Themes In Shirley Jackson's The Haunting Of Hill House

such as her isolation and unhappiness with her ‘husband.’ Jackson shows the flawed and even defected relationship between husband and wife in the 1950s through the portrayal of Margaret and her new husband. Life continues like this, and Margaret does not seem concerned about the new John or the whereabouts of actual husband, until one day when Margaret is alone at home with her children and suddenly decides that she can no longer bear “another afternoon of widowhood” (Stranger 64). Rather, she decides to spend the day shopping, buying presents for her family. Even in confusing times, she puts her family first. Once Margaret is done shopping, she is on her way home, driving in a taxi, when she discovers that she no longer knows where she lives

According to John Parks, “most of Jackson’s protagonists are emotionally violated and must struggle desperately to overcome their estrangement and dislocation. And most of them fail” (16). This sense of estrangement and dislocation is a direct effect of the wife’s underappreciated role at the home, the very home that serves as a prison to the wife. The story “The Haunting of Hill House” is one of a woman in her thirties, who devoted her youth caring selflessly for her elderly and ill mother. This devotion brought little to no fruit or appreciation of her service. Tirelessly giving made Eleanor, the protagonist, weary and discouraged. Eleanor dreams of being free and living the youth that she had in a sense, lost. Upon being invited to stay at the huge yet slightly formidable mansion, Hill House, Eleanor eagerly accepts. Taking the car, despite opposition from her sister and mother, she sets off for Hill House, driving for what seems to be an eternity, and enjoying her freedom at last. When she stops at a restaurant to eat, she overhears a family’s conversation. It is centered around a young child who is asking insistently for her “cup of stars” which the mother explains to the server is a sippy cup with stars on the bottom (Haunting 22). The child eventually is told to stop asking since her mother is unable to give to her the cup, which was left at home. Eleanor, overhearing all of this, leans toward the child and says, “Don’t do it… Insist on your cup of stars. Once they have trapped you into being like everybody else, you will never see your cup of stars again. Don’t do it” (Haunting 22). Eleanor