The Haunting of Hill House (2)

In the book, The Haunting of Hill House, we see a huge theme of family through the text. We come to notice that all four of main characters in the story have quite a broken family background, and this especially goes to Eleanor. Eleanor's father had passed away when she was a young child and she spent most of her 20's taking care of her mother up until she died. In the end all she was left with was a sister who cared more about a car than Eleanor. As for the other characters, Luke never had a mother, Theodora's family is never once mentioned, and as for Doctor Montague, well his wife and him just don't seem that compatible. Still, it is Eleanor that appears to be troubled about this issue the most, especially since she has this guilt bottled in her that she was the reason that her mother died (156). Thus, through the progression of the text it seems as though the house is slowly possessing Eleanor, as it appears that she begins to become one with the house. This is shown through her ability to hear what the others are doing without even being in the same area as them (152). As this goes on Eleanor becomes more and more attached to Hill House and she sees it as her real home and that Luke, Theo, and the Doctor have become her family. Thus, when she is forced to leave Hill House, due to the fear of her safety, she goes as far as killing herself by crashing her car into a giant tree next to the house. This causes me to wonder if during the whole book she was actually a ghost that is reliving the events of her life that she had spent at Hill House before her death, since this was the place she is most attached to. For, this would explain her ability to hear everything so clearly through the entire house.