English

"It's the only time anything's ever happened to me. I liked it" (Jackson, p. 117). This is a line that sums up Eleanor’s entire life. It should make anyone sad hearing a statement like this from another human being. But for most of her life, Eleanor has been isolated and confined; she’s never been able to experience anything of life between the need to care for her bad-tempered, invalid mother, and then after her mother’s death, her existence with an indifferent sister and brother-in-law. It makes me consider everything that Eleanor has missed: relationships with schoolmates, for example; romantic encounters; music and art; worldly temptations; a career; a husband; children—all the experiences that touch our lives and help us develop. But she is unaware of the benefits these experiences bring so she lacks any persona. She was never able to develop an ability to keep herself stable in unstable situations. And life is full of those.

We as readers are aware of this, but Eleanor is not and so we can see why she is really not prepared to make this trip. She has never been allowed to do any of the things that present a learning experience or a challenge that helps us deal with future events. She has been blinded to life and having things happen to her, so she’s not capable of knowing how to cope with people and events as they happen. Most people grow up learning these coping strategies, but she has not and thus has developed any life skills. Without this perspective, she winds up misinterpreting the things that occur to her during this stay at Hill House. Thus she forms a relationship with the very eerie Hill House which seems to be as unbalanced as she is. Indeed she states she’s “already used to the comforts of Hill House” (p. 119). But she has no realization of how disturbing and disturbed Hill House really is. It’s as though no one ever told her how dangerous a wild bear is. Therefore when she sees one for the very first time, she goes forward to make a friend of it with no realization of the danger it presents.

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