Sanya Walma
Stories (1/0)
The Psychology of The Haunting of Hill House
It's rare for a novel to genuinely earn the term “psychological horror.” Haunted house stories, along many others in the horror genre, tend to rely on our more primal responses to make an impression. Vampires, serial killers, and demonic spirits can be used effectively to disturb us, but rarely do creatures like these confront a person's identity, persona, and insecurities so palpably. With Shirley Jackson's novel, however, these are the essential elements at play. Through the delicate language used to express her characters' thoughts and feelings, built up with layers of personal experiences exacerbated by inexplicable forces, we're given a story that turns out the psyches of those characters for us to feel, empathize with, and above all, to share in their terror.
By Sanya Walma3 years ago in Horror