If you ask any group of horror film fans what fright flick gave them the most genuine goosebumps, one of the films they'll likely mention is the spooky classic The Haunting. As HORROR-WOOD'S Karin Wikoff shows, this film, that haunts all who view it, is really all about...
By Karin Wikoff
(Note: This article was originally intended for the November 1998 issue.)
The month of November is a bleak time. It's not so dismal as February, when you've been living through winter in these northern lands so long and it's still not over. Rather it is the very beginning of cold weather, gray and gloomy with the whole winter still to go, but no glorious snowy Yuletide days yet either. In this frame of mind, it is the right time to consider an exquisitely bleak movie like The Haunting, a movie in which nothing is black and white except the film.
Directed by Robert Wise in 1963, based on The Haunting Of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, The Haunting is the story of a group of researchers staying at a creepy mansion. They are headed by Professor Markway. He has chosen Eleanor and Theo for their associations with psychic phenomena in the past, and Luke is along for the ride to keep an eye out for the interests of the owner, his aunt, knowing someday Hill House will be his.
The movie begins with discordant chords, "off" like Hill House itself, and voice-over straight from the novel, describing a house that was "born bad," a house twisted by the man who built it to match his own twisted soul, lacking even one square angle. It has rooms and passages that shift around as in a nightmare, and doors which swing open and shut by themselves with a will of their own. This opening leads to one of many distorting shots by master director, Robert Wise, skewing the views of the house so as to make it look just as Shirley Jackson describes it: brooding, foreboding, warped and--haunted, by what, or for what reason, is never made clear. As the house comes into to our view, so too we hear the ominous words "Whatever walked there, walked alone."
Eleanor is the focus of this story and the focus of Hill House--or perhaps Hill House is the focus of Eleanor; one can't be sure. We learn more about her than any of the other central characters, either the living group of researchers or the dead former inhabitants of Hill House.
Eleanor, unlike the others at
Hill House, is not so much running away from something (though
she has a perfectly awful situation to run from); she's running
towards something. She doesn't
know what it is, but she's quite sure that "Finally,
something is happening" for her. Through this yearning for
somewhere to belong, she is drawn to Hill House, which, like a
hungry beast, willfully sucks her in.
 |
 |
| Author Shirley Jackson | The Haunted Source... |
Perhaps subconsciously Eleanor senses the similarities between her own life and the lives lived already in Hill House. One of the strongest of these parallels is the sisters, though this motif loses something in the translation to film. In the novel, Abigail Crane, daughter of the man who built the house, has a sister. Abigail fought with the sister over ownership of the house--not unlike the way Eleanor fights with her own sister over the ownership of their car. Eleanor's sister is a horrible controlling shrew of a woman, who treats Eleanor like a stupid child, and who spitefully plays on Eleanor's feelings of guilt over the death of their mother. It is to escape this suffocating sister that Eleanor takes the first independent steps in her life and accepts the invitation to Hill House. At Hill House, she finds Theo, who suggests that they can be "like sisters." It is just like Theo to make this two-sided suggestion--on the one hand offering what appears to be a long-awaited good, healthy, sisterly relationship, and on the other taking a mean stab at Eleanor, knowing what her real sister is like. Theo even takes the sister's role of gibing Eleanor to make her feel guilty about her mother's death. The idea of their "reflected life" is reinforced in a shot of their two wide-eyed faces side-by-side in a mirror.
One of Theo's remarks also points up the parallels in Eleanor's life with that of Abigail Crane's paid companion. Abigail Crane died when she beat her stick on the wall for the companion to come to her aid--but the companion was off trysting with her lover and didn't hear the old woman. Similarly, after selflessly spending years of her life caring for her feeble but demanding elderly mother, Eleanor is tired and doesn't get up when her mother bangs on the wall for her to come yet again. It turns out to be the final call for help, and her mother dies. Hence, Eleanor's guilt makes a tie between her life and those who lived before at Hill House.
A strong tension grows between Eleanor's natural fears and revulsion of Hill House and her strong opposing desire to stay and belong. Her initial instinctual reaction to Hill House is that it is vile and she should go away from it--but she reasons she has no where else to go. She first is drawn to the group of researchers, and her resistance to giving in to fear is countered by her desire to be part of the group. Her need to be wanted quickly resolves itself into attachments to both the manipulative and capricious Theo, and to the quietly kind Professor Markway. Eleanor will defy the House and her fear of it for these relationships.
Eleanor's crush on Professor Markway is obvious and understandable. Her great need for affection, the intimacy of their isolation, their companionship in their task and their mutual comfort in adversity make Eleanor easily susceptible to falling in love with at least one member of the group, and the gentle, understanding, almost fatherly Markway is a ready-made object for her attraction. One even senses a certain wistfulness on the part of Markway, as if he wishes he could return her affection, though he always stays within the gentlemanly boundaries of propriety.
The
dynamic of the relationship between Eleanor and Theo is a good
deal more complex and deserves more attention. One of the most
oft-debated issues of The Haunting is:
"Is she or isn't she -- a lesbian?" Certainly
homosexuality is an undercurrent running through the film, but
the answer isn't a straightforward yes or no. Eleanor doesn't
have a fully developed sense of sexuality, her own or anyone
else's. She is drawn towards intimate attachments to anyone who
is the least bit kind to her, but that doesn't make her a lesbian
or bisexual per se. Eleanor is in a state
of arrested development, somewhere in the just barely pre-sexual
phase. She's starting to get stirrings, but she isn't clear yet
what they mean. And it's all mixed up with her need to feel
welcome and wanted and loved.
Frequently, reviewers use the scene in which Eleanor calls Theo "unnatural" to "prove" that Eleanor thinks Theo is gay. I think Eleanor is referring to the Theo's ability to know other people's minds and hearts. Further, when she calls Theo a monster, she doesn't mean that Theo is a lesbian (and hence monstrous, in her supposed world-view). Eleanor is referring to Theo's cruel streak, not her sexuality. Theo uses her psychic powers to "know" other people's thoughts, but it doesn't bring her any closer to them. Instead, she uses that delicate information to make the most casual, cruel remarks. She is just plain nasty, and worse yet, she's nasty out of boredom. She hasn't learned the usual sort of social boundaries that stop people from saying nasty things; perhaps this is due to her ability to hear what others think together with her intelligence and lack of a sense of ethics. Theo is sexual with just about everyone, regardless of gender. It is part of her personality. She flirts with Eleanor, but with Markway and Luke as well. The whole combination makes her an incredibly selfish individual, playing games with other people's hearts to amuse herself in her boredom.
Theo playing one of her little games is the one who suggests to Eleanor early on that "The house wants you." But then Theo gets jealous of Eleanor for the attention she gets--both from the house and the other researchers. The scene in which Eleanor's name is chalked on a wall is a prime example. Eleanor is in a fine twist of emotions upon seeing her own name on the wall. She is horrified that the house knows her name, that Theo might be right that the house wants her. At the same time, she is semi-consciously thrilled to be the center of attention, especially from the concerned Markway. Intuiting Theo's nature, she suspects Theo may have done the writing on the wall herself as a prank. But Theo goes straight for the throat, voicing aloud in front of the others an assertion that Eleanor just wants attention. In a deft move, Markway diverts the cruelty of Theo's remarks by saying that Theo is just trying to get a rise out of her to help her get over her shock and fear.
Theo is a piece of work. As described here, it's hard to imagine having any sympathy for her at all -- she sounds like a nasty bitch. And she is. But she is also a lost soul, unable to connect normally to others because she sees too much of their true hearts. She also acts as a catalyst for much of the turmoil that goes on around her. She certainly stirs up Eleanor. What's growing between these characters is a love triangle with a fourth dimension--the House. Though Theo plants the seeds in Eleanor's mind that the House wants her to stay, Eleanor stays at first only to be with the other people. It is when being with the others doesn't work out that she considers other possibilities. Theo, who seemed like she'd be such a good friend and a kindly "sister," turns out to have a mean streak. Then Eleanor suffers a terrible shock when she learns that Professor Markway is married. In her anguish and disappointment over the people she had hoped to make a part of her life, she begins to turn instead to the House, which seems to want her so.
When Eleanor's erratic behavior comes to a near-fatal head on the shaky stairs in the library, Markway urges her to leave. He does so to protect her and out of concern for her as a woman he has come to care for more than he'll admit (though Theo knows his secret feelings and taunts him about it just as she taunts Eleanor). Theo sees that her teasing has led Eleanor to danger and, in one of her genuinely kind moments, steers her towards leaving. The failure of the others to understand her desperation over her unfulfilled need to be loved and wanted leads them to try to make her leave--which, in turn, makes her even more desperate to stay. At the same time, an opportunity presents itself for her to do something heroic. She decides to sacrifice herself in place of Mrs. Markway, whom the House seems to have swallowed up. All her hopes for affection crushed, and having no where else to go, giving in and giving herself up to the House becomes more and more attractive, until it becomes the "something" that finally happens to Eleanor.
The other big question about Eleanor is "Is she or isn't she--crazy. She's neurotic, but you get to see how she came to be that way. She has a meek disposition, and she has been boxed into a role all her life. She has no experience, no confidence and has never had a chance to gain any self-esteem. She is weak in many ways, and lacks the backbone to stand up for herself. Making a victim of herself is a role she's learned through her circumstances, and she can't be expected to be more like someone like Theo and just shake off all those years of taking everything submissively and suddenly become her own confident young woman. I keep wishing for her to find a way to make enough personal progress to escape her destiny.
She also has an active fantasy life, but who could blame her considering the shrew of a sister she had to live with? Her dream-life, with the little house with stone lions on the mantel, is her only refuge. She is susceptible to the influences of a mad house, a house which itself is not sane. Hill House, with its irregular angles that continuously throw the mind off, could easily unhinge any person, but especially vulnerable little Eleanor.
No, I do not think Eleanor was insane at the start, and I am not even convinced she was mad at the end. One can't blame her for not wanting to go back to live with that awful sister in a horrible, confining non-life. She takes the only path she can see--but the thought and impulse to drive into the tree is planted in her head by the accursed House. Her very last thoughts are of wondering why she is doing this, and when are they others are going to stop her--as if the house releases its grip on her mind at the last moment so she can die in torment.
In the end, it is Eleanor's voice telling us that "We, who walk at here, walk alone." She thinks she won't be frightened or alone anymore. But in her rush to be with others, she throws herself into a multi-planed Hell in which each tormented soul is left isolated from the others. She, too, is doomed to walk alone, for all eternity.
Thanks, Karin, for a shivery look at a truly scary film. If you've never seen this film before, you're in for a terrifying treat--just don't watch it alone. Or, The House may get you too...Cheers!
Article copyright Karin Wikoff
