Fear and Dissociation Theme Analysis

Throughout The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson creates a palpable atmosphere of fear. As she builds terror and dread, Jackson examines the effects of prolonged bouts of fear on her four main characters—Eleanor, Doctor Montague, Luke, and Theodora—and, in so doing, ultimately suggests that the state of being acutely afraid over such an extended period of time creates an effect of dissociation or depersonalization, rendering individuals strangers to themselves and one another.

When Eleanor first arrives at Hill House, she is tethered to reality—though a little whimsical and fanciful at times, there’s nothing about Eleanor to suggest that she’s insane, delusional, or prone to dissociative episodes. As the house deepens its claim on her, however, Eleanor slowly loses her grip on reality—and on herself. She begins to feel she is “disappearing inch by inch” into the house, “going apart a little at a time” due to the pressure of the fear she’s experiencing, and the increasing frequency with of sounds, noises, and even presences that only she can perceive. In the book’s denouement, as Eleanor’s spirit seems to meld with—or be taken over entirely by—whatever possesses Hill House, Eleanor runs wild through the house in the middle of the night. She is both herself and not herself; she clearly is in possession of her own memories, but she refers to herself in the third person and speaks of having at last found her way “home” to the very “inside” of Hill House. The morning after the episode, once Luke and the others have coaxed Eleanor down off of a rotting iron staircase from which she was, ostensibly, preparing to plunge to her death, Eleanor is encouraged to leave the house but seems reluctant to—she has become obsessed with the house, and decides to commit suicide in its driveway rather than leave it. Only in the “unending, crashing second before the car” hits a giant oak tree does Eleanor briefly seem to return to herself, wondering at last why she is “doing this” and why no one is stopping her. Eleanor’s fear seems to have completely severed her connection with reality until that final moment, when it’s already to late to reclaim her sense of self.

The housekeeper and cook, Mrs. Dudley, is perhaps the most profound example of someone whose elongated exposure to the evil within Hill House—and the terror it inspires—has resulted in a kind of dissociation. Mrs. Dudley speaks robotically and flatly in sentences that describe only her schedule in the house—her entire existence has become oriented around the times at which she enters the house, performs her duties, and leaves again. She never reveals anything more about herself or her life to the new guests, and she doesn’t ask any questions about them either—in fact, she never even varies the words she uses. Mrs. Dudley’s flat affect, depersonalized speech, and inability to focus on anything other than getting out of the house shows that in order for her to complete her accursed duties at Hill House, it’s necessary for her to separate herself from anything but the task at hand. Just as Eleanor, in the depths of her fear, cannot access anything beyond being afraid, Mrs. Dudley’s life outside Hill House—whatever it is—becomes inaccessible to her when she’s within the confines of the house.

After an encounter in which whatever possesses Hill House writes a message to Eleanor on the walls of Theodora’s room in blood, Theodora moves into Eleanor’s room. The two sleep in separate beds, but begin sharing clothes and possessions, as all of Theodora’s things have been stained with blood. As the two of them begin dressing, speaking, and acting like one another, the line between them blurs. Theodora, dressed in Eleanor’s demure clothes, begins calling herself “Eleanor” and speaking in mocking tones about “herself” in the third person. At the same time, Eleanor allows Theodora to paint her toenails bright red—though she feels provocative and out of place in her own body once the job is done—and begins adopting some of Theodora’s more fiery characteristics. As the two women seem to meld together, it is almost as if they are latching onto one another’s personalities as they feel their own selves dissolving in the presence of their constant state of fear and disorientation. It’s easier to embody another person than it is to reckon with the confusion and strangeness that has infiltrated their own minds, and as Eleanor and Theodora both consciously and subconsciously adopt parts of one another’s appearances and personalities, it seems they’re trying to hide themselves away, perhaps out of an instinct to preserve whatever is left of their true selves.

Additionally, Doctor Montague, Theodora, and Luke Sanderson all discuss the strange effects of being exposed to heightened fear over a long period of time. In humorous, almost academic discussions each morning as they lay out their plans for the day—and in the evenings, often after an encounter with the presence within Hill House—they deconstruct the emotions they experienced during the episodes with an eerie detachment, often poking fun at their own terror or one another’s. As the novel progresses, these chats become more and more ludicrous to the imperiled Eleanor, who is—depending on how one views the narrative—either drifting further away from herself, or closer to the true core of who she is: a woman possessed by an entity even she can’t understand. Indeed, as the others try to bring Eleanor back from the brink of her own destruction, they do so with the same tongue-in-cheek, disbelieving irony with which they’d deconstructed their encounters with the presence at Hill House days earlier—it’s as if what’s happening to their friend right before their eyes is at a distance or remove from them.

“When I am afraid,” Eleanor Vance states at a crucial point in the novel, after a horrific message has been scrawled in blood on the walls of Theodora’s room, “I can see perfectly the sensible, beautiful, not-afraid side of the world […] But when I am afraid I no longer exist in any relation to these things.” Jackson’s attempt to define fear as a state of dissociation, in which the “not-afraid side of the world” exists but becomes inaccessible, is her novel’s great experiment. Through the omnipresent atmosphere of terror and dread which permeates Hill House, she explores how fear slowly but surely detaches her protagonists from reality.