Primitivity, Irrationality, Insanity – Demons in Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson's horror stories, “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House, reflect the secularization of the modern, twentieth century which produced them. These works lack the overt supernatural: no vampire lurks in the gothic Hill House waiting to sup on the blood of innocent, defenseless women; no demon walks among the villagers in “The Lottery,” slowly concocting their damnation. Yet, despite this departure from such earlier elements of the genre, Jackson's stories are horrifying. Evil merely takes a different form in “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House: rather than being embodied in a figure external to and opposing the protagonists, evil is disembodied, an aspect of the mind and of human nature, emanating from the protagonists themselves – from their individual and collective psyches. In particular, Jackson explores group dynamics, ritual culture, and the human tendency to create – and the necessity of creating – dreams and stories by which to live. Underlying all of these, however, is a latent primitivity, irrationality, insanity – which, in the modern age of anxiety, godlessness, and self-fragmentation and -doubt, is, indeed, truly horrifying.

What strikes most readers about “The Lottery” is the sheer normality of the villagers: the children play, the men talk of “planting and rain, tractors and taxes” (1), and the women, in their “house dresses and sweaters...[exchange] bits of gossip” (1). By juxtaposing this apparent normality against the inhuman crime which the villagers commit, Jackson demonstrates the superficiality of what appears real and significant. In “The Lottery,” the things we base our lives upon and hope will hold up against evil – family, friendships – disintegrate into it. Jackson allows us to get a sense of what seems to be the villagers' tight-knit and warm community: when Mrs. Hutchinson arrives late, for example, we get a snippet of her comfortable conversation with Mrs. Delacroix before “the people [separate] good-humoredly to let her through” (2). The village thus seems like one of friends – except that it is difficult to describe them as such when they turn on one of their own. Mrs. Delacroix, in fact, who is the only woman we see Mrs. Hutchinson interact with, and with whom she does so in a decidedly friendly and familiar fashion, is among the first to turn on Mrs. Hutchinson, and does so with horrifying enthusiasm: “Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. 'Come on,' she said. 'Hurry up'” (7). Family, too, is something Jackson draws attention to, only to show it falling apart at the end of the story, when little Davy Hutchinson (along with the other Hutchinsons, presumably) advances towards his mother with pebbles in his hands. In the village, to say the least, appearances are deceiving.

In The Haunting of Hill House, too, reality is shown to be a fabrication. Eleanor altogether constructs what she presents as her life; when she tells Theo about her house, all the little details – the “white curtains..., little stone lions..., and...white cat” (64) – are things she noticed or imagined on her way to Hill House. As in “The Lottery” her relationships fall into patterns that suggest a superficial intimacy: for example, as critic Laura Miller has noted, Theo and Eleanor bond much the same way little girls do when they first meet (xvii), planning picnics, swapping various details about their lives, and finally deciding that they must be related (Jackson 38-39). They quickly become apparent best friends - “'Would you let them separate us now? Now that we've found out we're cousins?'” Theo asks Eleanor (38) – but as in “The Lottery,” Jackson invites us to recognize how quickly that veil of friendship disintegrates. The novel hints at Eleanor's latent dislike for Theo, akin to Mrs. Delacroix's dormant antipathy toward Mrs. Hutchinson: “[Eleanor] had never felt such uncontrollable loathing for any person before,” the novel states (116). Thus, in The Haunting of Hill House, as in “The Lottery,” Jackson demonstrates that the relationships, conversations, and activities that constitute daily life are fabricated and false. Eleanor's life is a series of fantasies that act as a veil. Hill House itself is a symbol of the deceptiveness of what we perceive as reality: the house does not look it, but it is ever so slightly off balance.

This – that what we perceive as reality is in fact not real at all – is disconcerting in and of itself. But Jackson's horror is more poignant: it explores what it is that our constructed realities are veiling and in so doing uncovers the primitive and irrational foundations of our lives - foundations which we strive to – but, as Jackson's works suggest, cannot - mask, ignore, forget, or transcend. In The Haunting of Hill House, this underlying irrationality is represented by the house itself. Critics and commentators often suggest that the house represents the irrational mind; as Stephen King notes in his informal discussion on the novel in Danse Macabre, “Stepping into Hill House is like stepping into the mind of a madman” (305). If we accept the compelling interpretation taken by King (and many others) that the hauntings in Hill House are not caused by actual ghosts but by telekinetic manifestations of Eleanor's psyche (King 307-308), the house becomes a symbol specifically of Eleanor's mind. The hauntings, then, can be traced back to Eleanor's childhood; they mimic the raining stones incident that occurred in her pubescent years. The hauntings thus derive from both the irrationality and unconscious narcissism of childhood and the explosive sexuality of the teenage years. From a psychoanalytical perspective, the hauntings are a manifestation of Eleanor's id, which, because she could not develop her individual self properly in her suppressive role as the passive and dutiful daughter, Eleanor could never properly subdue under a developed ego.

Eleanor's fantasies which she passes off as reality most literally are meant to veil something she lacks; she does not have a house of her own, for example, so she imagines one. Horror fiction author Anne Rivers Siddons has this to say regarding the symbol of the house:

[A] house is so much more than that...to most of us anyway, whether or not we are aware of it. It is an extension of our selves; it tolls in answer to one of the most basic chords mankind will ever hear. My shelter. My earth. My second skin. Mine. (King 287).

In creating a fantasy home and passing it off as reality, then, Eleanor is not only hiding the fact that she does not have a home, but more significantly, she is veiling the fact that she does not have an identity, a developed ego, a fixed thing to call “I.” Her attempts to create an identity for herself throughout the novel – by creating superficial relationships, for example, or by colouring her life with fairy-tale beliefs such as “journeys end in lovers meeting” - are futile, furthermore; her gradual appropriation by Hill House symbolizes, thus, her gradual reduction to nothing but her irrationality, her childishness.

The psychoanalytical concepts of the id and the ego are relevant in interpreting “The Lottery” as well. It is evident that within the village, there is a disturbing disjunct between what is presented on the surface (a village full of friendly, ordinary people) and what lies underneath (a mob of violent murderers): in a sense, the village itself has a civilized ego and a primitive id. It is significant, in this respect, that the children are the first to gather for the annual stoning; children are the most primitive members of society, those who have subdued their ids least of all. The ritual of the lottery itself is primitive, in fact; one may speculate that it has evolved from some kind of ancient fertility ritual: it takes place around the time of the summer solstice, in midsummer, like many pagan festivities; it demands a human sacrifice; furthermore, it has a superstitious basis: “'Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in june, corn be heavy soon,'” as Old Man Warner says (14).

While The Haunting of Hill House examines the irrational mind of the individual, “The Lottery” foregrounds the collective mind which, unfortunately, is no better. In Group psychology and the analysis of the ego, Freud argues the following regarding group dynamics:

The most remarkable and...important result of the formation of a group is the 'exaltation or intensification of emotion'...Men's emotions are stirred in a group to a pitch they they
seldom or never attain under other conditions; and it is a pleasurable experience for
those who are concerned to surrender themselves so unreservedly to their passions and
thus to become merged in the group and to lose the sense of the limits of individuality. (27)

Freud suggests, thus, that the collective mind is by its very nature regressive and primitive: “individuality” or ego fades away into the “'intensification of emotion'” - the id, in other words, becomes the driving force. His observations apply pertinently to “The Lottery” where it is as a unified mob, a collective “they,” that the villagers stone Mrs. Hutchinson, as the final lines of the story convey: “Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her” (7, emphasis mine). The irrationality we find in Eleanor is just as present among the villagers, despite the fact that the villagers act as a group while Eleanor cannot place herself successfully in a group: both demonstrate, as Freud calls it, “a regression in mental activity to an earlier stage such as we are not surprised to find among savages or children” (82). Just as Eleanor “surrenders” to Hill House, the individual villagers surrender to the group mentality - which is to say that both Eleanor and the villagers surrender to irrationality and primitivity.

Part of what makes Jackson's tales so horrifying is her implication that this irrationality, rather than resting somewhere in the unconscious and rearing its head now and again, is something that is ever-present. The narrator of “The Lottery” lists the annual stoning ritual along with various other seemingly ordinary events and gatherings that mark the calendar throughout the year - “the square dances, the teen club, the Halloween program” (1) – suggesting that perhaps these too (which exist even in our own societies) have some ritualistic, primitive basis. Similarly, Mr. Summers, the modern-pagan priest, not only conducts the lottery, but also presides over most other “civic activities” (1). All of these events take place at the Town Square which – if we accept the interpretation of the lottery as a primitive ritual – plays the role of the magic circle. Of course, the shift from a magic circle to a square in Jackson's story is significant: studies of religious and cult ceremonies have associated the circle with the “circular motion of heavenly bodies” (Aune 1790) – it represents the cyclicality and change of nature. In neopagan rites, the circle represents “the passing from one phase of life to another, and the shifting from one type of consciousness to another” (Pike 7829). The square, on the other hand, suggests nature's rigidity and entrapment. The villagers cannot escape their primitivity; it is at the heart of the village and spread throughout it.

One might argue that the story hints at a gradual movement away from primitivity: in some towns, the lottery is going out of fashion. Throughout the story, however, Jackson gives strong indications of the direction of sociocultural evolution, particularly through the character of Old Man Warner who, as the oldest denizen of the village, provides observations of the future through a perspective informed by the past. According to Old Man Warner, “It's not the way it used to be...people ain't the way they used to be” (6). We learn that certain other towns have given up the lottery; Warner, like many an old man today, blames the younger generation: “'Pack of crazy fools,' he said [of those considering giving up the lottery]...Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them” (4). This seems hopeful; future generations will become aware of the horrors of the lottery and put a stop to the primitive ritual. However, when we consider this possibility against the actual “young folk” depicted by Jackson in her story, the prediction loses credibility: the children are the most likely of all to give in to such primitivity. Old Man Warner also ironically claims that giving up the lottery is like “wanting to go back to living in caves” (4) – he truly believes that the lottery is, in fact, an indicator of advanced society, while, to the reader's outside perspective, it is apparent that the lottery preserves all the violence, fervour, irrationality, and superstition ascribed to primitive paganism. Thus, the novel is not hopeful about humanity: Jackson demonstrates its lack of progress and the impossibility of it transcending its own origins and foundations.

I began with the claim that Jackson's horror tales are unlike their predecessors because they lack, for example, vampires and demons; let me return to this assessment now. It is true that we never catch a glimpse of the Count Dracula in the halls of Hill House – but there is certainly something there preying upon Eleanor, who, with her undeveloped sense of self, is in many ways innocent and defenseless. And of course there are no discernible demons among the Joes, Steves, Nancies, and Janes of the village in “The Lottery,” but an early modern Christian, for example, would certainly recognize that the lottery is a demonic, pagan ritual. And after all, – vampires, monsters, ghosts, demons, werewolves, witches – what are these but symbolic representations of evil? And what is it we fear most of all? Dracula would not be frightening if he did not have the ability to transform us into bloodless, soulless beings incapable of being saved. Demons cannot damn those incapable of sinning. And so it is the evil within ourselves that horror has always explored – in the past, it has merely done so through externalized, supernatural, symbolic creatures. “The Lottery” and The Haunting of Hill House present, thus, a new horror – the modern-secular – but also a very ancient horror. These works examine the fragility of the happy yet superficial realities we have created for ourselves through stories, friendships, dreams, and rituals. Jackson looks through the veil of these realities to uncover the primitivity and irrationality which underlie our day-to-day lives: she looks at the id buried in all of us, points it out and says 'There is violence; there is selfishness; there is rampant sexuality; there is hate.' According to Jackson, the demons are within and among us and they are just as frightening, if not more so, than those that lurk in Gothic castles or under our beds. 

SOURCES

Aune, David. “Circle.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2^nd ed. Vol. 11. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 1790-1795. Gale Virtual Referenece Library. Web.

Freud, Sigmund. Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. New York: Boni and Liveright, 192-. Scholars Portal Books. E-book.

Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Penguin Group, 2006.

---. “The Lottery.” 1948. The Middlebury Blog Network. 1-7. PDF File.

individualandthesociety/files/2010/09/jackson_lottery.pdf>
King, Stephen. “Chapter IX: Horror Fiction.” Danse Macabre. New York: Gallery Books, 2010. 264- 310. Google Books. E-book.

Laura Miller. “Introduction.” The Haunting of Hill House. New York: Penguin Group, 2006. ix-xxii.
Pike, Sarah M. “Rites of Passage: Neopagan Rites.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2^nd ed. Vol. 11. Detroit: Macmillan Referenece USA, 2005. 7828-7831. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 

Mystery Fiction as Continuation and Response to Gothic - a comparison of Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and Lewis's The Monk

Edgar Allen Poe, who invented the first detective in C. Auguste Dupin, is widely known for his
tales of horror. As this might suggest, there is some overlap between the genres of mystery and the
Gothic. A comparison of works from the two genres, Matthew Lewis's The Monk and the short mystery
stories of Poe (particularly “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”), reveals that early mystery fiction can
be seen as a continuation of the Gothic genre; many of these stories utilize characteristic Gothic motifs,
including the Gothic setting, the morally questionable protagonist, and the exploration of the darker
aspects of human nature. However, while mystery is a continuation of the Gothic, it is likewise a
response to the Gothic which, even as it uses the Gothic tropes mentioned above, alters, adapts, or
subverts them.

An evident point of similarity between Lewis's The Monk and Poe's “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue” is setting. In The Monk, Lewis describes the central location of the Capuchin Church as
containing a “gloom” and a “gothic obscurity.” The setting used for the home of Dupin and his
unnamed companion, “a time-eaten and grotesque mansion,” is likewise Gothic. In each case, the
setting reflects the characters and plot. The “gothic obscurity” of the Capuchin Church, in addition to
creating the eerie quality associated with the Gothic, hints at the obscured or suppressed truths and
passions therein. Similarly, Dupin's home mirrors “the fantastic gloom of [his]...temper.” However,
there is a significant difference in setting between the two works: Lewis' novel, influenced by the
Romantic interest in the premodern, is set in the past, in a time of castles and Cavaliers carrying
rapiers; Poe's story, conversely, set in a contemporary age “amid the...shadows of the populous city,”
brings the Gothic into the modern.

The urban setting is a defining feature of mystery fiction. Poe's earlier story, “The Man of the
Crowd,” which – with its observant protagonist pursuing “the type and genius of deep crime” – one can
read as a prototype to Poe's detective stories, also emphasizes the urban setting: the story takes place on
a crowded “principal thoroughfare” in the city of London. The interest and emphasis on the urban in
mystery fiction, as well the popularity of mystery fiction in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, can be linked to the urbanization taking place throughout Europe during the Industrial
Revolution which brought greater numbers and varieties of people into locations such as London.
Mystery fiction, then, adapts Gothic elements to a modern context. Thus, despite having Gothic traits,
mystery fiction lacks the Romantic, retrogressive quality of Gothic literature. It is more present.

The tendency of mystery fiction to be present, as opposed to distant or other-wordly as Gothic
fiction often is, manifests itself also in the underlying logic of mystery stories. Generally, mystery
fiction relies on materialism. In the baffling case of the L'Espanaye murders, for example, physical
materials such as the “little tuft [of hair he takes] from the rigidly clutched fingers of Madame
L'Espanaye,” prove essential to Dupin's reasoning through the case. Gothic fiction, on the other hand,
relies on the supernatural to extend and explain the plot. In The Monk, Don Raymond is unable to elope
with Agnes, for example, because he gets involved with the ghost of a nun. Similarly, Ambrosio's
downfall is exacted though a “crafty spirit” working for the devil. Poe, in “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue,” draws particular attention to the fact that he is departing from this kind of supernatural
explanation by having Dupin say assuredly “Madame and Mademoiselle L'Espanaye were not
destroyed by spirits. The doers of the deed were material, and escaped materially. Then how?” In both
stories, there is violence and crime; however, mystery fiction begins with the premise that these are
caused materially, and thus can be solved materially. Gothic fiction, in this way, is, conceivably, more
horrifying; to think that there are hidden, evil spirits working for our downfall, especially in a world
like Lewis's where benevolent spirits seem altogether absent, is a frightening thought. In an age of
increasing industry, materialism, and secularization, however, mystery fiction may have been seen as
more relevant and applicable than literature which relied on the supernatural.

Despite the fact that the premise underlying (and therefore the conclusion arising from) “The
Murders in the Rue Morgue” is fundamentally different from that which underlies The Monk, each of
these stories considers the same issue: where does violence come from? In this, one sees that mystery
fiction has a keen interest, characteristic of Gothic literature, in the darker aspects of nature. One
element of the mystery story wherein we see this interest is the characterization of the protagonist as
morally ambiguous. From his inception with Dupin, the detective figure has rarely been a classic hero –
smart, courageous, handsome, and likeable; more often, as with Dupin, he is an insightful, somewhat
anti-social character observing society from its outskirts with no interest in engaging with it except at
his own pleasure and convenience. The moral ambivalence of Dupin shows through in his desiring to
examine the murder scene of the L'Espanayes, not from a desire to help, but because “an inquiry
[would] afford...amusement.” More strikingly perhaps, in his discussion of analysis in “The Murders in
the Rue Morgue,” the narrator writes that “the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent
[and] identifies himself therewith.” Thus, in solving the case of who killed the L'Espanayes, Dupin is,
in fact, thinking like the murderer. In this particular case, it is the mind of an animal that he identifies
with; thus, Dupin is able to get in touch with a primitive, irrational, and potentially extremely violent
mentality within himself. The narrator says that he and Dupin lived “as madmen – although,
perhaps...of a harmless nature.” In other words, the protagonist of Poe's mystery stories, the hero, is
somehow essentially alike to the villain, and this alike-ness is foregrounded. In The Monk, similarly, it
is the villainy of the protagonist Ambrosio, his capacity for evil thought, his primitive desires, his
irrational impulsivity, and so on which are foregrounded. However, again, an essential difference
emerges between the two stories. The detective's capacity for thought is unlike anyone's but the
criminal himself. This is precisely why no one else can solve the case; the police, for instance, despite
all their “vast parade of measures,” are ineffectual. Within the context of the story, then, only the
detective can identify with the criminal. In this sense, he is outside of general humanity, just as the
criminal is. In The Monk, conversely, the villanous protagonist is a monk. He is expected to be the best
of us; thus, his succumbing to evil implies that everyone else is equally, if not more so, likely to be
damned: if the best of us can fall, what hope do the rest have?

Herein, perhaps, lies the defining difference between the two genres: the early works of mystery
fiction are, essentially, hopeful. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” for example, begins with this quote
by Sir Thomas Browne: “What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he bid
himself among women, although puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.” That is a
reassuring statement, telling the reader that it is possible to know what seems unknowable. In the case
of “The Murders of the Rue Morgue,” it becomes possible to make sense of what initially seems to be
senseless brutality. Furthermore, it is possible to do so without resorting to explanations involving
forces of pure evil, as the Gothic tends to do. Mystery fiction is about the solution: by solving a case,
the detective brings understanding which restores a sense of security. Gothic works such as The Monk,
on the other hand, focus on the fall of society and individuals from peace and security into a state so
debased, of evil so profound, it can only be explained as supernatural.

Mystery can be read as a continuation of the Gothic. The two genres share similarities in setting
and in characterization; they even ask similar questions: What is evil? Where does violence come
from? How can humanity and society be saved from these forces that threaten them? However, mystery
and Gothic fiction differ in key respects: mystery focuses on the urban and the physical; the
protagonist, while he shares a likeness with the villain, is not himself a villain but is rather salvaged
through the usage of his intellect and imagination; as to the question of evil, mystery fiction explains
crime rationally, thus eliminating the terror. The result is that, while mystery and the Gothic share
certain elements, explore similar questions and contrive similar themes, ultimately mystery is a more
positive genre, demonstrating a subtle yet obstinate strand of optimism that the Gothic generally lacks.


SOURCES

Lewis, Matthew. The Monk, a romance. Project Gutenberg. Web. September 22, 2012.

Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Man of the Crowd.” The Works of Edgar Allen Poe – Volume 1. Project
Gutenberg. Web. October 2, 2012.

---. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The Works of Edgar Allen Poe – Volume 5. Project Gutenberg.
Web. October 2, 2012.