Mit eget, lille sted: Det hjemsøgte hus i Shirley Jacksons The Haunting of Hill House og We Have Always Lived in the Castle

My Own, Little Place: The haunted house in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle Following the Covid-19-quarantines, as well as the rise of the alt-right, the home, domesticity, and the way both relate to women have once again become a topic of political and social discourse. Concurrently, Gothic twentieth century author Shirley Jackson is experiencing an international revival and reexamination. Among her most prominent works are The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, both Gothic horror novels that explore the literary motif of the haunted house. In this paper, I examine the depiction of the ambiguous role of domesticity in women’s lives, and the way in which Jackson’s haunted houses portray the home as simultaneously confining and liberating. I start by studying the way in which Gothic fiction—especially the Female Gothic mode—since late the eighteenth century has used the haunted house-motif to represent the anxieties and desires of young women. I compare Jackson’s two novels to other examples of the Female Gothic from the genre’s literary history, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Through this comparative analysis I exemplify the ways in which the haunted house depicts the home as a paradoxical asylum: Equal parts refuge and imprisonment. I discuss the meaning of the haunted house. First, I argue against the common psychoanalytical approach wherein the haunted house is interpreted as psychological projection. Instead, I suggest a reading of the haunted house that is aware of its structural and ideological implications. Furthermore, I consider the meaning of “haunting”, taking my point of departure in Jacques Derrida’s hauntology. I argue that haunting is not merely a phenomena of the past, but also of the future. More importantly, it is an inquiry. My analysis concludes