Here is this strong presence who threatens to swallow her up, and in a way, when she walks in, a sort of Gothic romance is born. She's afraid of Hill House in the same way she'd be afraid of a lover. It's presented as being alive, as being almost a lover who "enshadows" Eleanor when she walks up those steps, and in that description you get not only a sense of the house itself, but a sense of Eleanor, of her loneliness and perhaps even madness. And yet.we somehow know it intimately nonetheless. I find it fascinating that Jackson describes the house for nearly two pages without ever physically describing it, other than to say it's "enormous and dark" and has steps leading up to a veranda. I'd forgotten just what a genius description of the Hill House we're treated to when Eleanor first sees it. The interaction in the diner is classic Shirley Jackson-capturing the suspicion and unease and boredom of small town life. Again, it takes a few pages to get there, but it allows for wonderful scenes where her imagination takes flight or where she interacts, awkwardly, with the townsfolk in the nearest small town. Then we follow Eleanor, the main character, as she takes the car she shares with her sister and drives to Hill House. A contemporary editor might have said: "Cut this out and get right to the story," but to me these opening pages are wonderful little character studies. I love the fact that the opening pages essentially replicate the clinical nature of the premise: here's the chief investigator, here are the three other characters, all described at a clinical remove before we get into the "story" itself. The premise is that of a science experiment-an academic exercise to test the reality of house-haunting. A contemporary editor might have said: "Cut this out and get right to the story," but to I'm falling in love with this book all over again as I re-read it.
I'm falling in love with this book all over again as I re-read it. When that doesn't work for her, what choice does she have but to give herself the same ending the companion had? (less) (hide spoiler)]
The house is then imbued with resentful repressed same-sex sexual interest, which inflicts itself on Eleanor - she picks up on the (not-so) subtle hints that Theodora has a lesbian partner (her "roommate") that she's fighting with, and thinks that her future will be following Theodora to her home and becoming her new lover. To me, the companion was the elder sister's lover and the younger sister didn't want to acknowledge that they had a familial relationship. But the younger sister doesn't see her as worthy of owning the house and harasses her until she ends up killing herself. The companion inherits the house when the elder sister dies. I don't know that anyone else mentioned that the elder Crain sister, a spinster, has a young woman from the village come and live with her.