The Monstrous Feminine in The Haunting of Hill House, Part One

I’m excited about this post because it’s mini-practice for my PhD essays. If you like it, let me know, and I’ll do more on here.

The first thing I have to say—there will be spoilers for the TV series of The Haunting of Hill House. If you haven’t watched it yet, I wouldn’t recommend reading further!

The Haunting of Hill House is based on a book by Shirley Jackson (most famous for her short story, The Lottery). I haven’t read the book but I have read that the TV series is very different. So again, even if you’ve read the book, and you think I can’t spoil the TV series for you, I totally can.

Here we go!

The Haunting of Hill House is the story of the Crain family—a father, a mother, two sons, and three daughters—who move into a giant, gorgeous house with the intent to flip it and make enough money to build a house for themselves that they call “the dream house.” The mother is an architect, the father is an all around handyman, and they have no concerns about flipping Hill House.

But quickly, the children start seeing ghosts, hearing banging on the walls, and having other strange experiences. The parents try to explain these things away as nightmares, or sometimes the wind, though by the end of the family’s time in the house, even the parents see the ghosts.

While there are many monsters in this story (mostly ghoulish ghosts who are gray and decaying), they don’t tend to push the story forward. Instead they scare the children and build a divide between the children and their parents, as the children don’t feel that their parents believe them.

However there are three monsters in the story who are necessary to the plot. The first is a ghost named Poppy, who appears as gray and decaying sometimes, but in most occurrences, is seen as a beautiful young lady. The second is the mother of the family, Olivia. The third is “The Bent-Neck Lady,” who is a ghost only seen (and named) by the youngest daughter in the family, Nellie.