Hill+House+Historicism

//The Haunting of Hill House// a New Historicist perspective

Opening activity Debrief on the chapters. Any questions? Clarifications? Any ideas of what might happen? Discussion of what was happening in the 1950s.

Articles: -Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Stories (just [|Bernice M. Murphy, ed.,]   **//[|Shirley Jackson: Essays on a Literary Legacy])//** use this: http://irishgothichorrorjournal.homestead.com/bookreview.html#anchor_54 -The Good Old Days (first three pages) http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:vaj2zVvaiP8J:www.chatham.edu/PTI/PDF/Tolliver99.pdf+social+issues+of+the+1950s&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us -Individuation and Character Development in the Fiction of Shirley Jackson http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=LitRC&userGroupName=litt24484&tabID=T001&searchId=R2&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=1&contentSet=GALE%7CH1420078271&&docId=GALE|H1420078271&docType=GALE

I hope those work.

Summary Response: Sarah Cheney Ackerman American Literature Honors 28 April 2008 What //The Haunting of Hill House// says about family life in the 1950s //The Haunting of Hill House// is a novel by Shirley Jackson that is about a psychologist who is very interested in the supernatural. He decides to conduct an experiment to see how different people react when they live in a haunted house. He invites two people to come and stay in this house for the summer: Eleanor Vance and Theodora. This story is about their experience with this house that is apparently haunted. Shirley Jackson, in her novel //The Haunting of Hill House//, argues that the “perfect family” of the 1950s is a hoax, but that American’s still strive for it as a comfort zone. In //Hill House//, Eleanor is the main focus of this abnormal family life. She is a mid-thirties woman who has taken the blame for the deaths of her parents on her own shoulders. Because of this abnormal family life, Eleanor turns to other sources for that “normal family” every American dreams of: “Eleanor …turns to the ghostly incarnation of Hugh Crain, the late master of Hill   House , for her father-lover” (Hoffman). She looks for a father in a ghost, and looks for the motherly comfort she misses in an inanimate object: Hill House itself: “[Eleanor]…exchanges the guilt surrounding the death of her mother for the ghostly womb that is Hill   House” (Hoffman). Since she lost the “normal family life” every person craves, Eleanor turns to outside sources to find it. Jackson argues that this family bond is superficial, and restricting: “during the whole underside of her life, ever since her first memory…Eleanor had held fast to the belief that someday something would happen” (Jackson 8). This “something” came in the form of an invitation from Dr. Montague to spend the summer at Hill House. Eleanor, like many Americans in the 1950s, “was not happy with traditional roles” (Tolliver 1). Jackson uses Eleanor to show that the average 1950s family was not happy with these roles, but that “  families of the fifties looked to marriage, parenthood and traditional gender roles for security” (Tolliver 2). Shirley Jackson argues that, in the 1950s, Americans hypocritically tried to forgo the American family while still hereditarily holding onto those traditional beliefs.

Discussion Questions: 1) How does Jackson portray/satire the American family? 2) How does Eleanor challenge the societal norms of the 1950s (i.e. stay-at-home mom, caretaker) 3) Relating to biographer, how does Eleanor reflect/oppose Jackson herself? 4) How does Eleanor's journey to Hill House represent the release that American Women in the 2950s tried to obtain? 5) What is Jackson trying to say about American's, beyond the belief that American's are unsatisfied with the perfect family? (i.e. bigger ideas dealing with hypocrisy, challenging the system, etc.)

Works Cited §    Hoffman, Steven K. "Individuation and Character Development in the Fiction of Shirley Jackson." __Hartford Studies in Literature__. 8.3 (1976) 190-208. **Rpt. in** __Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism__. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 187. Detroit: Gale, 2007. 190-208. __Literature Resource Center__. Gale. ARAPAHOE HIGH SCHOOL. 28 Apr. 2008 < http://go.galegroup.com/ps/start.do?p=LitRC&u=litt24484 >. §   Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies. //Books reviewed in Issue #1.// 28 Apr 2008. . §    Jackson, Shirley. //The Haunting of Hill House.// New York: The Viking Press, 1959. §   Tolliver, Renee C. //The good Old Days//. 28 Apr 2008. < http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:vaj2zVvaiP8J:www.chatham.edu/PTI/PDF/Tolliver99.pdf+social+issues+of+the+1950s&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us >.

Sarah Chn