Reference no: EM133443644

Assignment:

1. List some of the specific characteristics of Jackson's Hill House that Laura Miller highlights in her introduction. What makes this novel remarkable among ghost stories? What makes Eleanor Vance a unique protagonist for the supernatural tale? (pp. ix-x and elsewhere)
2. Explain in paraphrase Miller's point about this novel's central theme of the inescapable self-one's own unexpressed desires or stifled personality. How does Hill House serve as a potential symbol of this repressed self? What is the "real horror" of Hill House?
3. What sort of woman is Eleanor? How does her past at least partly explain her present character? What is tragic about the little old woman with the food declaring that she would pray for Eleanor?
4. Describe some of the fantasies Eleanor dreams up on the way to Hill House. What do these fantasy lives reveal about her character? What does Eleanor seem to want more than anything else? How does she tend to see the world?
5. Outline Eleanor's reaction to Hill House. What does she mean by saying the house is "vile"? How do the Dudley's affect her impression (and yours) of the house?
6. The narrator describes it as "not sane"; Eleanor calls it "vile"; Theodora calls it "filthy" and "rotten"; and Dr. Montague suggests that it's "disturbed," "leprous," and "sick." From the various descriptions of its history and appearance, its interior decorations and peculiar construction, what characteristics would you ascribe to Hill House? 
7. What does the notion of a house possessing all of these qualities assume about the supernatural, and how does Dr. Montague explain this belief during his story about the house?