LITERATURE: The Haunting of Hill House – Classic Show vs. Tell

Here’s how Jackson gives us Elinor, one of the main characters on her way driving up to meet the others at Hill House:

On the main road of one village she passed a vast house, pillared and walled, with shutters over the windows and a pair of stone lions guarding the steps, and she thought perhaps she might live there, dusting the lions each morning and patting their heads good night.  Time is beginning this morning in June, she assured herself, but it is a time that is strangely new and of itself; in these few seconds I have lived a lifetime in a house with two lions in front.  Every morning I swept the porch and dusted the lions, and every evening I patted their heads good night, and once a week I washed their faces and manes and paws with warm water and soda and cleaned between their teeth with a swab.  Inside the house the rooms were tall and clear with shining floors and polished windows.  A little dainty old lady took care of me, moving starchily with a silver tea service on a tray and bringing me a glass of elderberry wine each evening for my health’s sake.  (…) People bowed to me on the streets of the town because everyone was very proud of my lions.  When I died… (p. 18)

What Jackson is showing is not the house itself–at least not that we can tell thus far into the story or would suspect–but rather, Elinor.  Elinor in her fantasy world that she must need desperately and sees within her reach now that she has escaped the reality of her life by taking the initiative of making this secret journey.  Behind her she has left a sister who wouldn’t let her use the car she’s had to sneak away to take.  A mother who finally released her from nursing responsibilities by her death after many years.  This is Elinor and where her imagination takes her.  This is the character that Jackson is revealing to us in the most intimate way.