Arts, Faculty of
English, Department of
DSpace
UBCV
Payne, Anna
Master of Arts - MA
University of British Columbia
The settings of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House all take place in monstrous old buildings with horrendous pasts. The memories of Bly, Manderley, and Hill House are all haunted by the untimely deaths of past occupants, influencing each of the novels’ narrators to perceive the house itself is haunted. Because all three novels are ambiguous pertaining to the existence of the supernatural phenomena, criticism on the novels oscillates between reading the paranormal activity at face value, and in opposition, interpreting the paranormal activity as each of the narrators’ personal hauntings. These two differing interpretations split into countless other possible readings by debating why the house is haunted or why the narrators hallucinate the paranormal activity. This thesis joins the ongoing conversation through a psychoanalytical perspective and argues that the houses are not haunted, the narrators’ unconscious psyches are. It aims to examine how a lens of desire can help render visible possible readings that may have been overlooked when dealing with ambiguity in literature. While each of the thesis’s three chapters focuses on different novels, all three chapters come together to convey the same message; desire reveals a narrator’s disconnect from reality. The first chapter illustrates how the unnamed governess’s desire for her employer causes her to hallucinate apparitions in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The second chapter examines how the unnamed narrator’s desire for an identity is tied to her elaborate fantasy spaces in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. The third and final chapter assesses how Eleanor’s desire to belong in a familial structure in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House leads her to believe that Hill House is haunted by supernatural phenomena. Together, these three chapters exemplify how desire can be used as a lens to uncover what is actually happening in each narrative.
Haunted by Desire: Hallucinations and Fantasy Spaces in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House by Anna Payne B.A., The University of Washington, 2021 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (English) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2023 ©Anna Payne, 2023 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the thesis entitled: Haunted by Desire: Hallucinations and Fantasy Spaces in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House submitted by Anna Payne in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts . in English . Examining Committee: Dr. Sandra Tomc, Professor, English, The University of British Columbia . Supervisor Dr. Miranda Burgess, Associate Professor, English, The University of British Columbia . Supervisory Committee Member iii Abstract The settings of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House all take place in monstrous old buildings with horrendous pasts. The memories of Bly, Manderley, and Hill House are all haunted by the untimely deaths of past occupants, influencing each of the novels’ narrators to perceive the house itself is haunted. Because all three novels are ambiguous pertaining to the existence of the supernatural phenomena, criticism on the novels oscillates between reading the paranormal activity at face value, and in opposition, interpreting the paranormal activity as each of the narrators’ personal hauntings. These two differing interpretations split into countless other possible readings by debating why the house is haunted or why the narrators hallucinate the paranormal activity. This thesis joins the ongoing conversation through a psychoanalytical perspective and argues that the houses are not haunted, the narrators’ unconscious psyches are. It aims to examine how a lens of desire can help render visible possible readings that may have been overlooked when dealing with ambiguity in literature. While each of the thesis’s three chapters focuses on different novels, all three chapters come together to convey the same message; desire reveals a narrator’s disconnect from reality. The first chapter illustrates how the unnamed governess’s desire for her employer causes her to hallucinate apparitions in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The second chapter examines how the unnamed narrator’s desire for an identity is tied to her elaborate fantasy spaces in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. The third and final chapter assesses how Eleanor’s desire to belong in a familial structure in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House leads her to believe that Hill House is haunted by supernatural phenomena. Together, these three chapters exemplify how desire can be used as a lens to uncover what is actually happening in each narrative. iv Lay Summary This project explains that houses are not haunted, people are. Through analyzing Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw, Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, and Shirley Jackson’s novella The Haunting of Hill House, this thesis argues that all of the paranormal activity in the narratives is fabricated by the narrators’ unconscious psyches. This is accomplished by looking through a lens of desire and observing how each of the narrators’ personal desire is connected to the appearances of apparitions, supernatural phenomena, and fantasy spaces in all three novels. Thus, this thesis is interested in how a lens of desire can help reveal possible readings that may have been previously overlooked, and further argues that a lens of desire can be helpful in interpreting literature moving forward. v Preface This thesis is original, unpublished, independent work by the author, Anna Payne. vi Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………...iii Lay Summary………………………………...…………………………………………………...iv Preface……………………………………………………………………………………………..v Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………vi Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………vii Dedication……………………………………………………………………………………….viii Introduction……………………………..……………………..…………………………………..1 Chapter 1: Desirous Hallucinations in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw……………………8 1.1 The Prologue of The Turn of the Screw and Desire…………………………………...9 1.2 Peter Quint’s Five Appearances………………………………………………..…….10 1.3 Miss Jessel’s Three Appearances………………………………....……….…………13 1.4 Identifying the Apparitions……………………………………….…….……………15 1.5 Doubling and Apparitions……………………………………..……………………..19 Chapter 2: Fantasy Spaces and Desire in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca…………………..…...22 2.1 Desire for an Identity……………………………………………..………………….23 2.2 Fantasy Spaces in Rebecca…..………………………………………………………27 2.3 The Reality of Rebecca…………………………………………………………....…33 Chapter 3: Familial Desire in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House………………..…35 3.1 ‘Looking Awry’ at The Haunting of Hill House…………………………………….37 3.2 Familial Relationships and Desire……………………...……………………………38 3.3 Exclusion and Hallucinations……………………………………..…………………42 3.4 The ‘Child’ in Eleanor’s Hallucinations……………………………………..………48 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….56 Work Cited……………………………………………………………………………………….57 vii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my committee: to my supervisor, Dr. Sandra Tomc, for graciously guiding me through every stage of the project and for introducing me to a new field of research; and to Dr. Miranda Burgess, for serving as a member of my committee and being a wonderful mentor during my time at UBC. I would also like to thank the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia for having such a wonderful group of faculty and staff. Lastly, I would like to thank my cohort and all of the friends I made during my time at UBC, it has been an honor to learn alongside you. viii Dedication To my wonderful family 1 Introduction Henry James’s 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca, and Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novella The Haunting of Hill House all begin with lonely and financially burdened female narrators moving into monstrous old houses. The unnamed governess in The Turn of the Screw moves into Bly, the unnamed narrator in Rebecca moves into Manderley, and Eleanor in The Haunting of Hill House moves into Hill House. All three of these narrators’ lack family support, money, and positions in life before moving into the grand houses, and each of them is described as lonely and seeking to connect with others in order to form relationships. Despite each of the houses being plagued by the untimely deaths of past occupants, the narrators fetishize the structures and use them as a space onto which to project their desires. This desire for family, money, and positions takes the form of hallucinations and fantasy spaces, which lead the narrators to believe the house itself is haunted. At first glance, we might expect these novels to revolve around social class, but if we look at them closely, they all in fact, revolve around the desire of the central protagonist and her construction of fantasy space. For instance, the unnamed governess’s desire for her employer in The Turn of the Screw causes her to hallucinate apparitions of the previous governess and valet. Similarly, the narrator’s desire for an identity in Rebecca prompts her to concoct elaborate fantasies about her husband’s previous wife. The last case this thesis discusses, is Eleanor’s desire to belong in a familial structure in The Haunting of Hill House, which leads Eleanor to fabricate hallucinations revolving around children. Further connecting The Turn of the Screw, Rebecca, and The Haunting of Hill House, is the presence of ambiguity throughout each narrative. All three novels can be read through several different perspectives from start to end, without one reading being favored over another. 2 In this way, every possible reading within the texts is supported with textual evidence that does not compromise any other possible reading. This sparks an ongoing debate regarding the novels and raises the question of what is really happening in each narrative. This thesis argues desire in these cases is worth exploring because it helps render features visible that would have otherwise remained hidden. It is through this perspective that this thesis joins the ongoing debate of ambiguity in the novels and argues psychoanalyzing the narrators’ desire further adds to the field of research. While James’s The Turn of the Screw has received ample scholarly attention since its publication in 1898, the opposite can be said of du Maurier’s Rebecca and Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, written in 1938 and 1959 respectively. As previously mentioned, all three of these narratives are ambiguous and do not close down on any single reading. Because of this, and because of the large body of scholarship written on The Turn of the Screw, this thesis is only looking at a small portion of the scholarly content written on James’s novella that is interested in viewing the apparitions as hallucinations. Although Harold C. Goddard was the first to suggest the governess suffers hallucinations and presented this idea in lectures from the 1920’s forward, his article, “A Pre-Freudian Reading of The Turn of the Screw,” was not published until 1957 by his daughter. This is notably after Edna Kenton’s 1924 article, “Henry James to the Ruminant Reader: The Turn of the Screw,” and Edmund Wilson’s well-known 1934 article, “The Ambiguity of Henry James.” Kenton’s article is praised as the first to interpret the apparitions as imagined by the governess, though lacks significant textual evidence as to why the governess imagines the apparitions. Goddard’s article, like Wilson’s, argues the apparitions are hallucinations and gives ample textual evidence. Though in contrast to each other, Goddard presents the apparitions as insanity driven hallucinations, whereas Wilson argues the governess’s 3 repressed sexual desire leads her to hallucinate the apparitions. Because this thesis is interested in how a lens of desire can provide a clearer perspective, Wilson’s theory that “the young governess who tells the story is a neurotic case of sex repression, and the ghosts are not real ghosts at all but merely the hallucinations of the governess,” is crucial to this thesis’s understanding of the governess’s desire (Wilson 200). Wilson’s essay focuses on the governess’s repressed sexual desire for her employer, Peter Quint, and Miles, whereas this thesis argues the governess’s desire for her employer is the only source of her hallucinations. Other scholarly articles relate the hallucinations to sexual abuse and domestic abuse at Bly. Additionally, another reading of the novella interprets the narrator of the story, Douglas, to be an older Miles, as seen in Rolf Lundén’s article, “‘Not in any Literal, vulgar way’: The Encoded Love Story of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.” In contrast to The Turn of the Screw, du Maurier’s Rebecca has not received as much scholarly attention. A large portion of the limited criticism is focused on social class and sexuality pertaining to the female characters, which discusses how Rebecca exists outside of the social norm while the narrator remains bound by middle-class expectations. These readings comparing the two women’s contrasting relationships to class and sexuality also analyze the narrator’s desire for Rebecca and to be Rebecca within this context. For instance, Alison Light’s article, “‘Returning to Manderley’: Romance Fiction, Female Sexuality and Class,” and Auba Llompart Pons’s article, “Patriarchal Hauntings: Re-reading Villainy and Gender in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca,” both discuss how Rebecca challenges the repression and limitations of social norms and patriarchy through her sexuality and femininity. Other scholarly works such as Teresa Peterson’s article, “Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: The Shadow and the Substance,” and Nicky Hallett’s article, “Did Mrs. Danvers Warm Rebecca’s Pearls? Significant Exchanges and 4 the Extension of Lesbian Space and Time in Literature,” discuss lesbian desire in the text through analyzing Mrs. Danvers relationship with Rebecca, and the narrator’s desire for Rebecca. Another common reading among scholarship on Rebecca, is the novel’s relation to the “Bluebeard” storyline with Maxim’s murder of his first wife, Rebecca. This can be seen in criticism such as Heta Pyrhönen’s article, “Bluebeard’s Accomplice: Rebecca as a Masochistic Fantasy,” as well as in Light and Llompart Pons’s previously mentioned articles. Thus, scholarship often reads Rebecca in tandem with queer theory, sexual desire, Victorian domesticity, as well as the Gothic “Bluebeard” narrative. Continuing the discussion of the narrator’s desire, this thesis focuses on how the narrator’s desire for an identity is connected to the elaborate fantasy spaces she concocts. Similar to Rebecca, Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House lacks significant scholarly attention. Most scholarly content on The Haunting of Hill House discusses Eleanor’s complex relationship with her now deceased mother and analyzes Eleanor’s desire for a maternal presence. For instance, Lynne Evans’s article, “‘Help Eleanor Come Home’: Monstrous Maternity in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House,” and Richard Pascal’s article, “Walking Alone Together: Family Monsters in The Haunting of Hill House,” both analyze maternal spaces within the novella. Within this scope of scholarship, many scholars view Hill House itself to be a maternal space and argue Eleanor’s desire for the house and reversion back to childhood throughout the novella represent this. In addition, other scholarly research focuses on the relationship between Eleanor and Theodora and suggests a possible lesbian relationship between the two women. This is mentioned in Holly Blackford’s article, “Haunted Housekeeping: Fatal Attractions of Servant and Mistress in Twentieth-Century Female Gothic Literature,” whose commentary on the relationship between the two women is returned to in 5 Lynne Evans’s article referred to above. As previously mentioned, a large portion of scholarship on The Haunting of Hill House relates to Eleanor’s missing maternal presence with her deceased mother and the alleged maternal presence of Hill House. This thesis differs from these works and argues that Eleanor is not missing and seeking strictly a maternal presence, but a familial presence which she finds in the other researchers at Hill House. This thesis seeks to analyze each narrator’s desire in The Turn of the Screw, Rebecca, and The Haunting of Hill House in order to observe how and why the narrators hallucinate and construct fantasy spaces. As mentioned above, each of the narrator’s fetishizes the large house the narratives takes place in, and each house becomes a space for the narrator to project their desire onto. The first chapter of Žižek’s Looking Awry, titled “How Real is Reality,” investigates Lacan’s ideas on desire through contemporary mass culture content in order to argue that looking through the lens of desire “render[s] visible aspects that would otherwise remain unnoticed” (Žižek 5). One of the examples Žižek discusses is Patricia Highsmith’s story, “The Black House,” which presents a further understanding of desire being projected onto haunted houses. “The Black House” is a story about a house that is believed to be haunted by a lonely lunatic who kills intruders. Though at the same time, all the men in the village talk about Black House as a place that connects all their memories— first cigarette, first sexual experience… In the story, a young engineer comes to town and when hearing the stories, he goes to Black House only to discover it is simply a house. When telling the men back in the village of his discovery, the men are so horrified that one of them attacks and kills the young engineer. Žižek explains that Black House “functioned as an empty space wherein [the men from the village] could project their nostalgic desire, their distorted memories,” and by the young engineer saying it was nothing but an old house, “He annulled the difference between reality and fantasy space, depriving the men 6 of the place in which they were able to articulate their desires” (Žižek 10). This thesis analyzes how the mysterious history and fetishization of Bly, Manderley, and Hill House help the narrators fabricate fantasy spaces where they project their desire, similar to how the men project their desire onto Black House. Split into three chapters, one chapter per novel, this thesis analyzes each of the fantasy spaces the narrators fabricate through the lens of desire. The first chapter focuses on Henry James’s 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw through the lens of desire. By analyzing the unnamed governess’s thoughts prior to Peter Quint’s five appearances and Miss Jessel’s three appearances, this chapter argues that the governess’s desire for her employer prompts her to hallucinate the apparitions. To accomplish this, the chapter starts by deep reading the prologue of the novella in order to assert that the governess desires her employer. Next, the chapter moves onto analyzing each of the appearances of the apparitions and examines how the governess’s desire for her employer relates to her thoughts prior to the appearances. Following this, the chapter explains how the governess was able to give descriptions of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint without ever seeing them. In ending, this chapter analyzes the governess’s doubling of herself with Miss Jessel and the employer with Peter Quint through a Freudian lens, in order to situate an intimacy between the governess and her employer. The second chapter analyzes how the narrator’s desire in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca causes her to lose grasp of reality and concoct elaborate fantasies. The chapter begins by discussing previous scholarship examining the narrator’s desire, in order to argue that the narrator desires an identity associated with importance and respect, something she imagines the position of Mrs. de Winter to possess. Next, the chapter analyzes the narrator’s elaborate fantasy spaces in order to illustrate how the narrator’s desire is connected to her idealized vision of Rebecca, and the position of Mrs. de Winter. In ending, the chapter explains that the narrator’s 7 idealized vision of Rebecca is not linked very closely to reality by comparing Rebecca in the narrator’s fantasy to the reality of who Rebecca really was. The third and final chapter focuses on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novella, The Haunting of Hill House. This chapter deep reads several alleged paranormal activities in the novella in order to argue that Hill House is not haunted, Eleanor’s unconscious is. The chapter’s first step is to outline Eleanor’s desire to belong in a familial structure, which the chapter then connects to Eleanor’s feelings that the other three researchers are her new family unit. Next, the chapter turns to analyzing specific scenes where Eleanor feels excluded or ostracized from the group and observes how these moments are directly followed by scenes of Eleanor hallucinating supernatural phenomena. This repeated cycle of losing security in her desired family unit causes Eleanor’s desire for a familial structure to be continuously reproduced throughout the novella as seen in her hallucinations. In ending, this chapter draws attention to the reoccurring figure of the child in Eleanor’s hallucinations, and discusses why a child figure relates to Eleanor’s desire. This thesis aims to exemplify how a lens of desire can help reveal possible readings that may have been overlooked when dealing with ambiguity in literature. With a focus on Gothic fiction, this thesis is particularly interested in cases where desire reveals a narrator’s disconnect from reality with the alleged existence of supernatural phenomena. In these particular novels, this thesis argues that the houses are not haunted by apparitions and paranormal activity, the narrators’ unconscious psyches are. While this thesis focuses on the specific cases of The Turn of the Screw, Rebecca, and The Haunting of Hill House, the larger message of this thesis is that a lens of desire can be beneficial when reading literature in general, and that these three novels are just an introduction to what needs to be discussed in scholarship moving forward. 8 Chapter 1: Desirous Hallucinations in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw Similar to the child’s game ‘Broken Telephone,’ Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw follows a governess’s story in the form of a manuscript, read by someone named Douglas, and later retold by an unnamed narrator. Because the story is retold by two other people before reaching its readers, the overall accuracy and reliability of the translators is disputable. This discrepancy is not the only questionable aspect of the story. The ambiguous circumstances surrounding the apparitions allows for several possible readings, one which questions the reliability of the original manuscript written by the governess. The manuscript follows an unnamed governess’s travels to Bly where she cares for her employer’s orphaned nephew and niece. Being young and inexperienced, the governess is instantly charmed by the employer and accepts the job despite the mysterious circumstance of never being able to contact him ever again. Upon arriving at Bly, the governess adores the children at first glance and quickly befriends the housekeeper, making everything seem idyllic. This idealized situation only lasts a short while, because the governess begins seeing apparitions of the deceased governess and valet who cared for the children prior to her employment. While the governess describes the apparitions as evil presences coming back to haunt and corrupt the children, each appearance of the apparitions occurs in tandem with the governess’s personal thoughts of desire. Through the lens of desire, it will be argued that the governess’s desire for her employer causes her to hallucinate the apparitions of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel. In this chapter, I will start by discussing Žižek’s first chapter in Looking Awry, which explains how desire influences a person’s perception of reality. It is through this lens of desire that this first chapter on James’s novella argues that the governess’s desire for her employer, as seen in the prologue, causes her to lose grasp of reality and hallucinate the apparitions. From 9 here, I will move onto analyzing the governess’s thoughts of her employer prior to Peter Quint’s five appearances and Miss Jessel’s three appearances, and argue it is because of her desire that she hallucinates. Following this, the chapter explains how the governess was able to give descriptions of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint without ever seeing them. In ending, this chapter examines the governess’s doubling of herself with Miss Jessel and the employer with Peter Quint, in order to show an intimacy between herself and her employer. 1.1 The Prologue of The Turn of the Screw and Desire Slavoj Žižek’s first chapter of Looking Awry raises the question of how real reality is, which Žižek suggests is not that real after all. Žižek’s chapter explains that desire influences and distorts perceptions of reality, and that looking through the lens of desire “renders visible aspects that would otherwise remain unnoticed” (Žižek 5). In this way, it is only when looking awry at something, through the lens of desire, that one is able to see the object clearly, “…if we look at a thing straight on, i.e., matter-of-factly, disinterestedly, objectively, we see nothing but a formless spot; the object assumes clear and distinctive features only if we look at it ‘at an angle,’ i.e., with an ‘interested’ view, supported, permeated, and ‘distorted’ by desire” (Žižek 14). Seeing how the apparitions in James’s novella do not exist for an objective gaze such as the children, Mrs. Grose, or other workers at Bly, it becomes clear that the governess’s gaze is distorted by desire. Through applying these concepts of desire and reality to Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, it will be argued that the governess desires her employer, and it is because of this desire that she hallucinates the apparitions. The governess fears the children are lost to Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, though instead it is the governess herself who becomes lost, only further emphasizing Žižek’s point that a “subject’s relation to the horrifying object that embodies its surplus enjoyment: the more we fight against it, the more its power over us grows” (Žižek 8). 10 The prologue to The Turn of the Screw informs the reader that the governess is in love with her employer, though when offering her the job, her employer requests she “never, never: neither appeal nor complain nor write about anything; only meet all questions herself, receive all moneys from his solicitor, take the whole thing over and let him alone” (James 6). The governess’s options are to either refuse the job and never see the one she loves again, or to accept the job and possibly have the chance to see him if he visits. Upon accepting the job, the governess admits to living in a constant state of belief that the employer may show up at any moment, “we lived in much profusion of theory that he might at any moment arrive to mingle in our circle” (James 52). Constantly believing the object of her desire may arrive at any moment influences the governess’s unconscious mind and creates the appearances of the apparitions. Written in 1934, Edmund Wilson’s essay, “The Ambiguity of Henry James,” also suggests the apparitions of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are hallucinations and says, the governess “is never to meet her employer again, but what she does meet are the apparitions” (Wilson 200). Peter Quint’s five appearances and Miss Jessel’s three appearances all occur at moments when the governess’s thoughts are clouded by fantasies of her employer. Through analyzing the governess’s thoughts immediately prior to the appearance of each apparition, it will be argued that the governess’s desire for her employer causes her to fabricate figures of the past governess and valet. 1.2 Peter Quint’s Five Appearances Directly prior to the first three appearances of Peter Quint, a repeated pattern can be seen of the governess fantasizing narratives which result with her and the employer together. It is while romanticizing about her employer that the governess first sees Peter Quint on the tower. The governess is taking a stroll in the garden daydreaming about meeting someone, something 11 she admits is often on her mind on these wanderings, when arrested on the spot she has “the sense that [her] imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did stand there!” (James 15). From this quote the reader learns it is not just anyone she seeks to run into, but a specific person who is later described as her employer. After overcoming her initial shock upon seeing the figure, the governess is able to realize the figure is not “the person [she] had precipitately supposed,” nor the man “that had been on [her] mind” since she had last seen him in Harley Street, but rather a complete stranger (James 15, 16). Knowing the governess is daydreaming about her employer right before her first sighting of an apparition suggests Peter Quint is not a ghost, but rather a hallucination in response to the governess’s desire. Preceding the second appearance of Peter Quint, the governess is reflecting on the haunting at Bly and comparing her situation to heroines in Gothic novels such as The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. These two novels are not randomly chosen; Radcliffe’s novel portrays love persisting despite distance and supernatural events, while Brontë’s novel depicts a governess who challenges economic and social classes by falling in love and marrying her employer. Peter Quint’s appearance while the governess is comparing her situation to these novels suggests the governess is daydreaming a scenario that would enable her to be with her employer, just as these other popular Gothic novels depict. Also involving the mention of a romantic novel, the third appearance of Peter Quint occurs late at night while the governess is reading Henry Fielding’s novel Amelia, “I recollect in short that though I was deeply interested in my author I found myself, at the turn of a page and with his spell all scattered, looking straight up from him and hard at the door of my room” (James 39). Amelia is a novel about love persisting despite rank, financial struggles, infidelity, and other obstacles. When seeing Peter Quint this third time, the governess describes the situation as if she is a hero meeting Peter Quint’s gaze with “common 12 intensity” and notes her lack of fear (James 39). The governess is once again comparing herself to heroines in Gothic novels such as The Mysteries of Udolpho, Jane Eyre, and Amelia who find love despite any horrors or obstacles. While the governess claims Peter Quint’s appearance broke the “spell” she was under while reading Fielding’s Amelia, arguably Peter Quint was part of the unconscious spell as a desirous hallucination (James 39). The last two appearances of Peter Quint depict the governess taking action, just as a heroine in a Gothic novel would, to overcome any obstacles between herself and her employer. One night the governess awakens to find Miles standing outside looking up at the tower and believes Peter Quint to have made his fourth appearance. Instead of going directly outside where she would be able to protect Miles and have a view of the top of the tower, the governess searches for a specific room: “There were empty rooms enough at Bly, and it was only a question of choosing the right one. The right one suddenly presented itself to me as the lower one-though high above the gardens- in the solid corner of the house that I have spoken of as the old tower” (James 43). Considering the many empty rooms in Bly, it is curious that the governess chooses this room in particular, especially since it does not give her the ability to see the apparition. This position instead places the governess in the tower below where she believes Peter Quint to be. The room the governess selects is described as “a large square chamber, arranged with some state as a bedroom, the extravagant size of which made it so inconvenient that it had not for years, though kept by Mrs. Grose in exemplary order, been occupied. I had often admired it and I knew my way about in it” (James 43). Knowing the room to have been occupied a few years ago despite Bly never having visitors besides the employer himself, as well as noticing the grandeur of the room and how it is kept in impeccable order at all times, it is insinuated that this is the employer’s chamber whenever he stays at Bly. The governess’s description of the room suggests 13 she too believes the chamber to be her employer’s, which gives the impression that this fourth appearance of Peter Quint is tied to the governess’s desire for her employer. The governess seeking out the employer’s chamber points towards an intimacy between herself and her employer. She views herself and her employer as a united force against the apparition, believing they will overcome any obstacles together just as the Gothic novels she previously mentioned portray. The fifth and final appearance of Peter Quint results in both the ending of the novella, as well as the alleged death of Miles. This fifth appearance occurs after the governess asks Miles whether he stole the letter she had written to his uncle. After asking this question, the governess recalls her “grasp of how he received this suffered for a minute from something that I can describe only as a fierce split of my attention,” because “the appearance was full upon us that I had already had to deal with here: Peter Quint had come into view like a sentinel before a prison” (James 81). The governess believes the note she wrote has the power to influence her employer to visit Bly, so Miles’ action of stealing the letter creates an obstacle between her reuniting with her employer. Peter Quint, who is both what enables the governess to write to her employer, as well as an obstacle the governess has to overcome to be with her employer, shows up in that moment and creates a situation where the governess becomes a heroine who must defeat this evil apparition and his hold on Miles. 1.3 Miss Jessel’s Three Appearances The previous governess, Miss Jessel, appears a total of three times to the current governess. Before each appearance, the governess’s mind is preoccupied with thoughts of her employer; her thoughts oscillate between appreciating her position and fearing she might lose it. Miss Jessel’s first appearance occurs while the governess is sitting beside the lake with Flora enjoying the outdoors. The governess explains Flora is playing while she is thinking of 14 something deeply which takes all of her attention. While the governess does not mention exactly what she is thinking about, she does mention her happiness with “her” children crosses her mind and that “thanks to my superior” she was given the governess position (James 28). This mention of the uncle out of the blue seems purposefully placed, especially knowing the governess often thinks about meeting someone on her afternoon walks (James 15). The second appearance of Miss Jessel occurs directly after the governess fights with Miles about contacting her employer. Miles and the governess are walking to church together when Miles mentions wanting to go back to school and suggests writing to his uncle. The governess realizes this would bring to light her procrastination in discovering why Miles got expelled and finding a solution to his expulsion. If the employer discovers that the governess neglected accomplishing these tasks, it is logical for the governess to fear losing her position for not completing a governess’s required duties. After leaving the church grounds overcome with worry, the governess travels back to the manor alone where she comes across Miss Jessel in the schoolroom seated at her own table. According to the governess, Miss Jessel gives her a look that claims, “her right to sit at my table was as good as mine to sit at hers” (James 57). The third and final appearance of Miss Jessel occurs after the governess writes the letter to her employer and believes it to be sent: “I quickly, by the way of answer, felt for my letter, drew it forth, held it up, and then, freeing myself, went and laid it on the great hall-table. ‘Luke will take it,’ I said as I came back. I reached the house-door and opened it; I was already on the steps” (James 65). After laying the letter in the great hall to be sent, the governess and Mrs. Grose walk across the lake where they find Flora smiling at them. The governess declares Miss Jessel is also present and watching, but neither Mrs. Grose nor Flora admit to seeing the apparition. Having just previously sent the letter to her employer, the letter, and in turn her desire for her employer, is still on the governess’s mind when she sees 15 Miss Jessel this third time. Perhaps fear of how her employer would respond, or not respond, is also something that prompts the governess to hallucinate Miss Jessel this last time. The governess’s only relationship to her employer is her role as governess to his niece and nephew, so it is no coincidence that each time the governess sees the previous failed governess she is thinking about her employer and position. 1.4 Identifying the Apparitions In “Mr. Edmund Wilson and The Turn of the Screw,” A.J.A. Waldock questions Edmund Wilson’s belief that the apparitions are hallucinations and not ghosts. While Waldock does not completely disagree with Wilson, he does argue the apparitions cannot strictly be declared as hallucinations because the governess describes them in detail despite having never seen them. Waldock questions, “How did the governess succeed in projecting on vacancy, out of her own subconscious mind, a perfectly precise, point-by-point image of a man, then dead, whom she had never seen in her life and never heard of? What psychology, normal or abnormal, will explain that? And what is the right word for such a vision but ‘ghost’?” (Waldock 334). In response to Waldock, and in support of Wilson, this section of the essay questions if the governess did give “point-by-point” descriptions of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, and instead suggests the governess gives broad possible descriptions that Mrs. Grose turns into “point-by-point” descriptions (Waldock 334). When talking to Mrs. Grose on her first day, Mrs. Grose let it slip to the governess that there was another man in the house who liked his women young and pretty, “‘Oh he did,’ Mrs. Grose assented; ‘it was the way he liked every one!’ She had no sooner spoken indeed than she caught herself up. ‘I mean that’s his way- the master’s’” to which the governess replies, “But of whom did you speak first?” (James 12). Wilson’s “The Ambiguity of Henry 16 James” also notes this moment as a possible reason for the governess’s description of Peter Quint and says, The governess has never heard of the valet, but it has been suggested to her in conversation with the housekeeper that there has been some other male somewhere who ‘liked everyone young and pretty’ and the idea of this other person has been ambiguously confused with the master and with the master’s possible interest in her, the present governess (Wilson 201) This dialogue informs the governess that there was once another man in the house and that Mrs. Grose thinks of him negatively, as well as how Wilson points out, that the master and this other man are being “ambiguously confused” with one another and their feelings towards the past and present governesses (Wilson 201). Turning to the first description of Peter Quint, the governess describes him as, ‘He has no hat.’ Then seeing in her face that she already, in this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of a picture, I quickly added stroke to stroke. ‘He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight good features and little rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are somehow darker; they look particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, strange-awfully; but I only know clearly that they’re rather small and very fixed. His mouth’s wide, and his lips are thin, except for his little whiskers he’s quite clean shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking like an actor’. Mrs. Grose exclaims ‘an actor’ and the governess responds, “‘I’ve never seen one, but I suppose them. He’s tall, active, erect,’ I continued, ‘but never-no, never!- a gentleman’ (James 23) 17 Not only is the governess watching Mrs. Grose’s face for a reaction before she continues in one direction or another, but the governess is also giving very broad and easily assumed descriptions. First, there is no reason a gentleman besides the uncle would be at the manor, so the possibility of the figure wearing no hat is easily assumed. It is also noticeable how the governess describes the man as having a clean-shaven face besides the whiskers on his face. This phrasing allows the man to be clean-shaven while also having facial hair, and notably the governess goes with whatever Mrs. Grose says on the matter. Wilson also mentions “it is impossible for us to know how much the ghost resembles the master,” because the master is never described in detail (Wilson 201). In this way, it is possible that the governess is describing the master and Mrs. Grose interprets it to be Peter Quint, which has already happened once before. Similarly, the description of Miss Jessel is formed both by watching Mrs. Grose’s reaction to each detail and following her lead, as well as from easily assumed details from previous conversations. The governess describes Miss Jessel as, “a figure of quite an unmistakable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful-with such an air also, and such a face! - on the other side of the lake. I was there with the child-quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came’” (James 30). Mrs. Grose then asks, “‘The person was in black, you say?’” and the governess responds “‘mourning-rather poor, almost shabby. But-yes- with extraordinary beauty.’ I now recognized to what I had at last, stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed this. ‘Oh handsome-very, very,’ I insisted; ‘wonderfully handsome. But infamous’” (James 31). Mrs. Grose identifies Miss Jessel strictly from two details: she was wearing black, and she was pretty. From the previous conversation mentioned above with Mrs. Grose saying Peter Quint liked his women young and pretty, the governess knows there was something between Peter Quint and Miss Jessel and that she was 18 pretty. The governess also knows Peter Quint died before Miss Jessel moved home and died herself, so it is easily assumed that Miss Jessel was dressed in black and mourning Peter Quint’s death. When identifying both Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, the governess says the descriptions came to Mrs. Grose “stroke by stroke,” though arguably the governess lays the foreground for the painting and Mrs. Grose is the one who paints the image “stroke by stroke” (James 23, 31). Despite the employer’s one request that the governess should “never, never” bother or contact him about anything, the governess attempts to send him a single letter (James 6). While the reader never sees what is written in this letter, it is assumed the letter either contains information about the hauntings at Bly, or simply a request for his visit. Either way, the reader knows Miles steals the letter and burns it in the fire, meaning the employer never receives word. It is important to note the apparitions of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are the reason the governess feels required to write to her employer. It is because she believes the children need protection from these corrupt and evil apparitions that the governess makes the choice to ignore her employer’s one request and contact him. It is also worth noting that others in the manor attempt writing letters to the employer, all of which the governess gains control over and does not allow to be sent. Miles and Flora both write their uncle several letters, all of which the governess keeps, and Mrs. Grose makes the decision to write to their employer, but the governess threatens to leave if Mrs. Grose does. Wilson’s essay, “The Ambiguity of Henry James,” also notes this moment between the governess and Mrs. Grose and says, “The housekeeper threatens to send for the master herself; the governess threatens to leave if she does. After this, for a considerable period, the visions no longer appear” (Wilson 201). Wilson’s observation that the “visions” no longer appear after this argument points towards the apparitions of Miss Jessel and Peter Quint being the cause of governess’s own inner turmoil and thus part of her personal unconscious 19 psyche (Wilson 201). Arguably, the governess’s refrain from sending any letter but her own also places importance on that single letter, which perhaps the governess does on purpose so the employer would be less likely to ignore it as he would if he regularly received many letters from Bly. 1.5 Doubling and Apparitions While Slavoj Žižek’s Looking Awry provides one explanation that argues the apparitions are the governess’s desirous hallucinations, Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny also supports this theory. Freud argues that the uncanny is “that class of the terrifying which leads back to something known to us, once very familiar” (Freud 1-2). Freud is interested in that which was once known and familiar that has undergone repression, and when resurfaced causes feelings of terror. Freud also mentions circumstances of desire undergoing repression and resurfacing. This connects to The Turn of the Screw through the governess’s desire for her employer being repressed and resurfacing in the figures of the apparitions causing terror and fear. Freud’s The Uncanny is also important in conversation with The Turn of the Screw through the idea of doubling. While the governess is said to double both of the apparitions several times throughout the novella, the governess doubling Miss Jessel while the employer doubles Peter Quint is relevant to this paper’s argument through showing an intimacy between Peter Quint and Miss Jessel and in turn the governess and her employer. After the governess argues with Miles about contacting the employer, and before the governess sees Miss Jessel for the second time, the governess rushes back to the manor and remembers “sinking down at the foot of the staircase-suddenly collapsing there on the lowest step and then, with a revulsion, recalling that it was exactly where, more than a month before, in the darkness of night and just so bowed with evil things, I had seen the spectre of the most horrible woman” (James 56-57). Here the reader sees 20 the governess become a double to Miss Jessel. Another doubling of the two women comes shortly after this moment when she walks into the schoolroom and finds, seated at my own table in the clear noonday light, I saw a person whom, without my previous experience, I should have taken at the first blush for some housemaid who might have stayed at home to look after the place and who, availing herself of rare relief from observation and of the schoolroom table and my pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself to the considerable effort of a letter to her sweetheart (James 57) This doubling of Miss Jessel sitting in the governess’s own seat and writing a letter to her sweetheart, something the readers knows the governess is thinking about having just come back from her discussion about writing to the employer, reveals the uncanny doubling. Peter Quint doubles the employer by wearing the employer’s clothing and taking the role as the overseer of the estate when the employer is gone. Peter Quint also doubles the employer the first time the governess sees the apparition of Peter Quint as she is walking in the garden daydreaming about meeting the employer. By doubling herself with Miss Jessel and the employer with Peter Quint, the governess shows a romantic intimacy between herself and her employer by knowing Miss Jessel and Peter Quint were themselves romantically involved. Wilson’s “The Ambiguity of Henry James” mentions, “in the collected edition that James has not included The Turn of the Screw in the volume with his other ghost stories but in a volume of stories of another kind” (Wilson 202). James’s choice not to include The Turn of the Screw with his collection of ghost stories conveys James did not view The Turn of the Screw as involving ghosts, which in turn supports the theory that Miss Jessel and Peter Quint are hallucinations plaguing the governess’s unconscious psyche. It is also worthwhile to note that 21 while the term ‘ghost’ is used a single time in the prologue in reference to another story, the term is never used in the novella itself in reference to Miss Jessel or Peter Quint. James did not view The Turn of the Screw as a ghost story or include the term ‘ghost’ in his novella because it is a psychological horror story where the governess’s view is distorted by desire. This becomes evident through analyzing the governess’s thoughts of desire directly prior to the appearance of each apparition and observing how the governess hallucinates the apparitions to manipulate a desired outcome. 22 Chapter 2: Fantasy Spaces and Desire in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca is told by an unnamed narrator reflecting back on her life. The narrator and her husband, Maxim, are traveling across various Mediterranean tourist spots when one night the narrator dreams of her and Maxim’s old home, Manderley, which prompts her to think even further back to when she was a lady’s companion to Mrs. Van Hopper in Monte Carlo. The narrator begins her flashback here and describes meeting her future husband, Maximillian de Winter, while at lunch with Mrs. Van Hopper. Once being introduced to one-another, the narrator explains how she and Maxim began spending time together driving around Monte Carlo. It is while on these outings, that the narrator learns a little more about his previous wife, Rebecca, who allegedly drowned in a boating accident a year prior. While in Monte Carlo, the narrator begins concocting elaborate fantasy spaces about the previous Mrs. de Winter, something she continues to do even after eloping with Maxim and moving to his family estate. Upon moving to Manderley, the narrator attempts to adapt to her new home and class, but she struggles both to compete with the legacy of Maxim’s previous wife, as well as to form a relationship with the distant housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who seems determined to dislike her. Everywhere the new Mrs. de Winter goes, and anything she does, is compared to the previous Mrs. de Winter, creating a ghostlike haunting on the narrator’s life at Manderley. This leads the narrator to believe Maxim is still in love with his previous wife and always thinking about her. It is only near the end of the novel that the narrator learns Maxim never loved Rebecca and murdered her out of rage. This chapter argues that the unnamed narrator’s desire for an identity in Rebecca, and later her distress in not having one despite becoming Mrs. de Winter, leads her to concoct elaborate fantasy spaces throughout the novel. 23 Through a lens of desire, this chapter focuses on Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca and analyzes how desire causes the narrator to lose grasp of reality and concoct elaborate fantasies. I begin the chapter by discussing previous criticism regarding the narrator’s desire in Rebecca and argue that the narrator desires an identity associated with importance and respect. From here, the chapter moves onto discussing how the narrator’s desire for an identity is related to what she imagines the position of Mrs. de Winter to be. The chapter then turns to deep reading the fantasy spaces in the novel in order to illustrate how the narrator’s desire is tied to her idealized vision of Rebecca in her fantasies. In ending, the chapter discusses how the narrator’s fantasies are not closely linked to reality, by observing the reality of who Rebecca really was. 2.1 Desire for an Identity Despite being published in 1938, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca has not received much scholarly attention. The scholarship that does discuss the narrator’s desire, focuses on the narrator’s desire in regard to Maxim and Rebecca. Within this realm of scholarship, a common discussion among scholars is the lack of sexual desire between the narrator and Maxim, which is instead replaced with a paternal relationship. For instance, Teresa Peterson’s article, “Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: The Shadow and the Substance,” notes this paternal relationship and says, “The father-daughter relationship is clear—Maxim, who is twice the narrator’s age, tells her that a husband ‘is not so very different from a father after all’” (Peterson 58-59). Peterson goes on to describe scenes where Maxim treats the narrator as if she were a child, suggesting their relationship is not one of desire. Janet Harbord’s article, “Between Identification and Desire: Rereading Rebecca,” also address the desireless paternal relationship and explains any desire is for Rebecca, 24 The marriage between Max de Winter and the girl is overly paternal. Representations of passion and erotic charge are confined to Rebecca who, problematically for the narrative in terms of gender, activates and inspires sexual interest. The failure to construct a heterosexuality that is passionate leaves open the interpretations of the paradigm of sexuality/gender (Harbord 102) The absence of desire in the heterosexual relationship, Maxim and the narrator, is what inspires Harbord to investigate the overlap between “The axes of identification (with the same sex) and desire (for the opposite sex)” (Harbord 96). Rebecca was selected for this investigation because, as Harbord points out, the narrator’s desire can be read as desire for Rebecca, as well as desire to be identified with Rebecca. Though ultimately, Harbord explains that “sexuality as it emerges does not depend on a distinction between desire and identification,” that any distinction between identification and desire does not exist; desire is desire. An interesting example Harbord introduces in understanding this, is the discourses of fandom. In fan culture, fans both identify with and desire their object of desire, emphasizing the overlap of axes. Further on this discussion of desire for Rebecca, Nicky Hallett’s article, “Did Mrs. Danvers Warm Rebecca’s Pearls? Significant Exchanges and the Extension of Lesbian Space and Time in Literature,” contemplates the presence of lesbian spaces in the novel, and discusses Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers, and the narrator’s involvement in those spaces. Hallett explains that specific scenes in Rebecca are “alive with erotic tensions and same-sex cross-class intimacy, or fantasy of it: desire here, as ‘mistress’ infers, is power related. In the novel, Mrs. Danvers’ portrayal and her relationship to Rebecca and to the unnamed second wife (and hers to the dead Rebecca) is rich in lesbian overtones” (Hallett 38). These lesbian spaces that Hallett describes in her article discuss the narrator’s same-sex desire for Rebecca, and in moments, Mrs. Danvers as well. In contrast to 25 previous scholarship debating the narrator’s desire in relation to Maxim and Rebecca discussed above, this chapter argues that the narrator does not desire any specific person, but rather to have an identity where people know who she is and respect her. Further, the narrator believes that in becoming Mrs. de Winter, her desire for an identity full of importance and respect will be fulfilled, illustrating how the narrator associates her desire for an identity with the position of Mrs. de Winter. This next part of the section analyzes the narrator’s time in Monte Carlo before becoming Mrs. de Winter in order to illustrate how the narrator is overly concerned with how others perceive her, in order to stress the narrator’s desire for an identity. As mentioned earlier, the beginning of the narrator’s flashback begins when she is a lady’s companion to Mrs. Van Hopper in Monte Carlo. As a lady’s companion, the narrator is at Mrs. Van Hopper’s beck and call and fulfills any task asked of her. During this time in the novel, the narrator frequently references her lack of importance. For instance, when sitting down to converse with Mrs. Van Hopper and Maxim, the narrator notes how Mrs. Van Hopper introduces her with a tone “just casual enough to warn him of my footing. It meant I was a youthful thing and unimportant and that there was no need to include me in the conversation” (du Maurier 14). Maxim ignores Mrs. Van Hopper’s social cue in this scene and treats the narrator with a respect she does not normally receive. After Mrs. Van Hopper becomes bedridden with a small flu, the narrator begins spending her days with Maxim as he drives them around Monte Carlo. At one point, the narrator gets into Maxim’s car and thinks, “I was a person of importance, I was grown up at last” (du Maurier 28). The narrator knows she is only a person of importance in that moment because she is with Maxim, and that once alone again she will be ignored. Readers see proof of this shortly after when the narrator and Maxim part ways for the day and the narrator sits down for tea alone, “The waiter appeared bored, seeing me alone there was no need for him 26 to press, and anyway it was that dragging time of day, a few minutes after half-past five, when the normal tea is finished and the hour for drinks remote” (du Maurier 32). The narrator is acutely aware that she is only treated with respect when she is with someone of importance. Because her lack of importance is connected to her absence of identity in life, i.e. title, wealth, name, her desire for an identity can be seen in her wish to be respected whether she is alone or with someone of importance. Once Mrs. Van Hopper is no longer bedridden from the flu, she decides she will travel to New York for a change of scenery. Since the narrator is Mrs. Van Hopper’s employee, this means the narrator will also be traveling to New York and leaving her new friendship with Maxim. When Maxim hears of Mrs. Van Hopper’s plans to leave, he proposes to the narrator and says he wants to show her Manderley. The narrator, uncertain if he is being serious or not, does not respond to his proposal at first, but upon hearing ‘Manderley,’ the narrator thinks about how she will be Mrs. de Winter and what that position means in terms of social respect, We would be in a crowd of people, and he would say, ‘I don’t think you have met my wife.’ Mrs. de Winter. I would be Mrs. de Winter. I considered my name, and the signature on cheques, to tradesmen, and in letters asking people to dinner. I heard myself talking on the telephone: ‘Why not come down to Manderley next week-end?’ People, always a throng of people. ‘Oh, but she’s simply charming you must meet her—’ This is about me, a whisper on the fringe of a crowd, and I would turn away, pretending I had not heard (du Maurier 55) When asked to marry Maxim, the narrator is not concerned about what the position entails or her future life with Maxim, but rather how she will be in a position of importance where others know her name and will talk about her highly. Further, the narrator is imagining her signature on 27 cheques, to tradesmen, and on invitations to dinner, all of which are marks of a high class. This fantasy the narrator fabricates places a high importance and power on the title of Mrs. de Winter, suggesting that in marrying Maxim, the narrator is most concerned with how she will be perceived by others and her future wealth and class. Auba Llompart Pons’s article, “Patriarchal Hauntings: Re-reading Villainy and Gender in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca,” discusses the narrator’s dependence on her title to define her identity and says, “Mrs. de Winter needs patriarch to define who she is,” explaining that the narrator needs her husband to define her identity (Llompart Pons 80). This emphasizes the importance and power the narrator places in being Mrs. de Winter, and her belief that when she is Mrs. de Winter, she will no longer lack an identity and instead be someone of importance who people respect and know of. 2.2 Fantasy Spaces in Rebecca After eloping, the narrator and Maxim travel back to Manderley to start their life together. In the beginning, the narrator imagines a future where servants, Maxim’s family, and others in their social circle all adore her simply because she is Mrs. de Winter. The narrator assumes now that she is Mrs. de Winter and holds a position of importance, everyone will respect her and think highly of her. Though upon arrival at Manderley, the narrator realizes the servants laugh at her for being naïve and ill-bred, Maxim’s grandma still thinks of and adores Rebecca, and members of their social circle compare the narrator to Rebecca and find the narrator to be inadequate. Thus, while the narrator is legally Mrs. de Winter, as time goes on, she realizes the name does not belong to her but to Rebecca, both in her eyes and in everyone else’s. The narrator sees traces of Rebecca everywhere in Manderley, She was in the house still as Mrs. Danvers had said, she was in that room in the west wing, she was in the library, in the morning-room, wherever mackintosh still 28 hung. And in the garden, and in the woods, and down in the stone cottage on the beach. Her footsteps sounded in the corridors, her scent lingered on the stairs. The servants obeyed her orders still, the food we ate was the food she liked. Her favourite flowers filled the rooms. Her clothes were in the wardrobes in her room, her brushes were on the table, her shoes beneath the chair, her nightdress on her bed. Rebecca was still mistress of Manderley. Rebecca was still Mrs. de Winter (du Maurier 237) The narrator sees Rebecca in every part of Manderley, as well as in everyone’s thoughts when they think of the position of Mrs. de Winter. Thus, the lack of importance and position that the narrator felt as a lady’s companion, and that she believed she had filled in becoming Mrs. de Winter, is revealed to still be missing in her life. This constant sense of missing something creates a reproduction of desire, because no matter what she does, the title Mrs. de Winter will never belong to her. Mrs. Danvers cruelly says as much to the narrator, “‘It’s no use, is it?’ she said. ‘You’ll never get the better of her. She’s still mistress here, even if she is dead. She’s the real Mrs. de Winter, not you. It’s you that’s the shadow and the ghost. It’s you that’s forgotten and not wanted and pushed aside” (du Maurier 250). This section of the chapter moves onto deep reading the narrator’s fantasy spaces in Rebecca in order to argue that the fantasies are linked to the narrator’s desire for an identity. In this way, this section argues that the fantasies display an idealized vision of Rebecca, of the position of Mrs. de Winter, that the narrator projects her own desire onto. The first fantasy space that the narrator concocts occurs after one of her and Maxim’s drives. When arriving back to her shared accommodation with Mrs. Van Hopper, the narrator is unable to hold a conversation with Mrs. Van Hopper because, as she notes, “I was not there at 29 all. I was following a phantom in my mind” and begins to imagine Rebecca’s features and shadowy shape (du Maurier 44). The narrator’s fantasy space takes her further, and she begins considering everywhere Rebecca may have visited and things she may have touched during her life. This is when the narrator thinks about the book under her pillow that Rebecca gave to Maxim, I had a book that she had taken in her hands and I could see her turning to that first white page, smiling as she wrote, and shaking the bent nib. Max from Rebecca. It must have been his birthday, and she had put it amongst her other presents on the breakfast table. And they had laughed together as he tore off the paper and the string. She leant, perhaps over his shoulder, while he read. Max. She called him Max. It was familiar, gay, and easy on the tongue… How many times she must have written to him thus, in how many carried moods. Little notes, scrawled on half-sheets of paper, and letters, when he was away, page after page, intimate, their news. Her voice, echoing through the house, and down the garden, careless and familiar like the writing in the book (du Maurier 44) As seen here, the narrator concocts this entire fantasy scene where Rebecca gives Maxim the book, among a stack of other presents, for his birthday. Within this fantasy, the narrator imagines Rebecca and Maxim intimately laughing and smiling together while Rebecca closely leans over Maxim’s shoulder as he opens the presents. This leads the narrator to further imagine Rebecca writing Maxim other notes throughout their life together, as well as Rebecca’s voice echoing throughout Manderley while she was alive. Notably, this fantasy is not based in any sort of reality. Maxim and Rebecca’s relationship was filled with hatred and they never shared any moment of happiness together, explaining how this fantasy surrounding Rebecca’s gift to Maxim 30 is all inside the narrator’s imagination. In this way, the fantasy can be seen as the narrator’s idealized vision of Rebecca’s power as Mrs. de Winter and in her marriage with Maxim. Another scene displaying the narrator fabricating a fantasy space occurs after the narrator moves into Manderley and struggles to adapt to her new life with the legacy of Rebecca. This scene begins when the narrator accidentally breaks a cupid made of china in the morning room with her wedding present from Maxim’s sister. The narrator hides the broken pieces and forgets the whole thing until Mrs. Danvers accuses other staff members of stealing the valuable treasure. After coming clean to Maxim and Mrs. Danvers that she broke the cupid, the narrator learns the cupid made of china was a wedding gift to Rebecca and Maxim. At this point, Maxim becomes quiet in thought, and the narrator imagines he is thinking of Rebecca and his love for her, He is thinking about Rebecca, I said to myself. He is thinking how strange it was that a wedding present to me should have been the cause of destroying a wedding present to Rebecca. He is thinking about the cupid. He is remembering who gave it to Rebecca. He is going over in his mind how the parcel came and how pleased she was. Rebecca knew a lot about china. Perhaps he came into the room, and she was kneeling on the floor, wrenching open the little crate in which the cupid was packed. She must have glanced up at him, and smiled. ‘Look, Max,’ she would have said, ‘look what we’ve been sent.’ And she then would have plunged her hand down into the shavings and brought out the cupid who stood on one foot, his bow in his hand. ‘We’ll have it in the morning-room,’ she must have said, and he must have knelt down beside her, and they must have looked at the cupid together (du Maurier 151) 31 The narrator fantasizes about Rebecca and Maxim receiving the cupid and, upon opening it together, kneeling down beside one another as they admire the cupid happily together. Similar to the narrator’s fantasy of Rebecca giving Maxim the book for his birthday, this elaborate fantasy space the narrator concocts is not based in reality, but rather what the narrator believes Rebecca’s life was like as Mrs. de Winter. This fantasy also contrasts with the narrator opening her only wedding gift alone and her own experiences as the second Mrs. de Winter, suggesting the narrator is projecting her ideal self onto the Rebecca in her fantasies. Another important fantasy scene occurs one night when the narrator and Maxim are sitting down to dinner. Prior to dinner, the narrator is thinking about Mr. Favell’s recent visit. While thinking about Maxim’s dislike of Mr. Favell, the narrator thinks, “Rebecca, with a cousin like Jack Favell? It was wrong, out of all proportion. I decided he must be the skeleton in the family cupboard, and Rebecca, with her generosity, had taken pity on him from time to time and invited him to Manderley” (du Maurier 203). The narrator is imagining Rebecca as too good to keep in contact with her cousin, but kind enough to take pity and invite him to Manderley every now and then out of the kindness of her own heart. From here, the narrator imagines Rebecca to have defended Mr. Favell so strongly that Maxim and Rebecca were forced to come to an agreement that she could have Mr. Favell over while Maxim was away. This, as the narrator imagines, created a tension and “a slight awkwardness whenever [Favell’s] name was mentioned” (du Maurier 203). The narrator continues to concoct an entire fantasy illustrating this slight awkwardness between Rebecca and Maxim over dinner, I pictured Rebecca sitting where I sat now, picking up her fork for the fish, and then the telephone ringing and Firth coming into the room saying: ‘Mr. Favell on the phone, Madam, wishing to speak to you,’ and Rebecca would get up from her 32 chair with a quick glance at Maxim, who would not say anything, who would go on eating his fish. And when she came back, having finished her conversation, and sat down in her place again, Rebecca would begin talking about something different, in a gay, careless way, to cover up the little cloud between them. At first Maxim would be glum, answering in monosyllables, but little by little she would win his humour back again, telling him some story of her day, about someone she had seen in Kerrith, and when they had finished the next course he would be laughing again, looking at her and smiling, putting out his hand to her across the table (du Maurier 203) The narrator is only jolted back into reality by Maxim’s voice saying, “what the devil are you thinking about?” (du Maurier 203). According to Maxim, the narrator had listened as if she’d heard the telephone, turned and quickly glanced at Maxim while moving her lips, shook her head, and then shrugged her shoulders. The narrator was so engrossed in her fantasy of Rebecca, and had so identified with Rebecca, that she enacted Rebecca’s role in her fantasy. The narrator identifying with Rebecca can be seen as the narrator projecting her ideal self onto fantasy Rebecca. Again, similar to the other two fantasies previously mentioned in this chapter, this fantasy is not based in any sort of reality. Maxim and Rebecca did not have a relationship where they would happily eat dinner together or laugh and hold hands. Also similar to the previous two fantasy spaces, the narrator compares her idealized vision of Rebecca to her own current situation. This fantasy space the narrator fabricates involves Rebecca and Maxim eating dinner, just as the narrator and Maxim are when she creates the fantasy. Though while the fantasy of Rebecca ends with Maxim and Rebecca intimately talking, laughing, and smiling together, the 33 narrator’s own dinner with Maxim ends with Maxim treating her as a child and the two of them quarreling until she leaves the table. 2.3 The Reality of Rebecca This idealized vision of Mrs. de Winter that the narrator concocts of Rebecca in her fantasies is not based in reality. As the narrator learns near the end of the novel, Maxim killed Rebecca a year ago by shooting her in the chest and drowning her body and boat to make it look like a sailing accident. Maxim explains that he and Rebecca never loved one another, “‘You thought I loved Rebecca?’ he said, ‘You thought I killed her, loving her? I hated her, I tell you, our marriage was a farce from the very first. She was vicious, damnable, rotten through and through. We never loved each other, never had one moment of happiness together’” (du Maurier 275). Maxim explains that their entire marriage was a farce, and further describes how he learned who Rebecca truly was five days into being married to her when she told him all the horrible things she’d done. Maxim explains that he and Rebecca made a bargain that she would run his house and “make it the most famous show-place in all the country,” and she would do as she pleased, with whom she pleased, outside of Manderley (du Maurier 277). Maxim expresses that he would never get divorced out of pride, so all those years he and Rebecca lived a lie for the image of Manderley. He describes how they pretended to be in love and in a happy marriage in front of friends, family, and servants, though as time went on in Maxim and Rebecca’s sham of a marriage, Maxim details how Rebecca became careless regarding their image and would seduce people as a game and bring them back to Manderley. Maxim’s estate manager, Frank, and brother-in-law, Giles, are two examples of people Rebecca attempted to seduce to anger Maxim. Furthermore, the narrator learns more about Maxim’s dislike for Mr. Favell, who in addition to being Rebecca’s cousin, was also one of her frequent sexual partners. Maxim recalls how he 34 forbade Mr. Favell from Manderley because of their illicit relationship, as well as because of Mr. Favell’s filthy record, “Once again I warned her. I said if I found him here, anywhere on the estate, I’d shoot him. He had a black, filthy record… The very thought of him walking about the woods in Manderley, in places like the Happy Valley, made me mad. I told her I would not stand for it” (du Maurier 281). This greatly differs from the narrator’s fantasy imagining Rebecca inviting Mr. Favell to Manderley every now and then out of the kindness of her own heart because they were family, and Maxim putting up with it. Everything the narrator learns about the reality of Rebecca contrasts with her idealized image of Rebecca that she concocts in all of her fantasies. In this way, all of the fantasies about Rebecca and Maxim in love, opening birthday and wedding presents, arguing over Mr. Favell, and laughing over dinner, are far from the reality of Rebecca and Maxim’s actual relationship, and far from Rebecca’s actual position at Manderley or in the marriage. The narrator’s fantasies being so far from reality, suggest that her fantasies are not truly about Rebecca, but about the narrator’s projection of her own fantasy self as Mrs. de Winter. In this way, the narrator’s desire to have an identity, which she connects to being Mrs. de Winter, is projected onto the idealized vision of Rebecca as seen in all of her elaborate fantasy spaces. 35 Chapter 3: Familial Desire in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House Thirty-two-year-old Eleanor Vance has unhappily spent the last eleven years of her life caring for her invalid, and now deceased, mother. It is not until receiving Dr. Montague’s invitation to research paranormal activity at Hill House, that Eleanor feels something finally happens in her life. Upon arriving at Hill House, Eleanor meets Theodora, another visitor, Luke, the future owner of Hill House, and Doctor Montague, who orchestrated the entire event because he is writing a book on paranormal activity. After their arrival, the four begin experiencing supernatural phenomena such as cold spots, strange knockings, bloody messages, and ghostly voices. However, these scenes become more and more complicated as readers realize Eleanor is an unreliable narrator and the others at Hill House do not verifiably see many of the alleged supernatural events. This raises the question of what is real and what is happening inside Eleanor’s unconscious. This ambiguity gestures to the novella’s broader commentary that houses aren’t haunted, people are, and allows for a psychoanalytical approach to further understanding the novella. Jackson’s novella is thus a psychological horror story about a narrator’s struggle with desire, causing her to lose grasp of reality and hallucinate. In “Perception, supernatural detection, and gender in The Haunting of Hill House,” Melanie Anderson discusses how the history of Ballechin House, a Georgian manor built in Scotland, influenced Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Anderson references Jackson’s description of the Ballechin House haunting, I happened… to read a book about a group of people, nineteenth-century psychic researchers, who rented a haunted house and recorded their impressions of the things they saw and heard and felt in order to contribute a learned paper to the Society for Psychic Research. They thought that they were being terribly 36 scientific and proving all kinds of things, and yet the story that kept coming through their dry reports was not at all the story of a haunted house, it was the story of several earnest, I believe misguided, certainly determined people, with their differing motivations and backgrounds (Anderson 37-38) Jackson’s account that the Ballechin House was a story of “misguided” people with “differing motivations and backgrounds” positions Jackson’s belief that the supernatural at Ballechin House was influenced by the researchers desires and pasts (Anderson 37-38). Knowing this is the story that influenced Jackson’s writing in The Haunting of Hill House, suggests Eleanor’s perception of the supernatural at Hill House is also influenced by her personal motivations and desires and does not actually exist. Anderson explains how Jackson is not interested in actual ghosts, but rather what “possibility that ghosts (and their accompanying narrative) offer for exploring the human mind, emotions, and identity” (Anderson 38). Building off Anderson’s approach to understanding Jackson’s novella, this chapter focuses on how the human mind and emotions, specifically desire, affect Eleanor’s perception of the hauntings at Hill House. Through reading Jackson’s novella in tandem with Slavoj Žižek’s Looking Awry, it will be argued that Eleanor hallucinates several of the hauntings at Hill House which are prompted by her desire to belong in a familial structure. I begin this chapter by discussing Slavoj Žižek’s first chapter in Looking Awry in order to explain how a subject’s desire can distort its perception of reality. To accomplish this, I start by explaining the circular relationship between a subject and its object of desire, before moving onto discussing the presence of the objet petit a. I then relate Žižek’s theory to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, by describing Eleanor’s reproducing desire to belong in a familial structure and argue this circular movement of desire causes her to hallucinate supernatural 37 phenomena throughout the novella. My next step is to deeply analyze Eleanor’s previous and current familial relationships in order to defend my stance that Eleanor’s object of desire is to belong in a familial structure. From here, I move onto close reading The Haunting of Hill House in order to showcase specific scenes where Eleanor’s desire is continuously reproduced. This is proven through analyzing Eleanor’s hallucinations, as well as observing repeating patterns of feelings and thoughts that transpired directly prior to her hallucinations. Next, the chapter discusses the reoccurring figure of a child in Eleanor’s hallucinations and examines what the reoccurring figure means in relation to her desire, before moving on and concluding the chapter with a deeper look at Mrs. Dudley and Eleanor’s roles as caretakers. 3.1 ‘Looking Awry’ at The Haunting of Hill House In the first chapter of Looking Awry, Slavoj Žižek analyzes how desire influences and distorts perceptions of reality. To conquer this distortion of reality and help reveal the presence of visible aspects that would have otherwise remained unperceived, Žižek instructs readers to ‘look awry’ through the lens of desire. By outlining Zeno’s paradoxes through a Lacanian perspective and analyzing several short stories, films, and novels, Žižek begins explaining the process by illustrating a subject’s relation to an object of desire. For instance, Žižek explains the known paradox from The Iliad about a pursuer always chasing after a fugitive but never catching him, and the fugitive always running but never able to clearly escape his pursuer. This shows how the subject, the pursuer, gets closer and closer to the object, the fugitive, but is never able to attain it and vice versa. In other words, the object “is always missed; all we can do is encircle it,” explaining how the object of desire always evades our grasp, only reproducing our desire (Žižek 6). This reproduction of desire, its circular movement of never being fulfilled or forgotten, is what posits the ‘objet petit a,’ which is not the object of desire, but the object cause of desire. 38 The objet petit a is a “surplus of confusion and perturbation introduced by desire in to so-called ‘objective reality’” (Žižek13). In reality, and through an objective gaze, the objet petit a is nothing. It is only when looking awry, through the angle of desire, that the objet petit a is rendered visible, “In other words, the object a is always, by definition, perceived in a distorted way, because outside this distortion, ‘in itself,’ it does not exist” (Žižek 13). Through a distorted perception, the objet petit a assumes the shape of ‘something’ that is dependent on the subject’s desire (Žižek 13). For instance, the objet petit a can take the form of apparitions, hallucinations, fantasy spaces, smoke, and many other shapes and forms. Analyzing Žižek’s first chapter in Looking Awry in tandem with the paranormal activity in The Haunting of Hill House, renders a reading where several of the supernatural occurrences are hallucinations formulated by Eleanor’s desire. In this way, these paranormal activities that only Eleanor verifiably perceives are not actually real, but instead create a lens that displays the real of desire. Thus, I will suggest here that Eleanor’s desire for a familial structure, her object of desire, causes her to hallucinate supernatural activity. Žižek says, “the realization of desire does not consist in its being ‘fulfilled,’ ‘fully satisfied,’ it coincides rather with the reproduction of desire as such, with its circular movement” (Žižek 9). Similarly, Eleanor’s desire for a family unit is reproduced continuously throughout the novella. 3.2 Familial Relationships and Desire As Jen Cadwallader notes in “Picnicking at Hill House: Shirley Jackson’s Gothic Vision of Heaven,” a common interpretation of The Haunting of Hill House “favors a reading of Eleanor as the victim of bad parenting, particularly bad mothering, or ‘smothering’” (Cadwallader 885). This common interpretation is often supported through analyzing Eleanor’s strained relationship with her now deceased mother, and her current relationship with the maternal presence of Hill 39 House. This paper adds to this conversation, but instead of focusing on the maternal, this chapter argues Eleanor desires a familial structure, and more specifically, a familial structure with the other researchers she meets at Hill House. At the beginning of the novella, Eleanor is introduced in relation to her strained and resentful relationships with her uncaring sister and now deceased mother, “Eleanor Vance was thirty-two years old when she came to Hill House. The only person in the world she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister” (Jackson 3). Eleanor hates her mother who she has spent the past eleven years of her youth caring for in spite of “small guilts and small reproaches, constant weariness, and unending despair” (Jackson 3). She hates her uncaring sister, who cares more about their shared car than she does about Eleanor, and she hates how long she has spent alone “with no one to love” (Jackson 3). In introducing Eleanor in relation to her troubled familial relationships and longing to be loved, the novella lays the groundwork to understanding Eleanor’s desire to belong in a familial structure. It is while living in a small room at her sister’s house that Eleanor receives an invitation from Doctor Montague to observe supernatural phenomena at Hill House. Upon accepting Doctor Montague’s invitation, Eleanor is driving to Hill House when she sees two stone lions and fantasizes two separate dreams where she belongs to a familial structure: “A little 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,” and, “I will walk up low stone steps past stone lions guarding and into a courtyard where a fountain plays and the queen waits, weeping, for the princess to return. She will drop her embroidery when she sees me… And we shall live happily ever after” (Jackson 12,13). Both fantasies illustrate a desire for a maternal presence and to belong to a certain class. In the first fantasy, a little old lady takes on a maternal presence by caring for Eleanor’s health and providing food for her. In the second fantasy, a queen waits 40 weeping for her daughter to return, showing a maternal presence missing her child. This maternal part of Eleanor’s fantasies comments on Eleanor’s own missing maternal presence in her life with her mother being ill the last eleven years and Eleanor having to give up her adolescence to take on the maternal position. Also notable in both fantasies, is a commentary on class. In the first, the old lady carries a silver tea tray and provides fine wine, in the second the mother is a queen waiting for her princess to return to the castle. Instead of silver trays, fine wine, and waiting mothers, Eleanor spent her youth, “Caring for her mother, lifting a cross old lady from her chair to her bed, setting out endless little trays of soup and oatmeal” (Jackson 4). Eleanor’s fantasies thus represent scenarios where she feels a sense of security, something and someone she can depend on, not vice versa. After Eleanor’s arrival at Hill House, she meets Theodora, Luke, and Doctor Montague. As the four find rhythm living together, their relationship starts to resemble that of a family. In “‘Help Eleanor Come Home’: Monstrous Maternity in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House,” Lynne Evans observes this evolving relationship and says, “Dr. Montague is the ‘infallible’ father who has ‘chose[n]… to bring [Eleanor] safely to him and to Hill House,” “Luke is the son who ‘would inherit Hill House,” and “Theodora is the sexually aware elder sister who, unlike Eleanor, was not a ‘Girl Scout’” (Evans 103). Of importance to this chapter, Eleanor takes the position of a child, and further a child who was wanted and, as Evans explains, was specifically chosen by Doctor Montague. On the first morning after breakfast, the group are heading towards the sitting room when Eleanor thinks to herself, “They were a family, greeting one another with easy informality and going to the chairs they had used last night at dinner, their own places at the table” (Jackson 71). Eleanor’s comments that they are a family because they greet each other informally and all have a designated spot, illustrates her desire to simply belong somewhere with people who care and 41 know about her. In “Walking Alone Together: Family Monsters in The Haunting of Hill House,” Richard Pascal discusses Eleanor’s repeated phrase: ‘journeys end in lovers meeting,’ and says, The perfect love she yearns for so blurrily need not even be amatory in any sense. Thus, her extreme desire for all embracing maternal or paternal affection also falls within the range of the ‘journeys end’ catchphrase’s implication: the lovers who meet may be—may as well be—parent and child. More broadly still, her beloved may be a group rather than an individual—the nuclear family thought of as a warmly embracing nexus of ‘lovers meeting’ (Pascal 477) Pascal asserting that ‘lovers’ can be “a group rather than an individual” aids this chapter’s discussion of Eleanor seeing the other researchers at Hill House as her desirous family unit. Though as time goes on, Eleanor begins to feel distanced from the group through being excluded or doubted. Knowing Eleanor now sees the others as part of a familial structure, these moments of being excluded distort her perception of reality. This is because Eleanor’s object of desire, a familial structure, is never attainable or forgotten, and is thus continuously reproduced. This reproduction is noticeable in Eleanor repeating the ‘journey’s end’ catchphrase fourteen times from the start of the novella to the end. This continuously reproduces her desire and causes her perception of reality to be distorted. For instance, right before deciding to drive her car into a tree, Eleanor thinks to herself, Hill House is not as easy as they are; just by telling me to go away they can’t make me leave, not if Hill House means me to stay. ‘Go away, Eleanor,’ she chanted aloud, ‘go away, Eleanor, we don’t want you any more, not in our Hill House, go away…They can’t turn me out or shut me out or laugh at me or hide from me; I won’t go, and Hill House belongs to me (Jackson 181) 42 It is only as she’s feeling the others are laughing at her or hiding from her that she loses grasp of reality and drives her car into a tree. In other words, Eleanor’s feelings of isolation and exclusion cause her to lose her grasp on reality, which reproduces her desire and drives her to attempt to stay with Hill House forever. 3.3 Exclusion and Hallucinations On the researchers’ second morning at Hill House, they are all gathering in the sitting room when Luke discovers the words, “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME,” written in chalk in the long hallway (Jackson 107). Upon seeing the words, Eleanor thinks about how it is her name chosen and not the others and looks at the group while thinking, “I am the one chosen, and she said beggingly, ‘Did I do something to attract attention, more than anyone else?’” (Jackson 108). Eleanor becomes frantic with fear rambling about how it is her name, “it is me, she thought. It is my name standing out there so clearly,” and says, “It knows my name, doesn’t it? It knows my name” (Jackson 107). At this point, Eleanor is claiming the attention of all with her ramblings and turning from Theodora to the doctor to Luke asking if they wrote it, when Theodora suggests Eleanor wrote it herself. Eleanor’s fear turns to anger as she starts deflecting and saying Theodora is the one who always needs the attention on her. This involves Eleanor shouting and stamping her foot. When the others begin laughing because they think the situation is over, the doctor says Eleanor was just afraid and Eleanor thinks, “How simple he is, how transparent; he believes every silly thing he has ever heard. He thinks, even that Theodora shocked me out of hysteria. She smiled at him and thought, Now I am back in the fold” (Jackson 109). This shift in Eleanor’s character suggests the readers are only privy to a handful of Eleanor’s thoughts and actions and informs readers that Eleanor’s biggest concern is being ‘in the fold.’ Similar to the chalk writing scene, Theodora finds, “HELP ELEANOR COME HOME ELEANOR,” written in 43 a red substance on her bedroom wall and clothing. Theodora instantly accuses Eleanor, and arguably Eleanor does seem suspicious. For instance, upon seeing the red message, Eleanor instructs Theodora to call Luke and the doctor so they can see, and Theodora responds “‘Why?’ … ‘Wasn’t it to be just a little private surprise for me? A secret just for the two of us?’” and makes no move to call the others (Jackson 113). Eleanor immediately goes and calls the doctor and Luke and says, “‘She’s hysterical. Someone- something- has gotten red paint in her room, and she’s crying over her clothes’ Now I could not have put it more fairly than that, she thought, turning to follow them. Could I have put it more fairly than that? She asked herself, and found that she was smiling” (Jackson 114). When Luke and the doctor come, Eleanor exclaims how hysterical Theodora is and proves how calm and collected she is at seeing the scene. Both Eleanor’s persistence in ensuring Luke and the doctor see the message at the same moment Theodora does, as well as her framing of Theodora as the hysterical one while she remains calm, suggests Eleanor is simultaneously ensuring her place in the group while excluding Theodora. Almost as if redoing the chalk writing scene but in an attempt to have Theodora be the hysterical one while she remains “in the fold” (Jackson 109). Of course, this attempt is in vain as shortly after when researchers are discussing the scene, Eleanor begins talking about her feelings of surrendering and the doctor and Luke both exclaim “surrender?” (Jackson 118). Eleanor is taken aback and at a loss for words, when Luke says, “She has done this before,” and the doctor gravely responds, “I know” (Jackson 118). This interaction positions Eleanor on the outside of the group through questioning her sanity, and places her stay at Hill House on precarious grounds. A few hours later, Eleanor awakens in the middle of the night holding Theodora’s hand and hears in the room next to hers a baby babbling, gasping, crying, and saying, “‘Go away, go away, don’t hurt me,’ and, after, sobbing, ‘Please don’t hurt me. Please let me go home,’ and 44 then the little sad crying again” (Jackson 120). Eleanor screams, “STOP IT,” waking up Theodora, who is across the room and who hears no baby sounds whatsoever (Jackson 120). Not only does Eleanor hallucinate the baby sounds, but she also hallucinates Theodora holding her hand, because Theodora is across the room more than an arm’s distance away. This hallucination occurring directly after Eleanor feels distanced from Luke, Theodora, and the doctor is no coincidence, it is because Eleanor feels a loss of security in her desired family unit that her desire is reproduced and causes her to hallucinate a baby crying. Another scene where Eleanor feels distanced from the others and hallucinates, occurs after Eleanor and Theodora fight. Theodora is mocking Eleanor for thinking she will live happily ever after with Luke, when Eleanor storms outside and Theodora follows her. Eleanor thinks to herself, “She could still feel Theodora’s hand on her arm, but Theodora was distant, locked away; it was bitterly cold, with no human warmth near” (Jackson 129). At this point, Eleanor is feeling alone and distanced from everyone. As she bites back a sob, she sees something move up in the distance, Their eyes blinded with the light of sun and rich color; incredibly, there was a picnic party on the grass in the garden. They could hear the laughter of the children and the affectionate, amused voices of the mother and father; the grass was richly, thickly green, the flowers were colored red and orange and yellow, the sky was blue and gold, and one child wore a scarlet jumper and raised its voice again in laughter tumbling after a puppy over the grass. There was a checked tablecloth spread out, and, smiling, the mother leaned over to take up a plate of bright fruit (Jackson 130) 45 Theodora screams at Eleanor to run, and as Eleanor runs through where the family was just sitting, she realizes the family was never there and it was just “weeds growing blackly in the darkness” (Jackson 130). When the two get inside, Eleanor still claims she saw a picnic, but notably Theodora never agrees. Theodora simply says Eleanor’s name over and over again while putting her head against Eleanor’s. This picnic scene, as Cadwallader’s article notices, captures the “1950s LIFE magazine images and Coca-Cola advertisements” showing a happy family full of affection and amusement while they are “indulging in the physical pleasures of puppies and food” (Cadwallader 893). Eleanor hallucinating a happy family having a picnic directly after she feels her desirous familial structure slipping away is once again not a coincidence. Eleanor feels her desirous family unit is getting further and further away, causing her desire to be reproduced in a circular movement, which can be seen in the hallucination of the family picnic. In analyzing the picnic scene, Pascal importantly notices the color of the child’s sweater and comments the sweater is “so like the red sweater that is [Eleanor’s] one flamboyant article of clothing” (Pascal 478). As seen before in the novella, this positions Eleanor as the child in the hallucination, but Cadwallader’s article reminds us that, But of course Hill House is not a lyric meditation on happy reunions, and reading Eleanor only as a child-like figure is to ignore the role of caretaker she also holds. It is to overlook the figure of the mother, holding her tray, just as frozen in the eternal moment of the scene as her child. To reconsider the feminine heaven Jackson offers readers is to look at the other quality of picnicking—not space, but act (Cadwallader 893) 46 Here, Cadwallader is commenting on Eleanor’s past as her mother’s caretaker and suggesting this scene does not only comment on Eleanor’s childlike dreams, but also limitations existing in maternal position. On the final day of Eleanor’s stay at Hill House, and her final full day alive, Eleanor is excluded by everyone at the house. As Eleanor, Theodora, and Luke walk down to the brook together, the others tell Eleanor to go single file ahead of them, but when Eleanor gets to the brook, she finds that they did not follow her. When she returns, Eleanor says, “I waited for you by the brook—,” Theodora responds, “We decided to stay here where it was cool, We thought you heard us calling you. Didn’t we, Luke?” (Jackson 159). Of course, Luke and Theodora never called out for Eleanor, and Eleanor realizes she is being excluded and mocked by them. Eleanor spends the rest of the day “hidden in deep shadows” watching the others from afar, marking her position as an outsider (Jackson 161). Further, when everyone collects in the sitting room after dinner to converse, the doctor and Luke play chess, Arthur, Theodora, and Mrs. Montague talk, and Eleanor is notably not included in either and sits alone. As Eleanor is sitting, she hears someone pacing in the center of the room, but when she looks, that spot of the room is vacant. Then, Eleanor hears singing in addition to pacing coming from the center of the room, Go walking through the valley Go walking through the valley Go walking through the valley As we have done before (167) But again, when Eleanor looks at the center of the room no one is there. The voice, which she believes to be a child’s, continues singing and the center of the room remains visibly empty. Eleanor realizes no one else hears the sounds, and when the presence makes a move to leave, she 47 feels “the slight movement of air as the footsteps came close to her, and something almost brushed her face; perhaps there was a tiny sigh against her cheek, and she turned in surprise” (Jackson 167). As the presence leaves, Eleanor looks around the room again and sees Luke and the doctor still playing chess, while Arthur, Mrs. Montague, and Theodora are still talking. Just as with the picnic scene and the hand-holding scene, right before Eleanor sees and hears something that the others do not, she feels separated from the group. This feeling of isolation stands in opposition to her desire to belong in a familial structure and causes her to hallucinate. Just as Žižek’s example from The Iliad about a pursuer getting closer and closer to the fugitive but never attaining it, Eleanor gets closer and closer to her desired family unit but is ultimately distanced, only causing her desire to be reproduced. Later after everyone has gone to bed, Eleanor wakes up while the others are sleeping and allegedly hears her mother calling for her to “Come along” (Jackson 169). Eleanor follows the voice upstairs where the voice instructs her to come closer and closer, “Coming? Coming?” (Jackson 170). Ultimately the voice leads Eleanor to the library, she “turned and ran, without stopping, into the library. And here I am, she thought. I am inside. It was not cold at all, but deliciously warm… No stone lions for me, she thought, no oleanders; I have broken the spell of Hill House and somehow come inside. I am home, she thought…” (Jackson 171). Earlier in the novella we learn the library reminds Eleanor of her mother, “‘I can’t go in there,’ Eleanor said, surprising herself, but she could not… ‘My mother—’ she said, not knowing what she wanted to tell them, and pressed herself against the wall” (Jackson 75). Assumedly, the library reminds Eleanor of how she had “‘to read aloud to [mother] for two hours every afternoon. Love stories’—and she smiled a little, looking into the fire. But that’s not all, she thought, astonished at herself, that doesn’t tell what it was like” (Jackson 62). After entering the library, Eleanor dangerously climbs the iron staircase and completely loses her 48 grasp on reality. Not only does she keep exclaiming she is finally home, but when the other researchers shout up at her, she does not remember who they are, For a minute she could not remember who they were (had they been guests of hers in the house of the stone lions? Dining at her long table in the candlelight? Had she met them at the inn, over the tumbling stream? Had one of them come riding down a green hill, banners flying? Had one of them run beside her in the darkness? And then she remembered, and they fell into place where they belonged) (Jackson 172) Eleanor refuses to enter the library until this final night, suggesting when she finally enters the library everything changes. Her association of the library with her mother, and her complete loss of reality when entering the library emphasizes that if attained, her objet petit a, the maternal presence, would be the breaking point. 3.4 The ‘Child’ in Eleanor’s Hallucinations Notably, all of Eleanor’s hallucinations involve a child. When waking up and believing herself to be holding Theodora’s hand, Eleanor hallucinates a child crying, gasping, and babbling. When believing herself to see a family enjoying a picnic on Hill House grounds, Eleanor hallucinates a happy child being cared for and fed by a maternal presence. Further, a child that represents Eleanor by wearing a red sweater that, as Pascal’s article notes, is Eleanor’s “one flamboyant article of clothing” (Pascal 478). When believing herself to be visited and sung to by a presence in the sitting room, Eleanor hallucinates a child singing, pacing, and touching her face. This relates to Eleanor’s position as a child in the familial structure with the other researchers at Hill House where Doctor Montague is the father, and Theodora, Luke, and Eleanor are his children. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Evan’s article notices this and says, “Dr. 49 Montague is the ‘infallible’ father who has ‘chose[n]… to bring [Eleanor] safely to him and to Hill House,” “Luke is the son who ‘would inherit Hill House,” and “Theodora is the sexually aware elder sister who, unlike Eleanor, was not a ‘Girl Scout’” (Evans 103). Pascal’s article also notices Eleanor’s journey away from adulthood and back to childhood and calls it a “sort of bildungsroman in reverse” (Pascal 480). This is interesting when considering how Eleanor was forced to give up a crucial part of her youth to care for her invalid mother for eleven years. In this way, these hallucinations of children are no coincidence, but symbolize the missing childhood Eleanor feels herself lacking. The maternal presence at Hill House and Eleanor’s memories of her mother are how Eleanor realizes she lacks a happy childhood, meaning the maternal presences in Eleanor’s life are her objet petit a. This is all to say, Eleanor desires to belong in a familial structure where she takes the positions of one of the children, because she feels she is missing part of her youth by being forced to grow up too fast. This next section of the chapter further analyzes Eleanor’s shift away from adulthood and what it means in terms of domesticity, while also taking a deeper look at Hill House’s caretaker Mrs. Dudley’s role in the hauntings of Hill House to further support the argument that Hill House is not haunted by supernatural phenomena. Eleanor’s movement away from adulthood and back towards childhood can also be read as a fight against the limitations of domesticity. The eleven years Eleanor spent as her mother’s caretaker with roles such as cooking, cleaning, and entertaining her mother, illustrate the confinement of domesticity that Eleanor is running away from in her “bildungsroman in reverse” (Pascal 480). Similarly, Mrs. Dudley’s role as Hill House’s caretaker, a role she and her husband have fulfilled “ever since anyone can remember,” is to cook and clean after the guests (Jackson 50 47). Arguably, Mrs. Dudley is also fighting against the limitations of domesticity behind the scenes, through haunting the visitors at Hill House. Holly Blackford’s article, “Haunted Housekeeping Fatal Attractions of Servant and Mistress in Twentieth Century Female Gothic Literature,” argues Eleanor as an uncanny double to Mrs. Dudley. Blackford notes Eleanor’s consistent desire for a house and family and argues that Eleanor does not “understand Mrs. Dudley as a warning that belonging to a house is deadening to the soul” (Blackford 253). Blackford supports this through analyzing Mrs. Dudley’s automaton responses and actions throughout the novella and discusses how “servants who become increasingly isolated in their roles within post-industrialized culture” lose their humanity (Blackford 253). While in agreement with Blackford on the limitations of domesticity and the uncanny doubling of Mrs. Dudley and Eleanor, this thesis argues Mrs. Dudley does fight against the limitations of being a domestic caretaker through haunting the researchers in order to claim the house herself. In this way, Mrs. Dudley is not ‘deadened to the soul’ by the limitations of her domestic role, but rather pushed to fight back behind the scenes. In discussing the history of Hill House that Dr. Montague tells Eleanor, Theo, and Luke, Blackford explains that “Theo identifies with the lone spinster, becoming angry at the spinster’s sister, and Eleanor with the companion, shocked at the suicide and wishing the companion had not done it” (Blackford 250). This chapter adds Mrs. Dudley to this doubling, and positions Mrs. Dudley as the younger sister who was cheated out of her inheritance and acts cruelly and full of spite towards the companion. Taking this a step further, this chapter provides textual evidence arguing that Mrs. Dudley is the descendent of the youngest Crain sister, and that she haunts the researchers in order to take back what she sees as rightfully hers. 51 When observing a family portrait in the house, the researchers see a tall masculine figure in the middle and declare it to be Hugh Crain. On either side of Hugh Crain in the portrait are “his two attendant nymphs ... his daughters,” and the researchers easily decipher the daughter on the right to be the eldest daughter with her companion next to her (Jackson 79). This means the second daughter is on Crain’s left, and when the group look at her Luke declares it “is Dudley, done from life” (Jackson 79). Mrs. Dudley’s resemblance to the second Crain daughter suggests she is a descendant of the second Crain daughter, the daughter who was cheated out of her inheritance of the house by the elder sister’s companion and the Sanderson family many years ago. This resemblance is not the first time it is suggested the Dudley’s are more than just caretakers at Hill House. When Eleanor first meets Mr. Dudley at the entrance to Hill House, Mr. Dudley attempts to refuse Eleanor entrance and Eleanor thinks to herself, “she had certainly made him open the gate for her, but did he think of the house and gardens inside as his own?” (Jackson 22). Supporting this, the researchers found “a vegetable garden tenderly nourished by the Dudley’s” in the yard, raising the question of why the Dudley’s tenderly cared for a garden at a house they do not live in and claim so strongly to hate (Jackson 110). Further, Doctor Montague is explaining how the Dudley’s have cared for Hill House “ever since anyone can remember,” and Theodora says, “Mrs. Dudley is probably the only true surviving member to whom Hill House really belongs. I think she is only waiting until all the Sanderson heirs- that’s you, Luke- die off in various horrible ways, and then she gets the house and the fortune in jewels buried in the cellar” (Jackson 47). While Theodora may be joking in the moment, the idea is not that farfetched. Not only do the Dudley’s know their way around the maze of Hill House, but they also selected the rooms the researchers are staying in. This would allow the Dudley’s an idea of where everyone is located at nighttime, notably night is when the house is haunted, and 52 allow them the element of surprise. This section of the chapter focuses on alleged supernatural scenes that several of the researchers experience and track the Dudley’s involvement in order to argue Mrs. Dudley, like Eleanor, is fighting against the limitations of being a domestic caretaker. One of the believed paranormal activities occurs in the middle of the night, but only Eleanor and Theodora experience it. While the doctor and Luke are chasing a dog around the house and out into the garden, Eleanor and Theodora are locked in their rooms while there is crashing, loud knocks, and laughter coming from outside their door, little pattings came from around the doorframe, small seeking sounds, feeling the edges of the door, trying to sneak a way in. The doorknob was fondled…. The little sticky sounds moved on around the doorframe and then, as though a fury caught whatever was outside, the crashing came again, and Eleanor and Theodora saw the wood of the door tremble and shake, and the door move against its hinges (Jackson 96) As the doctor says the next morning, “we cannot say, ‘It was my imagination,’ because other people were there too” (Jackson 103). This erases the possibility that Eleanor hallucinates the situation as with the other cases mentioned above, and suggests there is another explanation for what happened. The researchers believe the house is doing the haunting, meaning there would be no physical presence knocking on the doors, but rather the house creating the noises itself. Though arguably, the house is not doing the haunting because the knocking and crashing stopped when Luke and the doctor came upstairs in sight of the girls’ door, A thin little giggle came, in a breath of air through the room, a little mad rising laugh, the smallest whisper of a laugh, and Eleanor heard it all up and down her back, a little gloating laugh moving past them around the house, and then she 53 heard the doctor and Luke calling from the stairs and, mercifully, it was over (Jackson 96-97) This suggests whatever was knocking and banging on the door had a physical presence that it did not want Luke and doctor to see as they came running up the stairs. Mr. and Mrs. Dudley would have been able to enact this situation, as one would have been able to draw Luke and the doctor outside, which notably happened significantly earlier than the knocking started, “Luke and I were awakened earlier than you ladies, clearly; we have been up and about, outside and in, for better than two hours, led on what you perhaps might allow me to call a wild-goose chase,” while the other went and knocked outside the girls’ door unnoticed (Jackson 99). Further, not only does Mrs. Dudley “walk without making a sound,” but Theodora and Eleanor notice her ease of moving between pathways throughout the house, “‘Our good Mrs. Dudley likes doors, doesn’t she? She can certainly’– and their eyes met- ‘get out fast in any direction if she wants to’” (Jackson 32, 82). Mrs. Dudley’s ability to move around the house untraceable suggests her ability to pull off this stunt in the middle of the night. Lastly, the researchers purposefully left all the house’s doors open that night before bed, but when Luke and the doctor come inside from chasing the dog, they notice how, “The front door was closed. So were all the other doors” (Jackson 98). Since the beginning of the researchers’ stay, Mrs. Dudley has continuously closed every door the researcher left open. This small detail of all the doors being closed indicates it was Mr. and Mrs. Dudley who visited Hill House that night and haunted the researchers. A similar scene happens later in the novella when the researchers are all gathering in the doctor’s room because they believe something supernatural is going to happen that night. First, they hear pounding come up the stairs “crashing on each step,” and then they hear knocking, patting, and turning of the doorknob (Jackson 147). Once hearing the first pounds, Theodora 54 relates the situation to the previous knocking on her and Eleanor’s door, “Seems like we’ve had this pounding act before; is it going to start everything all over again?” (Jackson 147). This suggests Mr. and Mrs. Dudley are behind this trick as well and are haunting the researchers once again to scare them from the house. Further, the noises and actions seem to mimic the first knocking scene with “little caressing touch(es)” on the doorknob, and “patting and fondling the doorframe, as though wheedling to be let in,” every sound and action achievable by Mr. and Mrs. Dudley outside the door (Jackson 149). Interestingly, Dr. Montague believes what occurred in the night was a storm his wife stirred up, “I cannot believe my wife stirred up that storm, but I do admit that one more word about pure love…” (Jackson 151). The others do not respond to the doctor nor seem to agree with him, and arguably it seems unlikely his wife stirred up a storm as there was knocking on only their door. This is discovered the next morning when neither Mrs. Montague nor Arthur, who were in different rooms than the room the researchers were in, recount any strange noises from the night before. Arthur says there was a tree branch tapping against his window all night, while Mrs. Montague says she slept horrible because of the poor air circulation, but neither mention a storm. This suggests that it was Mr. and Mrs. Dudley knocking only on the doctor’s door down the hall. While the knocking is heard by Eleanor, Theodora, Luke, and the doctor and is the product of Mr. and Mrs. Dudley trying to scare the researchers, Eleanor also hallucinates in this scene as she hears additional sounds the others do not, “Eleanor, rocking to the pounding, which seemed inside her head as much as in the hall, holding tight to Theodora, said, ‘They know where we are,’ and the others, assuming that she meant Arthur and Mrs. Montague, nodded and listened” (Jackson 147). This moment clarifies to readers that what Eleanor believes is happening is different than what Theodora, Luke, and the doctor believe are happening, and further explains Eleanor believes the sounds are inside her head. Moments later, 55 Eleanor hears the babbling sound from earlier in the novella, “and there was again the little babbling murmur which Eleanor remembered; Am I doing it? She wondered quickly, is that me? And heard the tiny laughter beyond the door, mocking her” (Jackson 149). Windows breaking, picture frames shattering, and excessive knocking becomes too much for Eleanor and she believes she has to give herself up to the house for it to stop, no; is it over for me. It is too much, she thought, I will relinquish my possession of this self of mine, abdicate, give over willingly what I never wanted at all; whatever it wants of me it can have. ‘I’ll come,’ she said aloud, and was speaking up to Theodora, who leaned over her. The room was perfectly quiet, and between the still curtains at the window she could see the sunlight (Jackson 150) After this, Eleanor wakes up in the room to find no windows broken, no picture frames shattered, and the others sitting peacefully by the window discussing the night’s haunting. While this second knocking scene can reasonably be explained as the Dudley’s attempting to scare off the researchers with the same tactics as before, Eleanor hallucinating is another byproduct. This hallucination involving children, like all of Eleanor’s other hallucinations, further argues Eleanor’s movement away from adulthood and back towards her missing childhood. This chapter does not seek to argue that Hill House is not haunted, merely that it is not haunted by paranormal activity. While Eleanor is haunted by her desire, Hill House is haunted by the Dudley’s. Mrs. Dudley’s haunting of Hill House can be seen as her fight for Hill House, and Eleanor’s hallucinations can be seen as her fight against adulthood. Both of these fights are against the limitations of domesticity and both women’s roles as domestic caretakers. 56 Conclusion The Haunting of Hill House, The Turn of the Screw, and Rebecca remain ambiguous from start to end and do not close down on any single reading. This ambiguity is possible because the textual evidence in all three novels simultaneously supports multiple different perspectives throughout the narratives without compromising any of the other possible readings. By remaining enigmatic, these texts give readers the means to take on an active role, as they are tasked with deciding for themselves which interpretation they believe. The existence of multiple readings sparks an ongoing debate among readers and scholars regarding what really happened in each narrative, which enables these texts to remain relevant in scholarly discussion many decades after their publication dates with new approaches and outlooks being continuously brought forward. It is through this perspective that this thesis is intended—to bring forward a new approach to interpreting these Gothic narratives with a psychoanalytical view on supernatural phenomena, hallucinations, and fantasy spaces. This thesis investigates The Turn of the Screw, Rebecca, and The Haunting of Hill House through a lens of desire in order to argue that reading these texts in tandem with desire provides an additional interpretation that would have otherwise remained hidden. In this way, reading through the lens of desire provides readers with a useful tool in approaching supernatural phenomena, hallucinations, and fantasy spaces in literature moving forward. This thesis is just an introduction to how analyzing a narrator’s desire can help uncover hidden meanings and motivations, countless other interpretations in literature are waiting to be revealed through the lens of desire. 57 Work Cited Anderson, Jill E. “The haunting of Fun Home: Shirley Jackson and Alison Bechdel’s queer Gothic neodomesticity.” Shirley Jackson, Influences and Confluences, edited by Melanie R. Anderson and Lisa Kröger, 2016, pp. 142-159. Anderson, Melanie R. “Perception, supernatural detection, and gender in The Haunting of Hill House.” Shirley Jackson, Influences and Confluences, edited by Melanie R. Anderson and Lisa Kröger, 2016, pp. 35-53. Ashton, Hilarie. “‘I’ll Come Back and Break Your Spell’: Narrative Freedom and Genre in The Haunting of Hill House.” Style, vol. 52, no. 3, 2018, pp. 268-286. Blackford, Holly. “Haunted Housekeeping: Fatal Attractions of Servant and Mistress in Twentieth-Century Female Gothic Literature.” Literature Interpretation Theory, vol. 16, no. 2, 2005, pp. 233-261. Brazzelli, Nicoletta. “Manderley in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: a haunted house.” Acme, vol. 73, no. 2, 2021, pp. 141-160. Cadwallader, Jen. “Picnicking at Hill House: Shirley Jackson’s Gothic Vision of Heaven.” Women’s Studies, vol. 49, no. 8, 2020, pp. 884-900. Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca. William Morrow Paperbacks, 2020. Evans, Lynne. “‘Help Eleanor Come Home’: Monstrous Maternity in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.” Canadian Review of American Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, 2020, pp. 102-120. Freud, Sigmund, David McLintock, and Hugh Haughton. The Uncanny. Penguin Books, New York, 2003. 58 Goddard, Harold C. “A Pre-Freudian Reading of the Turn of the Screw.” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 12, no.1, 1957, pp. 1-36. Haggerty, George. “‘Queer Company’: The Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House.” The Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, vol. 202, 2006, pp. 131-150. Harbord, Janet. “Between Identification and Desire: Rereading Rebecca.” Feminist Review, no. 53, 1996, pp. 95-107. Hallett, Nicky. “Did Mrs. Danvers Warm Rebecca’s Pearls? Significant Exchanges and the Extension of Lesbian Space and Time in Literature.” Feminist Review, no. 74, 2003, pp. 35-49. Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. Penguin Books, 2006. James, Henry. The Turn of the Screw. W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. Kenton, Edna. “Henry James to the Ruminant Reader: The Turn of the Screw.” Short Story Criticism, vol. 8, 1924, pp. 272-274. Kindig, Patrick. “The Laughing Child: Sex, Interpretation, and Laughter in Sigmund Freud’s ‘Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy’ and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.” Textual Practice, vol. 32, no. 8, 2018, pp. 1365-1381. Korkut-Nayki, Nil. “A Hauntological Reading of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.” English Studies at NBU, vol. 7, no. 1, 2021, pp. 21-36. Light, Alison. “‘Returning to Manderley’: Romance Fiction, Female Sexuality and Class.” Feminist Review, no. 16, 1984, pp. 7-25. Llompart Pons, Auba. “Patriarchal Hauntings: Re-reading Villainy and Gender in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.” Atlantis, vol. 35, no. 1, 2013, pp. 69-83. 59 Lundén, Rolf. “‘Not in any literal, vulgar way’: The Encoded Love Story of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw.” American Studies in Scandinavia, vol. 32, no. 2, 2000, pp. 30-44. Newman, Judie. “Shirley Jackson and the Reproduction of Mothering: The Haunting of Hill House.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, vol. 187, 2007, pp. 120-134. Pascal, Richard. “Walking Along Together: Family Monsters in The Haunting of Hill House.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 46, no. 4, 2014, pp. 464-485. Peterson, Teresa. “Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca: The Shadow and the Substance.” Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, 2009, pp. 53-66. Pyrhönen, Heta. “Bluebeard’s Accomplice: Rebecca as a Masochistic Fantasy.” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, vol. 38, no. 3, 2005, pp. 149-165. Sivinski, Stacy. “‘An invention… that bottled up a memory, like scent’: phantom fragrances in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.” Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 29, no. 8, 2020, pp. 860-869. Waldock, A.J.A. “Mr. Edmund Wilson and the Turn of the Screw.” Portuguese (Brazil). Modern Language Notes, vol. 62, no. 5, 1946, pp. 331-334. Williamson, Alan. “The Turn of the Screw and the Locus of Psychoanalytic Criticism.” Literary Imagination, vol. 16, no. 3, 2014, pp. 322-330. Wilson, Edmund. “The Ambiguity of Henry James.” The Hound and Horn, vol. 8, 1934, pp. 274-276. Wilson, Michael. “‘Absolute Reality’ and the Role of the Ineffable in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 48, no. 1, 2015, pp. 114-123. 60 Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. MIT Press, 1991.
Thesis/Dissertation
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Tomc, Sandra
Haunted by desire : hallucinations and fantasy spaces in Henry James's The turn of the screw, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, and Shirley Jackson's The haunting of Hill House
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