The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
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pg. 233
pg. 233
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I love that Shirley Jackson's text is the border of two of these gifs :)
reblog this post on tumblr - from pp. 66-67
In the book, Theo was "whipped", but other than that, this part is the same.
No Human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. pp. 30
O Mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love’s coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
Journeys end in lovers’ meeting-
Every wise man’s son doth know.
This phrase was quoted A LOT in the book, mostly by Nell. I'm still reading the book, but when I'm done I will edit this post and tell you how many times it was said, in some variation.
Edit: I counted 13 times. 16 times on 2nd reread with audiobook.
From the introduction of my edition:
"When Eleanor finally agrees to surrender to Hill House, to bury herself in its "folds of velvet and tassels and purple plush," it is her mother she goes chasing ("You're here somewhere") through the dark halls and up the treacherous library ladder. The "lovers meeting" she has spent the whole novel humming about materializes as a return to the womb that is also a grave, To anyone who has, like Jackson, labored mightily to transcend her parents' mistakes and shortcomings, the horror underlying Eleanor's full-circle journey is real as well as ghostly. It is the recognition that the harder you try to escape the emotional dynamics of your family of origin, the more likely you are to duplicate them. It feels like fate, like doom, but is it?" pp. xxvi-xxvii
"Theo's sexuality is ambiguous; she lives with a "friend" to whom she is not married and whose gender remains coyly unspecified. At times, Eleanor's crush on Luke seems like Jackson's way of asserting that her attachment to Theo isn't erotic, and Theo's possible lesbianism is a way to state that her rivalry with Eleanor isn't over Luke." pp. xxv
Luke is a liar and a thief, but he isn't a drug addict. He also isn't related to Nell and Theo (who are cousins in a strange coincidence). Luke's last name is Sanderson, and he is the heir of Hill House.
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and whatever walked there walked alone
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we're all stories in the end
Also in the book, there are a lot of references to the "game room". (See full post here). There is no red room in the book, but there is a blue room and a green room.
There are also a couple references to the nursery.
"I believe the nursery is one sort of disturbance" - pp. 170
reblog this post on tumblr - pp. 206-207
This creepy poem was in the book too. Luke recites it haha.
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"I will have to drink this coffee because I said I was going to, Eleanor told herself sternly..." pp. 20-21
See my larger V Pedretti post.
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"Fear is the relinquishment of logic" - pp. 149
The "who was holding my hand?" scene does happen but it was with Theo and Eleanor. (pp. 153) (There is no Shirley character in the book).
"Fear and guilt are sisters" - pp. 162
the whole "locked door" scene - pp. 189
"In the night...in the dark." pp. 40
This is in Chapter Five, on page 136.
"I am home...and stopped in wonder at the thought. I am home, I am home...; now to climb". pp. 219
I really like, when Steve says this line, there is a cut to the spiral staircase. A lot of the screenplay is in the book (cup of stars, lovers meeting, guilt and fear are sisters, the lovely crash, The Gratten Murders poem), but the big difference is that the book feels very choppy and disjointed. Sort of like Shirley Jackson had all these great ideas, but needed to develop them more. The Netflix show beautifully interweaves characters, the history of the Crain family and a bit of the Hills’ family tree, and gives the Dudleys a story as to why they leave at dark. In a way, I feel like the Netflix show humanized these characters. In the book, Nel is like "a longing, wistful Ophelia princess", and Theo is the sardonic-but-warm-beneath-the-surface type. And not much is given to Luke. Mrs. Dudley pretty much says one thing, "I leave after 2 pm."
Some things are similar though. Theo is ambiguously lesbian, Nel wants to have picnics and nobody wants to have them with her (in the show, she wants to have a tea party). Luke is a liar and a thief. Nel has mommy issues in the book too. Hugh Crain is in the book, but he is part of the historical family that lived in the house with the two daughters who grew to hate each other (maybe like Poppy and Hazel Hill?)
Nel doesn't die by hanging in the book. She almost dies on the spiral staircase, but Luke saves her, only for her to, later in the chapter, crash her car into a tree.
"Climbing the narrow iron stairway was intoxicating - going higher and higher, around and around, looking down, clinging to the slim iron railing, looking far far down on to the stone floor." pp. 220
Nellie is kind of like this though the entire book, and the house makes her a lot worse really fast. I don't understand why the psychologist, Dr. Montague, said that no one could leave with Nellie. I get that he realized the house was toxic for her, and that she had to forget this whole experience to become uncorrupted, But why couldn't anyone go with her to make sure she got out of there okay?
Letting her out of the house alone when she just tried to kill herself on the staircase didn't make sense. Especially since she told them that she had no home to go back to, that she lied about having an apartment, and that she had stolen her sister's car.
They don't even say if anyone found her body. Nellie/Eleanor had to die - Shirley Jackson meant for her to die - but the Netflix show deals with her downward spiral and dealth a lot more sensitively. And the whole time-traveling inter-generational haunting thing is really fascinating.
An exact quote from page 37.
The book I'm reading is the Penguin Deluxe classic, but I can't find this edition on amazon right now.
The audiobook from audible.
It isn't bad. It definitely helps me. The book is really repetitive, so I do tend to get bored.
I've been watching the series again. I might skip the third episode because it deals with CSA (Child Sexual Assault), and lately I've been triggered a lot.
This was an amazing miniseries, though, one of the best things Netflix has ever done.
If you see anymore graphics on tumblr with quotes from the book that I've missed please let me know :)
I do like Bly Manor a lot, but this series was absolute perfection.
Edit: in conclusion, I would tell someone to watch the Netflix show before reading the book, and to try to get the audiobook to read along with. The audiobook helped me so much. The book is extremely repetitive. The "journeys end and lovers meeting" thing is repeated 15 times (not including the reference to it in the introduction). Like, that is a lot.. When you're reading the book, at times, it's almost like you feel you've read the same page over and over again. Cup of stars, journeys end, I leave after dark....I read this book twice with the audiobook, and the second time I tried to read it as carefully as I could.
I've returned my audible audiobook, and I am not going to read this book again for a really long time (or ever lol).
Maybe at some point I will redo the gif quote part of this post - and try to find the other gifs for quotes that overlapped in the Netflix show and the book.
The Netflix show gave warmth and vulnerability to the characterization of Nell, and in the book she was really like a flightly princessy Ophelia-type.
But I am just glad I've finished this book and this post! This was my Penguin Deluxe Classic for the month of January :)