Whatever walked there, walked alone

No one writes the horrors of alcoholism like someone who knows what it is to suffer it first hand, and Shirley Jackson, whose haunted mind gave birth to several masterpieces in her time, knew what it was to suffer that hell. Her novel The Haunting of Hill House is like a dramatization of one woman’s fast-forwarded progression through an intensifying addiction while stuck in the never ending house party that started and bears witness to the whole cycle. Hill House is a masterpiece on many levels. Jackson’s opening passage is mesmerizing in its philosophic musing and terrible foreboding:

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

This cryptic introduction to her story accomplishes a number of characteristics that make the house a fitting representation of addiction. It is a contained, lonely space - “not sane…by itself” - that exists outside the realm of reality as a result of the insanity that reality has driven it to. This much is implied: that nothing alive should be expected to uphold sanity at all times due to the unrelenting nature of existence. Alcohol serves the purpose of removing us from that harsh glare for a time, however long we choose that time to be. But it doesn’t erase reality, and it achieves a more sinister effect shared by the house, which harbors darkness and silence within its walls, creating a space in which “whatever walked there, walked alone.” In Hill House, and in the cycle of addiction, even surrounded by others in the same space, we always walk alone.

In the book, Eleanor Vance is one of a small number of people invited to be part of Dr. John Montague’s study at the Hill House, an uninhabited mansion rumored to be haunted and therefore deemed the perfect setting for his research. Not everyone invited attends, which is an important feature to note with a simple reflection: not everyone whose life circumstances would drive others to drinking chooses to use alcohol to cope. Most times, they find other means that can be helpful or damaging to different degrees, but not everyone has to be an alcoholic.

Eleanor, whose life has been consumed by the care for her ailing mother, jumps on the opportunity to escape the confines of her sister’s home where she’s been living since the death of her mother. She sees a chance to leave the unbearable sanity of her life for an experience she perceives as a sort of dream. The other guest, Theodora, also appears to be fleeing some state of disharmony in her personal life to take part in the study. These two carefully selected guests are psychically sensitive subjects whose uncommon encounters with the paranormal world give them a predisposition for engaging with the haunted nature of the house. Unlike Luke Sanderson and Dr. Montague, Eleanor and Theodora have this internal quality and life experience not shared by the general population; it sets them apart and makes them susceptible to the energy of the house, which is old and evil in a way that only Shirley Jackson’s houses can be. Their predisposition to the house’s influence reflects the fact that certain people, because of generational trauma or past experiences, feel more drawn to the addictive cycle of alcohol and its false promise of relief. Hill House offers the false promise of a home to these women who feel displaced from their current places of residence. Theodora even reflects, though somewhat humorously, “It’s the home I always dreamed of…a little hideaway where I can be alone with my thoughts.” She says this shortly after her arrival at the house, which both she and Eleanor acknowledge to be a bit dark and grim, a mood intensified by the caretaker Mrs. Dudley’s lurking presence and cold demeanor. Despite their misgivings, the two of them find solace and the feeling of home in each other’s company. Though the house feels other and strange, the women form a quick bond as “fellow babe[s] in the woods”, as Theodora notes. In their shared displacement, they have something that links them that is not the house. This connection is the comfort Eleanor has felt missing from her life, in which the only women she knows are the overbearing, energy-consuming mother and sister. In the brief time before the influence of the house infects her mind, Eleanor finds a spark of connection with Theodora, who understands her. I think we’ve all had people like that in our life even before we let alcohol step in and ruin that sense of connection. The potential for deeper connection and understanding was there, but because of our internal brokenness and chaotic anxiety, we couldn’t let ourselves cultivate it.

Eleanor has brought her crippling self-doubt with her. Even after her first night of bonding with her new comrades and with no reason for it, she wakes in her room at Hill House to the immediate thoughts: “What did I do; did I make a fool of myself? Were they laughing at me?” Her insecurities, born from a life of being belittled by her mother and sister, may ebb for times when in the company of her friends, but they return with full force she is on her own. Rather than living in true connection with her companions, Eleanor’s inner demons continue to disconnect her from the others because she carries with her every terrible feeling she tries to leave behind or blame on her past.

Though she is able to converse easily with the other members, the third person limited narrator reveals the intrusive thoughts that plague Eleanor and isolate her in her mind even in the company of her new friends. Their conversation moves easily between their current reality to fantasy realms in which Eleanor, Theodora and Luke play out imagined pasts and futures, making the witty game of pretend something they pick up and put aside as easily as a pen on paper. In this way, though they bond, they don’t delve into each other’s true pasts. Their relationships are based on the easy camaraderie of pretend and their shared experience in the house. Likewise with drinking, we can fail to establish true connections since our sense of connections with others in our company feeds on the illusion of connection that drinking lends us as well as on the shared experience of drinking together.

Despite her initial, innocent sense of love for Theodora and her romantic perception of Luke, Eleanor begins to drift from them as her sense of connection with the house intensifies. Despite her desire for Theodora’s friendship and approval, she finds herself at odds with her companion over small offenses. “Fear and guilt are sisters,” Jackson writes in a passage in which Eleanor and Theodora, having fought with each other, storm away from the house together. I love the passage in which Jackson describes their discontent:

Silent, angry, hurt, they left Hill House side by side, walking together, each sorry for the other. A person angry; or laughing, or terrified, or jealous, will go stubbornly on into extremes of behavior impossible at another time; neither Eleanor nor Theodora reflected for a minute that it was imprudent for them to walk far from Hill House after dark. Each was so bent upon her own despair that escape into darkness was vital, and, containing themselves in that tight, vulnerable, impossible cloak which is fury, they stamped along together, each achingly aware of the other, each determined to be the last to speak.

When I was in my worst places of hurt, feeling myself misunderstood and victimized, I chose against all better judgment to cling to that belief in my own fear of rejection and my blame of other parties for my pain. In that mindset, I continued along the same cycle that contributed to whatever pain that was - disconnection always at the crux of it. It seems ludicrous, but it was almost a survival tactic at the time since in the dark spaces of my addictive mindset, I didn’t see any other possible means of facing the actual reality. Like Eleanor, I contained myself and walked imprudently from dark into darker, clutching at that cloak of despair. From an outside perspective, this mindset looks incredibly selfish and extreme, but it’s seemingly necessary under the circumstances. Disconnected from a true source of comfort, we retreat steadfastly in an effort to regain a sense of security, not realizing the distance we regress in doing so because it is all so dark. Guilt and fear are sisters in this dark place, each feeding the other. Fear of vulnerability and rejection and guilt in the lurking reality that we have caused all this; without proper light we can’t tell which is the shadow of the other.

Alcohol doesn’t blame or reject; neither are side effects listed on the bottles, which promise instead to remove us from the “conditions of absolute reality” that have become unnavigable to us. Alcohol seems to quiet those sister voices for a time; however, it’s really just keeping us oblivious to their growing power by pulling the cloak over our heads for a brief respite. We can’t ignore things away, just as Eleanor can’t escape herself or her discord with Theodora by walking into the dark. Even in the darkness without the bright light of day to show her, Eleanor has brought the same self and the same issues with her.

As Eleanor internally withdraws from her connections with the others, the house seems to step in to fill the void of human connection in her mind. When Luke finds and shows the others a message scrawled in large chalk letters in one of the halls, Eleanor begins to sense a deeper chasm between herself and the others. No one of the four members can account for their finding: “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME”, and though Eleanor desperately asks which of them has written it, part of her knows that the house senses something in her that the others do not share: “I am outside, she thought madly, I am the one chosen.” She intuits that she occupies a place outside the shared connection the others have; therefore, she is the likeliest to attract the knowing kinship of the house’s spirit. The same message returns later following a horrific incident in which Theodora’s clothes are found drenched in red paint that looks like a bloody massacre. This time the letters appear in the same bloody shade inexplicably found on the young woman’s belongings: “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME ELEANOR [is] written in shaky red letters on the wallpaper over Theodora’s bed.” Though the delivery is mysterious, even sinister, the content of the messages promises something that Eleanor has longed for this entire time: the comfort of home and the opportunity to be of service. Eleanor feels out of place in her reality, both at her sister’s house and among the fellow visitors to Hill House; however, the house seems to need her and want her in a way that she has not let herself feel wanted otherwise.

Her thoughts, to which we are privy, reveal increasing distance between her and the other people present. As the four of them regroup in the living room after seeing the second message, Eleanor entertains a disturbing dialogue about Theodora in her mind: “I would like to hit her with a stick, Eleanor thought, looking down on Theodora’s head beside her chair; I would like to batter her with rocks….I hate her, Eleanor thought, she sickens me; she is all washed and clean and wearing my red sweater.” Even when Theodora apologizes for having thought Eleanor responsible for destroying her clothes, Eleanor’s response reveals the disjointed nature of her connection with the other woman: “I would like to watch her dying, Eleanor thought, and smiled back and said, ‘Don’t be silly.’.” Her verbal communication with the others no longer reflects her inner reality as she tries to maintain an appearance that she thinks is appropriate for the setting despite the intense disconnect she feels. I’ve never wished others dead or bashed with sticks, but I can relate to the experience of saying what I believe is right even when it directly opposes the words in my head. In that kind of communication, I wasn’t really connecting and failing to let others connect with me. The more Eleanor lives in her unspoken thoughts, the further she drifts from the others present with her.

To her credit, Eleanor does make an attempt to communicate how she feels, but she does so in a disconnected, almost unaware sort of way. Here’s a couple passages from her efforts to explain herself in this same scene:

“I was wondering earlier…I thought I was altogether calm, and yet now I know I was terribly afraid...When I am afraid, I can see perfectly the sensible, beautiful not-afraid side of the world, I can see chairs and tables and windows staying the same, not affected in the least, and I can see things like the careful woven texture of the carpet, not even moving. But when I am afraid I no longer exist in any relation to these things. I suppose because things are not afraid…I am always afraid of being alone…Those letters spelled out my name, and none of you know what that feels like-it’s so familiar… I hate seeing myself dissolve and slip and separate so that I’m living in one half, my mind, and I see the other half of me helpless and frantic and driven and I can’t stop it, but I know I’m not really going to be hurt and yet time is so long and even a second goes on and on and I could stand any of it if I could only surrender.”

The others look at her like she’s crazy and repeat that word “surrender” as though she’s said something wrong. Their response seems to break Eleanor’s reverie, and she can’t even seem to recall what she’s said, though I think the words have come from her deepest state of consciousness. This is how she really feels, and she is trying to let them understand her fear and the disconnected state of her mind and body. She does not feel connected when fear dominates her mind, because fear makes her feel like the only one. Fear tells her that she is alone in her experience, that nothing and noone else in the world knows what it is to be afraid in this way. This dialogue is also tragic because it reveals that Eleanor sees how her mind is divided from the self she presents to the others. She knows how deeply disconnected she is, and she hates to see it. She is voicing the horrible feeling we have when we know we are different in the way we use alcohol or another addiction.

We too have this sense that none of our peers really knows what it is to live in fear the way we do. Fear of time itself slipping by and seeming only bearable if we surrender something in ourselves. I think that “surrender” - thought met with questioning by Dr. Montague and Luke - is the best word choice here. Eleanor feels that she has to surrender herself in order to endure the incessant anxiety of living with her fear. On some level, she is right. Tragically though, she doesn’t realize that surrendering to Hill House is not the surrender that will free her. Hill House embodies her personal hell in the same way alcohol holds ours. Silent and structured, it holds the pent up chaos of darkness and isolation in its labyrinthine rooms. It promises home when it is really just the structure of a house shut off by hills. It cannot sit with itself or live in sanity; it only comes alive in its darkness when someone with Eleanor’s disposition begins to surrender to its magnetic pull. Though it promises a haven from reality and creates an illusion of connection, alcohol too holds latent chaos in its makeup. That disorder comes alive when fear and desperation drives us to seek home in the wrong place. We surrender to alcohol because it is there, and because it is a thing we can hold and so can believe is in our power to control. When all these things that Eleanor speaks of that don’t feel fear look as though they exist on a different plane than ours, alcohol blurs the distinction between that plane and ours. We’re able to believe for a short time that we’re alright, that we too have nothing to fear because the helpless, frantic self quiets down.

The surrender we fail to see in this frantic mindset is a surrender to our higher power, to God. Surrendering ourselves to God doesn’t mean sitting back and letting Him take care of everything, though that would be nice. In war terms, surrender often receives a negative connotation since it admits defeat. But surrender is a choice to stop fighting a force greater than us, to admit our powerlessness and cede agency over our lives in the things that matter. It means accepting a plan greater than our capacity to discern and choosing to seek conscious connection with Him and the world of creation. Surrender of this kind comes when we realize that the power we have been fighting against is greater than we ever could have imagined, and though the experience of surrender is terrifying and difficult, it results in an alignment with that power rather than defeat.

Eleanor feels pushed away by the people she most deeply wants connection with: her mother, her sister, Theodora even. So the voices in her head tell her that they’re the enemy. She feels inferior and used in these relationships, and she has let these feelings go unspoken despite the persistent voices in her mind that tell her she is the victim. Not voicing our feelings of hurt perpetuates the resentment of feeling used; that resentment, or feeling again and again, builds disconnection and needs relief in something. Because Eleanor is unable to come to terms with her place in her resentments, she feels that connection with others is impossible. Though she senses the disjointed nature of the voice in her mind, she also feels that this voice is the only true voice she knows. The house, as she has noted to her comrades, knows her in a familiar way when it calls her by name to come home. Though disturbing and unnatural, it is also welcoming.

When Mrs. Montague, the pompous parapsychologist wife of the doctor, arrives to help with the ongoing research; she brings her planchette into use on their first night together. The planchette, a writing device believed to channel the voice of supernatural presences, responds to her question of “Who are you?” with “Nell” - the pet name Theodora often gives Eleanor. As she continues speaking with “Nell” via planchette, Mrs. Montague asks questions of motive and identity, discovering that the supposed spirit speaking with her not only identifies with Nell but wants “home”, a word repeated over and over in its responses.

Eleanor really does only want to be home, though she does not know where that would be for her. Even as the voice in her mind continues to maintain hostility to Theodora, Eleanor ventures to ask if she can return home with her new friend when they leave Hill House. Theo, taken aback by the request, at first politely turns her down and ultimately asks in exasperation if Nell always goes where she is unwanted, to which Eleanor responds, “I’ve never been wanted anywhere.” This whole conversation reveals that Eleanor has a warped view of herself in the world. Because of her built up resentments against her family, she does not feel wanted or loved. Because of her shared experience with Theodora, she latches onto the hope that she will find the connection she wants with her, whom she has only known for a few days before asking to go home with her. It seems childish of her, but it’s not much different from the connections we think we find at bars or other rivers in which alcohol fuels this hope for something deeper and lasting.

Eleanor doesn’t find the connection she seeks in her companions, so she finds increasing comfort rather than fear in the perceived attention she receives from the house. The house sends her messages and channels her desires in planchette, and Eleanor even believes she hears lines from a song sung only to her: “None of them heard it, she thought with joy; nobody heard it but me.” Rather than feeling victimized, she feels chosen. She even begins hiding from the others in a following scene, running through the house as she hears them calling for her. She is delighted by the fact that she can hear everything in the house and use this to her advantage in keeping herself hidden from them. When they do find her, she experiences a strange disconnect and cannot place their identity for a minute. Eleanor’s self-imposed isolation and unclear perception of her connection to the others reflects the disconnect we impose upon ourselves in our drinking. We think we can hide ourselves - our brokenness and self medicating - from everyone and feel that they don’t really know us anyway. We can see them, but they can’t see us. But this thinking stems from a hurt mind that has only been further traumatized by our blundering attempts to fix it. Like Eleanor, we find ourselves in a precarious place and can’t even rationalize how we reached it. Eleanor, having climbed a dangerous staircase in her confused game of hide-and-seek, allows Luke to help her down at the insistence of the others, who beg her to just “Do what Luke tells you.” This instruction is one Eleanor doesn’t want to listen to, and one which anyone addicted to a substance someone is advising against can relate to. It’s also one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever received: “Just do what everyone tells you.” That came from a man God brought into my life at a time and place I needed help, and I’ve remembered it every day since that day back in January. I’m not perfect, but when I’m able to act on the advice from people I trust and respect in recovery, I make progress. That’s part of surrendering: being able to cede our control and listen to the words of those who are trying to help us. Eleanor feels that this advice is coming from people who don’t have her best interests in mind, and that is because she believes that the house is her only hope of a home.

The others, fearing Eleanor’s safety and sanity, and at breakfast the next day they enact an intervention-esque scene in which they inform Eleanor that they have arranged for her to leave. Desperate to stay, Eleanor cries that she has nowhere to go, no home to return to. She protests to the last even as they pack for her and escort her to her car, telling Dr. Montague that “the house wants me to stay.” Eleanor’s protests reveal her inability to truly surrender. She fights their help, and even when she settles into her car at their bidding, she puts herself into a position of driving her life again. In the course of about a week, Eleanor feels that she has conquered her fear in connecting with the house; she no longer feels that she has nowhere to go, but she now faces the terrible reality that the others will not let her stay in this place that wants her and where she finally belongs. What the others see as a frighteningly quick seduction of her mind by the house, Eleanor views as the connection and home she has always wanted. She cannot fathom a life outside the house, and even as she puts the car into gear to roll away from the house, her thoughts convince her that she is not really leaving and doesn’t ever have to leave. Without consciously articulating her intentions, she accelerates, gripping the wheel of her life in a final attempt to remain in the familiar connection she perceives in the house. This desperation, influenced by the house, drives her motions, even as she feels that she is the one making the decisions. She finds brief comfort in the fact that they cannot stop her this time, but even as she seals her fate, her true character voices a final desire to live and to receive the help she is running from: “In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don’t they stop me?” Eleanor’s broken mind tells her that death is the only way to stay with the house, but she doesn’t really want to die. She doesn’t understand why she is choosing death in the end, even though the others cannot perceive her unspoken final questions.

In addiction, our choices are much like this. We look as though we are killing ourselves for something so insane and easy to put down, but the tides that pull us in this behavior run much deeper than they look. Often, we want to listen to the loved ones who advise us to get help, to seek professional services, to take time off from the drug that is killing us, but the crippling fear of losing the one comfort we’re sure of drives our cars while we’re still in active addiction, and it’s not a safe car to ride in even when we’re in the driver seat. Especially when we’re in the driver seat. We may look as though we’re hiding in order to get away with something and deliberately hurt people, but it’s a survival tactic we deem necessary to maintain the one form of connection we have that feels strong. We’ve broken and abused our true connections, even if we fail to see our part in it clearly, so the one thing left to us is the temporary relief that is at least consistent and known.

The voice in Eleanor’s mind that questions her impulsive, destructive final act is the one that has been clinging onto the connections she sees possible with other people. She does want to live and to have a home with someone who loves her, but that dream feels like such an unachievable dream that the little voice begging to be heard has been drowned by the voice with more substantial reason to listen to. The house has told her she is welcome and wanted there, and while Eleanor lives in the house she cannot see any other possibility for her. Only when she drives away from the house - albeit intending to be with the house forever through her death - does the other voice finally make itself heard. It doesn’t have answers for her, but it at least questions the certainty she has come to while under the influence of the house. In addiction, we need to be removed from the physical and mental effects of our substance in order to find clarity. Still in the cycle, we’re desperately trying to preserve the illusion of belonging and connection we have, even if we know we’re driving toward destruction in doing so.

The final passage of the novel mirrors the opening passage in its description of Hill House word for word. The repetition here emphasizes the fact that although these particular characters have concluded their experiences with Hill House, the spirit of the house endures and will continue to live on so long as there are people drawn to it and whose stories are entwined in its history. Similarly, addiction doesn’t just end for any of us. Theodora may have returned home to her friend, their undefined conflict resolved in her absence, but she lives with the traumatic memory of her time in Hill House and with the knowledge that the threat that is alive in that house still exists. It’s the same for us; we may not go every day reflecting on the nature of our addiction or connection to it, but that makes it no less real and threatening as ever. Generations may pass before it becomes an undeniable terror again. So long as conditions of absolute reality remain trying, escapes from the distress of daily life will always beckon, some more harmful than others. Surrender involves accepting the discomfort along with the blessings of our lives as parts of a larger plan that we have the capacity to understand. If we refuse to surrender to our higher power through acceptance and gratitude, addictions appear the only attainable means of coping with our lives. And in those addictions, whatever walks there will always walk alone.