the safe walls of Blackwood manor, and as a consequence we cannot observe how their personality would develop outside, in contact with different people. As it is the case often with female Gothic heroines, the circumstances do not allow them to develop an identity outside the walls of the house; they live imprisoned there, but usually they do not mind, and as Dallis argues “by the end of Eleanor’s journey, it becomes clear that an enclosed, protected space is what she truly desires” (54-55). They find happiness in their small and secluded world. But, as it has been presented previously, in Female Gothic fiction and for female Gothic heroines, the type of protection that the houses offer often tends to become overprotection, until a point that the heroine feels imprisoned within the structure itself: for these girls the house “is a very comfortable place in some ways […] but its cushioned embrace is suffocating” and although “Eleanor arrives at Hill House flush with dreams of liberation” she will find herself “irrevocably trapped in that embrace” (Miller).

In Roline Sluis’s words “Hill House creates the illusion of belonging, making its inmates believe that there is someone to hold your hand at night” (Sluis 38). However, for Eleanor the house does not become a space of comfort as she hoped when she set foot on the manor for the first time, but a “place of confinement” (33) for “creating the illusion of providing security, it threatens to destroy the autonomy of women” (33). At the beginning of this text, we perceive an Eleanor Vance who is willing to claim her own identity and who is keen on creating bonds with new people; at this point of the narration we can observe that Hill House is lessening Eleanor’s power and autonomy. We need to consider that “For Jackson, the house is a metaphor for the terror of home and desire; the Hill House represents the

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incongruences between the life a woman like Eleanor wants for herself and the life available to her” (Dallis 71), hence, despite Eleanor’s impression of the coziness of Hill House and the fantasy of it becoming her ideal home, Hill House will fail to provide the place of belonging she longs for. Oppositely, the house will become for her “the source of the haunting, the place that magnifies and weaponizes isolation” (Mandelo). Hill House affects as well as her relationship with the people in the house. Oftentimes we can perceive Eleanor expressing her insecurities regarding how she is perceived by Theodora and Luke, as in this particular instance where she ponders “Is she laughing at me? Eleanor wondered; has she decided that I am not fit to stay?” (Jackson, House 117), and although she is not a very confident we can observe, as the narration unfolds, that her insecurities increase the longer she stays in the house.

Not only do Gothic heroines surrender to the house as a place of comfort because it isolates them from the outer world and it provides them with safety, but also, as Claire Kahane remarks in her essay “The Gothic Mirror”, for these girls the house equals the ultimate place of protection, that is, the mother figure, the female body. Therefore, Eleanor finds herself at home, at the comfort of being protected by a mother and not vice versa as it has been for her during most of her life since she has taken care of her ill mother during eleven years. Nonetheless, the more she fraternizes with the house, the more she loses touch with reality, she “alienates her from the other guests” (Sluis 39) and changes her attitude towards them, especially with Theodora, to whom she showed great esteem and to whom she feels animosity and disgust now. “We can’t afford to have anyone but Theodora in the center of the stage, Eleanor thought” (Jackson, House 148); “I would like to hit her with a stick, Eleanor thought, looking down on Theodora’s head beside her chair; I would like to batter her with rocks.” (158) are just some of the ill thoughts that Eleanor dedicates to Theodora, and which curiously, intensify in hate as uncanny events take place in Hill House.

As the protagonist of a Gothic horror novel who dwells in a Gothic space, it is only natural that a Gothic heroine experiences indeed the horror of the supernatural, which in this case takes the presence of an invisible and unknown force. In the first frightening episode of the novel, Eleanor feels the presence of her deceased mother knocking on the door and noises coming from the wall, and she reunites with Theodora to feel safe. It is the first warning from the house, which the next morning will welcome them with the infamous message “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME” (Jackson, House 146). “It knows my name” (146), states Eleanor

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incredulously, and just like that, Hill House has trapped her. With the second message “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME ELEANOR” (155), written with red paint –perhaps blood-, Eleanor reflects about how familiar it feels for her to be called by the house. In fact, we can perceive that she somehow wants to be intimate with the house. Hill House has taken over Eleanor, it has absorbed her and she seems to acknowledge it as she says “Look. There’s only one of me, and it’s all I’ve got. I hate seeing myself dissolve and slip and separate so that I’m living in one half, my mind, and I see the other half of me helpless and frantic and driven” (160). At this point, Eleanor is contemplating whether to merge with Hill House, a motif that is classical of female Gothic narrations for the house represents then the place where women should belong according to society, a place she can take care of and can take care of her. The house stands for family and family relationship, something that Eleanor longs for.

Mrs. Montague’s arrival in Hill House agitates the atmosphere with her planchette reading, which again signals out Eleanor. Summarized, planchette tells Hill House’s guest that Nell wants to go home with her mother for she feels lost now. Exasperated after being constantly singled out by the house, after the last uncanny episode in the house, Eleanor feels ready to surrender:

I will never be able to sleep again with all this noise coming from inside my head; […] I am disappearing inch by inch into this house, I am going apart a little bit at a time” (201). “No it is over for me. It is too much, she thought, I will relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have (204).

As we have already mentioned during this analysis, one of the problems that Gothic heroines usually have to deal with is the fact that their self-identity is lost. The Haunting of Hill House inspired hope for a moment that Eleanor Vance would be able to create her own life in a place where she belonged, especially seeing Eleanor as such in Hill House:

It is my second morning in Hill House, and I am unbelievably happy. Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless nights I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long. Abandoning a lifelong belief that to name happiness is to dissipate it, she smile at herself in the mirror

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and told herself silently, You are happy, Eleanor, you have finally been given a part of your measure of happiness (137).

“Earlier, she has a sense of independent agency while being part of a group”, whereas now, after “Eleanor is regressing to a more child-like state of vulnerability” (Dallis 83). Hill House has finally won over Eleanor’s will; it has succeeded in vanishing Eleanor’s intention of asserting individuality and self determination, and in finding her true self away from her mother and her sister, for the presence of her mother stills haunts her actions and decisions. The house, the embodiment of the motherly figure in female Gothic narratives, has completely defeated Eleanor and her wishes, and she has become a woman that is not able to cope with life outside the familiar home, just as it is expected from Gothic heroines. In her last attempt to belong, Eleanor desperately asks Theodora to take her in her house but regardless Eleanor’s insistence, Theodora rejects her.

After Theodora’s dismissal, Eleanor’s conception of the inhabitants of Hill House as a family does no longer hold together –“I’ve never been wanted anywhere” (Jackson, House 209), Eleanor muses- and the only family she has left there is the house itself, which acts as a protective figure. As Mandelo signals “the isolation Eleanor feels is intense. She has been singled out as the house’s choice; she has also been rebuffed in her attempts to form a relationship with Theo or Luke. […] the house, if we’re giving it agency, is fully aware of and sinks its claws into” and as a consequence it “makes her ever more susceptible to the idea that Hill House is the only space that can provide a true sense of home, belonging, and even love” (Dallis 83).In the last night Eleanor spends in the residence she is called by Hill House, which tries to lead her into death to stay forever in the house. “‘Eleanor, Eleanor’” (Jackson, House 215) the houses whispers so as to attract her, “She closed her eyes and leaned back against the bank and thought, Don’t let me go” (215). Eleanor, on her part, as most Gothic heroines, has developed a profound attachment to the house and wishes to remain there forever, dead or alive, and in order to do so, she goes to the turret to commit suicide. Notwithstanding, found by the rest of inhabitants during her last incident in Hill House, described as “childish nonsense” (236) by Mrs. Montague, her stay in what she considers ‘home’ comes to an end. For her best, they decide Eleanor must leave Hill House.

Even though Eleanor Vance’s aspiration was for her to lead an autonomous and self- ruling life, we can observe that she has not succeeded. She has been guided by her mother, by Dr. Montague in coming to Hill House, and by the inhabitants of Hill House to do as she is

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told. And now, she leaves because they have considered it is the best for her; she has become a victim of their will. Female Gothic heroines are never regarded as victims when the plot of the narration is presented, but instead, as the narrative unfolds, events cause her to be seen as an afflicted victim who lacks the power to face the person –or entity in this case- who menaces and victimizes her. Nonetheless, it is not in the nature of a female Gothic heroine to remain a victim. The external circumstances unfortunately lead her to become one, but their personality is not submissive neither passive so they often show a great display of courage so as to change the situation that victimizes them.

Oftentimes, as Smith suggests in his essay “Children of the Night”, the disempowerment that Gothic heroines display during the narration is staged for in this case upon being expelled from Hill House “Eleanor represents a moment of disempowerment which masquerades as a moment of apparent empowerment” (Smith, 162). Eleanor’s desire is to be independent, to be herself, and to remain in Hill House and as a consequence, as she tells the Doctor “the house wants me to stay” (Jackson, House 240). Therefore, in a last lucid moment that shows her autonomy and ability to take her own decisions Eleanor states: “I am doing it, she thought, turning the wheel to send the car directly at the great tree at the curve of the driveway, I am really doing it, I am doing this all by myself, now, at last; this is me, I am really really doing it by myself.” (245) and she crashes her car against a tree in Hill House and so as to belong forever there, at home proving here that she has finally achieved her individuality, autonomy, and her place in the world, in Hill House. Leo Mandelo properly states that “there is nothing for or of Eleanor that she has the right to call her own until the moment of her suicide”.

All in all, as a Gothic heroine within the Female Gothic tradition, Eleanor Vance emphasizes the bond created between a female Gothic heroine and the house she inhabits. A house that acts as a character itself and that is able to undermine the heroine’s personality, but that at the same time becomes for her a stronghold that protects Eleanor from the uncertainties outside the house. Her intention of casting of her mother influence seems to succeed at first, but we can observe that the house embodies the maternal personality and Eleanor finally is carried along by the familiarity she feels for her. As a female Gothic heroine there is a menace that she must face, being in this case the fact that she is asked to leave Hill House, to which she will show her courage to achieve what she really longs for, although it means for our heroine to take extreme measures and to make a hard sacrifice, as in this case, committing suicide.

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5. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

The main limitations that we can point out with regards to this study are derived from the from the imposed document length. To begin with, it would have been ideal to be able to analyze both of Shirley Jackson’s novels in depth so as to establish the similarities –which we have briefly referred to throughout The Haunting of Hill House’s analysis- and the differences in the construct of the female Gothic heroine, regarding the characteristics or their personalities and their reactions regarding the different events that befall on the narration. Taking both into consideration, we would have been to able to discern what characteristics remain constant on the creation of both protagonists for Shirley Jackson, and hence, we could have traced what elements she considers pivotal regarding the figure of the female Gothic heroine.

Furthermore, it would have been optimal to contextualize Shirley Jackson’s work with paramount novels in the Female Gothic tradition so as to see how the literary construction the Gothic heroine has evolved from then novels written in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, examining Jackson’s contribution in the twentieth century together with another coetaneous writings, and observing how it has developed along the twenty-first century.

6. LINES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Regarding further lines of development for this essay, I think it should be very interesting to pay attention to the approach taken on current film adaptations of Shirley Jackson’s works. As we know the relationship between literature and cinema is a close one for both of them benefit from the ideas of the other. The use of literary works as the source for film scripts has been a dominant circumstance in the history of the new art, and as well, this situation has been beneficial for literature itself since adaptations stimulate the viewers’ interest in the literary work, widening the readership of the work significantly.

In the year 2018, the streaming service Netflix released a series adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House created by Mike Flanagan and from my point of view, it should be very interesting to see how the plot of the book has been adapted into a full series taking into account aspects such as how characters and locations are portrayed, what the plot differences and similarities are, and even, it could also be interesting to investigate whether the book has enjoyed a greater popularity or higher sales after the release of Netflix’s series. The same line

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could be applied to We Have Always Lived in the Castle’s movie adaptation, released in 2019 and with a cast of well-known actors such as Sebastian Stan as Charles, Alexandra Daddario as Constance, and Taissa Farmiga in the role of Merricat.

Furthermore, as it has been mentioned in the previous section, it would also be relevant to observe how the role of the Gothic Female heroine has developed during the centuries, and how the essence of this character has been captured in current narratives with plots developed in present circumstances.

7. CONCLUSION

From the foregoing, the main goal of the current study has been to determine whether Eleanor Vance, the protagonist of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House could be regarded as a female Gothic heroine. In order to fulfill the aforementioned objective, it has been necessary to set subsequent objectives that have contributed to show how Female Gothic literature emerged as a departure from Gothic fiction written by men, and as well, how it has originated a very particular type of character intrinsic to these novels: the female Gothic heroine. To determine if Eleanor Vance would qualify as such it has been necessary to establish parameters to observe when carrying out a close reading of The Haunting of Hill House to conclude if she can be included within the category determined for study.

The results portrayed in section 4.4.show that Eleanor Vance can be regarded as a female Gothic heroine for she embodies the following characteristics that are attributed to such figure: in the first place, as the protagonist of a Gothic novel, she lives situations that are produced due to the influence of supernatural events. To continue, regarding her personality, we have found that Eleanor Vance exhibits most of the characteristics that we have described as particular of a female Gothic heroine in section 4.2., as for instance, her need to be seen as a singular individual, able to act with self-determination and to state her will, and also, regarding too her prospects for the future that are connected with her desire to become fully autonomous and to find people with whom to connect. Moreover, she also displays an immature attitude as the result of having lived with suppressed by a dominant figure for a long time.

Additionally, we have perceived that she also establishes a strong bond with the house she inhabits and which causes her to lose her sanity, a situation that will prompt that Eleanor

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is seen as a victim, another quality of female Gothic heroines, and that in order to escape that situation she needs to take exemplary measures

These findings enhance our understanding of the protagonists of Female Gothic fiction and having observed that Eleanor Vance, protagonist of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House embodies and displays such characteristics. Therefore, we can conclude that, according to our analysis, she can be conceived as a female Gothic heroine.

This research may serve as a base for future studies, for example, studies which as we have mentioned in section 5, which perform a study of the evolution of the figure of the female Gothic heroine across the centuries, beginning with Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) surveying its evolution, reaching its more current representations in the twenty-first century.

All in all, The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle are two outstanding works of horror fiction of the twentieth century that should be considered as part of the literary canon of horror literature and that represent the embodiment of the modern characteristics of Female Gothic fiction and henceforth, of female Gothic heroines.

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