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The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Classics)
The greatest haunted house story ever written—the inspiration for the hit Netflix horror series!
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years
First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
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Readers say *The Haunting of Hill House* is a masterful and atmospheric psychological horror classic, praised for its chilling setting and complex cha...
The Netflix Hill House series is one of my favourite so I wanted to read the inspiration. It was hard to read this without comparing, but ultimately I didn't enjoy it as much. It did have the spookies and the setting and the character. However, it felt a little flat and I didn't love the ending.
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House is a literary classic that may not live up to the hype for all readers. Much like a Rorschach test, you get out of it what you want.
I appreciated the short length, the minimal number of characters, and how the supernatural phenomena were left ambiguous. Modern books nowadays are long and overstuffed. They spoon-feed you what they are trying to tell you. They lack trust with their own readers. This book gave readers the freedom to interpret.
My personal theory? Eleanor was completely delusional. Even before she entered Hill House, she was already showing signs of clear mental distress. She had the most supernatural experiences inside the house. Hill House was never haunted; it was the mind of Eleanor who was haunted all along.
I hated Mrs. Montague and Arthur. They came way too late into the story. Also, wouldn’t new subjects entering a live experiment disrupt the experiment? Therefore, causing everyone to redo everything? Not very scientific. Also, by adding more characters into the haunted house, the less isolating it felt. The story was fine with just the four main characters. I researched online that Mrs. Montague and Arthur were meant to be symbolic caricatures and serve comic relief. Why did a gothic horror story need comic relief?
Eleanor was also very annoying and repetitive. I felt more disdain than sympathy towards her. Her constant repetition in mentioning her mother was less eerie and more redundant. It was sort of prophetic that I finished this book around the same time I finished watching Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story (2025). Ed Gein loosely inspired Norman Bates from Psycho (1960). Many don’t realize that the film was an adaptation of the novel in 1959. That’s the same year that this book was released! Both Norman Bates and Eleanor Vance were literary characters with mothers who haunted their minds. Personally, I viewed Norman Bates as the superior character.
Throughout the book, Shirley Jackson seemed less interested in developing the characters and more interested in developing the atmosphere. Hill House was a character in and of itself. Outside of Eleanor, everyone else was pretty underwhelming. The doctor rambled through long monologues trying to make the paranormal sound scientific. Luke was dull. Theo was interesting at first but got rude towards the end.
There was a lot of online chatter about Theo and Eleanor having a romantic attraction towards each other. The more I read about Shirley Jackson, the more obvious that Eleanor was a self-insertion. Eleanor had depression, like Shirley. Eleanor had a disapproving mother, like Shirley. Eleanor attempted suicide, like Shirley. So I am trying to say that if Eleanor was truly meant to be a lesbian, wouldn’t Shirley? There is no conclusive evidence that Shirley Jackson was a lesbian. This goes back to the book’s overall ambiguity. It leads the reader to speculate and interpret everything.
My personal theory? Eleanor desired Theo not as a romantic partner but as a familial sister. Eleanor clearly disliked her own sister and throughout the book treated Hill House as her imaginary home and the others as her imaginary family. In the Netflix series adaptation, Eleanor and Theo actually were sisters! It’s hard to prove or disprove any theory because everything was so vague.
This book was ahead of its time. I cannot deny its literary significance. I liked it to an extent. It just did not necessarily rank as one of the greatest.
I appreciated the short length, the minimal number of characters, and how the supernatural phenomena were left ambiguous. Modern books nowadays are long and overstuffed. They spoon-feed you what they are trying to tell you. They lack trust with their own readers. This book gave readers the freedom to interpret.
My personal theory? Eleanor was completely delusional. Even before she entered Hill House, she was already showing signs of clear mental distress. She had the most supernatural experiences inside the house. Hill House was never haunted; it was the mind of Eleanor who was haunted all along.
I hated Mrs. Montague and Arthur. They came way too late into the story. Also, wouldn’t new subjects entering a live experiment disrupt the experiment? Therefore, causing everyone to redo everything? Not very scientific. Also, by adding more characters into the haunted house, the less isolating it felt. The story was fine with just the four main characters. I researched online that Mrs. Montague and Arthur were meant to be symbolic caricatures and serve comic relief. Why did a gothic horror story need comic relief?
Eleanor was also very annoying and repetitive. I felt more disdain than sympathy towards her. Her constant repetition in mentioning her mother was less eerie and more redundant. It was sort of prophetic that I finished this book around the same time I finished watching Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story (2025). Ed Gein loosely inspired Norman Bates from Psycho (1960). Many don’t realize that the film was an adaptation of the novel in 1959. That’s the same year that this book was released! Both Norman Bates and Eleanor Vance were literary characters with mothers who haunted their minds. Personally, I viewed Norman Bates as the superior character.
Throughout the book, Shirley Jackson seemed less interested in developing the characters and more interested in developing the atmosphere. Hill House was a character in and of itself. Outside of Eleanor, everyone else was pretty underwhelming. The doctor rambled through long monologues trying to make the paranormal sound scientific. Luke was dull. Theo was interesting at first but got rude towards the end.
There was a lot of online chatter about Theo and Eleanor having a romantic attraction towards each other. The more I read about Shirley Jackson, the more obvious that Eleanor was a self-insertion. Eleanor had depression, like Shirley. Eleanor had a disapproving mother, like Shirley. Eleanor attempted suicide, like Shirley. So I am trying to say that if Eleanor was truly meant to be a lesbian, wouldn’t Shirley? There is no conclusive evidence that Shirley Jackson was a lesbian. This goes back to the book’s overall ambiguity. It leads the reader to speculate and interpret everything.
My personal theory? Eleanor desired Theo not as a romantic partner but as a familial sister. Eleanor clearly disliked her own sister and throughout the book treated Hill House as her imaginary home and the others as her imaginary family. In the Netflix series adaptation, Eleanor and Theo actually were sisters! It’s hard to prove or disprove any theory because everything was so vague.
This book was ahead of its time. I cannot deny its literary significance. I liked it to an extent. It just did not necessarily rank as one of the greatest.
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