Key themes
- The house as psychological landscape
- Loneliness as its own kind of haunting
- The unreliable boundary between self and environment
About this book
Four people spend a summer in a house that may be alive; the gold standard for the literary ghost story.
Published in 1959, The Haunting of Hill House is widely considered the finest horror novel of the twentieth century. Shirley Jackson was herself known as the 'Virginia Witch' by her neighbours in Vermont.
Discussion questions
- The novel begins and ends with sentences about Hill House's wrongness. How does Jackson create dread through atmosphere and description rather than explicit supernatural events?
- Eleanor is the novel's emotional centre, and her fate is deeply ambiguous. Is the house haunting her, or is she haunting herself — or does the novel refuse this distinction?
- The group dynamic — the researchers, Theodora, the young man — slowly fragments. How does the house work on each character differently, and what does this suggest about what it feeds on?
- Jackson said the novel is about Eleanor's search for a home, not about ghosts. Does this reading satisfy you — and how does it change what the novel's horror means?
- The novel avoids explicit supernatural events for the most part. Is this restraint more or less effective than explicit horror — and can you find the moment where the restraint breaks?
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