The Haunting versus Reality: The Uncanny in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House

Document Type : Original research papers

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Abstract

The question of reality in all forms of the Gothic has no specific answer.  A text is liable to several interpretations and the referent is not so clear in such narratives.  In The Haunting of Hill House, the incidents that take place in the house can be taken both as realities fostered on the protagonist through her supernatural relation to the evil house, or mere projections created through her mind abilities.  The aim of this study is twofold: both to illustrate the reality of the haunting, and this is through studying different forms of doubling and applying Sigmund Freud’s theory of the uncanny 'unheimlich' on the novel and, consequently, to determine the genre of the novel. Being a ghost story or not, this will be clear by the end after discussing the main issue in this study of the novel; who haunts the house.  If the protagonist is the target of the haunting, the story will be considered a ghost story.  But assuming that it is she who does the haunting, the story will be dealt with as a psychological gothic horror work by Jackson.

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