Analysis Of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting Of Hill House Through Sigmund Freud’s Theory Of Mastery And Repetition

Shirley Jackson’s, the haunting of hill house is simple yet a complicated horror story generally based around the house which has a dark history of taking lives. The story generally revolves around Eleanor, who had a rough relationship with her mother. The story has mainly four characters that plays an important role and builds the main scene of the story, mainly Eleanor, Theodora, a young lady with no good terms with her family, professor Montague, an anthropologist, and Luke, one of the heir of the house. The house has a unique way of haunting the person there by opening all the doors of their mind and making their unconscious thoughts come wide in front of them. The same happens with Eleanor as in unconsciousness of meeting her mother and being home, which eventually happens when she dies. Thus, in this essay it will be displayed that how Elanor’s relationship with her mother was caught between a triangle of bully, victim and rescuer phase with the help of famous psychologist Sigmund Freud’s theory of mastery and repetition. 

In the start of the story the author describes Eleanor’s feelings for her mother as “the only person in the world she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister” shows how much hatred she had for her mother while taking care for her for the past eleven years. Also her connection with the outside world was not quite that much which is quite visible the first few pages of the novel. She also had not much to cheer about or do in her life, as author says her life was “built around small guilts and small reproaches”. Even when she received the invitation to go to hill house she first thought would her mother agree with her on going there. “I am sure mother would have agreed with me, Eleanor”. Her whole life has been revolving around her mother so much that she couldn’t even think of making conscious decisions without getting permitted from her mother in her mind. Whole of this portrays how Eleanor is acting like a victim in every case in her bond with mother. 

Sigmund Freud also in his theory of repetition and mastery explains how a simple game of throwing objects away and them fishing them back acts a thing of joy for the child. Freud explains that the throwing of object reflects to child’s mother being away from him and then bringing it back was a joyful experience of coming her back. repeating this game again and again lead Freud to conclude that it may perhaps be the experience of coming her back laid the true purpose of the game. Moreover, Freud also looked upon the situation from an another unprejudiced view in which he stated the child was in an passive situation where his mom left him alone and things happened to him but by repeating the game he took on an active part where throwing the toy away was actually saying go away I don’t need you. 

The same situation Eleanor finds herself in where up till visiting the hill house she found herself in an passive situation where she always had to listen to her mother. The banging on the door which she experiences as an haunting from the house is related to her mother when she used to bang the wall to call Eleanor when she needed something, also the day her mother died she kept on banging the wall but Eleanor didn’t responded and in her unconsciousness kept on believing that her mother died because of her. And that’s the way of hill house to haunt or we can better say terrorise its victims by exploiting them unconsciously. Also she says “I hate having things done to me”. Which means she hates being in an passive situation. All this implies that her relationship with mother was not that everyone wants to have, yet she wants to be home and when Mrs Montague ask her during the plantchet experiment she says mother is home. 

Also when they all found out the writing on the wall “help Eleanor come home, Eleanor” after all the banging on door previous night. This message can be interpreted in two ways first as a request to help Eleanor come home and second a command from her mother “come home, Eleanor”. Later in the story Eleanor turns a bit into her passive side when the incident with Theo where Theo painted Eleanor’s toe nails and she says “its wicked” which means theo is being a bully and Eleanor does not like it, Eleanor when she has to share the room with Theodora and had to give her red sweater starts shifting to the passive way of thinking where she is being a bully and doing things to Theodara “ I would like to hit her with a stick, Eleanor thought, looking down on Theodara’s head beside her chair; I would like to hit her with rocks”. 

The Hill House has been planning it all since the beginning. “I am like a small creature swallowed by a monster, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside. ” This is the first reference to future events but at the ending of the story when she enters the library she could feel the stone door moving caressingly under her feet as if she was a child in its mothers womb. As we see in the beginning the house was locked, barred and its windows were sensibly shut but at the end, Eleanor can move swiftly around the entire house as if the house had accepted her. She had found the lover she had always been singing of and dancing with in her head. Luke also said during his conversation with others “It’s all so motherly”. Hill House leads Eleanor in believing that it is what she had wanted her entire life which is true in many ways. 

Eleanor’s life come to an end and her willingness to be home and with her mother is finally full filled when the library lures her and acts as a death drive for her. Seems like she is the one to break the spell of that fairyland guarded by the oleanders. She begins to follow what in her head appears to be her mothers voice and led her to the library but Eleanor form beginning didn’t felt well being near the library because of its decomposing smell and how she felt there it actually represented the womb of her mother but she wanted to escape that too and reach the ultimate end of life that is death or a graveyard well depicted by the text. 

In gist it can be said that once all doors of the houses opened to Eleanor she came through each and everything she could have destined for that is being with her mother, yet she hated her so much couldn’t lived without her she had become such an important part of her unconscious mind that hill house used this as way to drive herself to kill her and be with her mother forever. “hill house is mine” as she quoted before leaving and no doubt she was true the house is hers in more than one way as her journey ended. 

Cited works

• Jackson, Shirley. “The haunting of hill house” penguin classics. 1959
• Sigmund Freud. “Beyond the pleasure principle”