At the novel’s conclusion, Eleanor commits suicide by driving her car into the oak tree in the house’s driveway, effectively choosing to die rather than allowing the other characters to send her away. As she ultimately falls entirely under the house’s spell, she attempts one night to commit suicide by jumping from its tallest turret after being lulled onward by a voice she believes to be the voice of her dead mother (whom, the narrative implies, she may actually have killed or allowed to die). The mysteries surrounding Eleanor only multiply and thicken as the novel goes on. What’s more, she seems not to know the truth of important details about her own life, insisting for example that a widely-reported poltergeist incident at her childhood home was simply the taunting of angry neighbors. Throughout the novel, Jackson sustains a sense of mystery surrounding Eleanor-she lies almost constantly about her age, her background, where she lives and how.
Eleanor’s fraught and possibly romantic relationship with her roommate at Hill House, Theodora, is a source of anxiety and frustration for Eleanor, who longs for connection with another person but seems uncertain of how to make her desires known. As the disturbances within the house increase in frequency and intensity, the house seems to be communing with or calling for Eleanor-writing addressed to Eleanor appears on the walls of the house in chalk and in blood, and Eleanor feels herself fracturing and slipping, tempted by the desire to “surrender” to whatever haunts the house. Once at the manor, Eleanor recognizes the evil and danger within immediately-but she is so determined to establish her independence, make some friends, and exist on her own in the world that she stays on. Eleanor goes so far as to steal the car she and her sister share in order to make the hundred-mile drive to Hill House. When she receives an invitation from the mysterious Doctor Montague to spend the summer at Hill House, she leaps at the chance to get away from her controlling sister Carrie, her brother-in-law, and her young niece-whom she greatly dislikes-and strike out on her own.
A thirty-two-year-old woman who has spent the last eleven years-the majority of her adult life-caring alone for her invalid mother, Eleanor is desperate to find where she belongs in the world. Eleanor Vance is the isolated, fanciful, and disturbed protagonist of The Haunting of Hill House.
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